Sustainable agriculture and the production of sufficient amounts of energy from RES have become imperatives for a growing global population. According to UN estimates, the world population today numbers 8.2 billion inhabitants of planet Earth, and if current trends continue, we can expect a figure of 9.7 billion in the middle of the XXI century. At the same time, while the number of people on the planet is growing (along with the increase in demand for food and energy), one of the most important resources today is slowly disappearing - according to UN estimates, in the period 2000-2015, about 20% of the Earth's total land was degraded due to enormous anthropogenic pressure. As one of the main priorities at the global level is the abandonment of fossil fuels and the reduction of CO2 emissions, the production of energy from RES and the green transition - additional activities have appeared that put pressure on the land use. More and more often, throughout Europe (but also in other parts of the world), we are witnessing conflicts between agricultural production and the expansion of RES - that is, the construction of large photovoltaic systems, which occupy free land, which can potentially be used for food production. Therefore, a key question arises - can food production and energy production from renewable sources be harmonized? To overcome the obstacles in the best possible way, it was necessary to research and develop new approaches such as agrivoltaics (co-location of solar energy and agriculture). Agrivoltaics enables the simultaneous use of land for two seemingly opposing activities - energy and agriculture, which reduces the need for additional land and increases efficiency, rationality, and sustainability in the use of natural resources. At the same time, agrivoltaics strongly supports strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change, decarbonization and green transition, which is in line with the policies of the European Green Deal.
Lukić et al. (Mon,) studied this question.