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Electric vehicle barriers shrinking for rural residents

An ag economist says barriers to electric vehicle adoption by ag producers and rural residents are shrinking but issues remain.

The University of Missouri’s Ben Brown said there’s growing access to charging stations.

“I was in Lone Jack, Missouri, which is a small town in western Missouri, and they had Tesla charging stations,” he said. “We have one in my hometown of Appleton City of 1,000 people. So, it’s a technology that’s growing.”

But he tells Brownfield Midwestern farmers raise valid concerns stemming from the Texas power grid blackout in early 2021.

“It kind of struck me because I tend not to see much integration with electric vehicles within the rural countryside in the Midwest,” Brown said. “But out here they’re not growing corn and so they’re more accepting of some of this technology.”

Brown said he was visiting a dairy farm in California this week which happened to own a Tesla…

“You still have to produce that electricity somewhere, right,” he said. “[And] the carbon intensity score of producing electricity verses the carbon intensity score of growing corn, what does that look like.”

And he said cost played a key role in their buying decision with it being the cheapest new vehicle available to them.

Brown made his comments on Brownfield’s recent Weekly Commodity Market Update.