The Post's Alka Prasad has gone deep into how farmers are electrifying their operations, installing solar and batteries to alleviate concerns about dry years, and reducing their energy costs. As Maniototo farmer and owner of Solayer Becks Smith says in the story: "It's not an either-or situation from hydro-generated electricity to solar-generated electricity. It's about having a renewable electricity grid and shifting as far from fossil-fuel energy as we can,” she says. “For business resilience, the energy you can generate and use yourself is the cheapest energy you'll ever get." Rewiring Aotearoa CEO and electric orchardist Mike Casey says "farmers could have a huge positive influence on New Zealand's electricity system by generating power themselves and putting it into the grid for everybody else to be able to heat their homes, heat their water and charge their electric vehicles". "We can treat our hydropower scheme more like a battery which could power our homes and businesses at night time and solar can do a lot of the grunt work during the day,” he adds.