06/04/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BNVBoGtGB/
“Solar should never touch farmland.”
Vs
“Solar should go everywhere.”
Both positions miss the reality farmers are living in.
There’s an assumption that agrivoltaics proponents want every acre of farmland covered in solar panels with sheep tucked underneath them.
I’m a sheep farmer. I believe in renewables. And I’ve never met anyone who actually believes that.
What I do believe is that farmers should have the right to make that decision for themselves.
Don’t want solar? Fine. Want solar, but no interest in farming around it? Fine. Want dual-use systems? Fine too.
Not every acre is the right acre for solar. Not every solar site can support agriculture.
Poor siting decisions deserve criticism. But we’ve started throwing the baby out with the bath water over a handful of details that are often either untrue or totally fixable.
We need to stop pretending that farmland exists in some untouched, static state where the only threat is solar.
Farmland is already disappearing, to development, to rising land prices. To operating losses.
When people say we can’t put solar on farmland, what they’re often defending is an idealized version of agriculture where every acre stays actively farmed forever under stable economic conditions.
That’s not the world we live in.
I don’t believe every acre of farmland should (or needs to) be solar. A fully solar-powered grid would require ~13 million acres.
Ethanol corn takes 30 million (and you CAN farm corn on solar, see sources).
Not every acre of farmland needs to become solar. But every farmer should be allowed to participate in the conversation, if they want to.
Some farms never pursue solar. Some shouldn’t. Some land is too constrained, too fragmented, for solar. Sometimes…we just don’t want to. And that’s ok, if it’s the landowner’s decision, not Statler and Waldorf casting judgment from the social media balcony.
Agriculture has always evolved alongside energy systems. We accepted grain dryers. Robotic milkers. Methane digesters. Electric fencing. Combines. Diesel tractors. Irrigation pivots. We accepted ethanol.
Energy infrastructure has never been separate from agriculture. We’re only debating which forms are culturally familiar enough to tolerate.
What agrivoltaics offers is something agriculture rarely gets anymore: options.
Options to stack income streams, reduce risk exposure, keep land in agricultural production while generating energy, and options for young farmers, graziers, and specialty crop producers to access land they could otherwise never afford.
Importantly, dual-use systems challenge the idea that farmland must perform only one job at a time.
Food and energy are not competing needs. We need both.
Doesn’t mean every project is automatically good, or every developer is responsible. It doesn’t mean communities shouldn’t have a say.
But the conversation improves when we ask the better question: “what does responsible agri-energy integration look like?”
Source:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44264-026-00141-0
