MIDDLETOWN, PA. – Country View Family Farms, the hog production division of Clemens Food Group, recently announced that it would install more than 8,000 solar panels at four of the company’s Pennsylvania farm locations.

The solar panels were designed in partnership with LuminaSun and are currently under construction. Country View said installation is expected to be completed by early September.

The project is led by William Fink, facility manager at Country View, as part of the company’s sustainability initiatives. Once completed the company will be able to redirect a percentage of electricity generated back to the farm, as well as assist in offsetting CO₂ emissions from other traditional sources of energy.

“We’re incredibly excited for the installation of these solar panels at our farms. At Country View, we are always looking for ways to increase productivity in ethical and environmentally-friendly ways,” Fink said. “We want to become self-sufficient, not only to use clean energy, as opposed to traditional energy sources, but to also help our communities by taking pressure off of local power grids. We are hopeful for the future of sustainability within agriculture, and hope to install even more solar arrays at more of our facilities.”

Country View expects to generate almost 3 million kilowatt-hours of energy from the 8,120 solar panels. That is equivalent to 221,769 gallons of gasoline, 4,562 barrels of oil or 2.172 million lbs of coal burned.