Farmers can benefit from solar projects that accommodate continued ag production.

Agrivoltaics — farming among solar panels — provides an opportunity to diversify income.

One example that lives up to its name is Mammoth Solar in Indiana, which is currently being constructed in four phases across 12,800 acres.

It will total 1,300 megawatts, enough to power 275,000 homes, and the project will pay out decades of lease and easement payments to 51 family farms in the area.

“We have pollinator habitats, row crop production and animal grazing,” said Tyrone Thomas of Doral Renewables.

Thomas spoke during a Feb. 27 panel discussion at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum.

In a video produced by Philadelphia-based Doral, farmer Billy Bope praised the solar project.

“Having the sheep on here, it’s allowed us to maintain the vegetation at the level that they need,” he said. “The project coming to our area, it may give us four generations to stay on the Bope farm.”

Pete Riley, a retired USDA analyst, said energy companies often enter into long-term leases lasting 30 to 40 years.

“Obviously there’s a lot of policy uncertainty at this stage, but we will see continued expansion in the next couple of years,” he said.

While wind power accounted for over 10% of U.S. electricity generation in 2024, its expansion has been slowing. Solar energy accounted for 5% and is expanding faster, Riley said.

Solar sheep grazing in the Eastern United States shows promising potential as a sustainable and innovative approach to maintain vegetation on solar farms.

That means more solar facilities, which often use land zoned for agricultural use.

Some farmers and state ag officials worry that expansion puts high-quality farmland at risk.

Matt Beasley, from solar company Silicon Ranch in Nashville, cited a report by the Tennessee Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations that concluded solar is not going to be a primary driver of the loss of ag land.

“Unlike other developments, the likelihood exists that land can be returned to agricultural production after a solar facility reaches the end of its useful life,” Beasley said, quoting the report. “They also stated that practices like agrivoltaics allow land to be put into solar without taking it out of agricultural production as well.”

Silicon Ranch delved into agrivoltaics after being contacted by Georgia farmer Will Harris. Seven years ago, while the company was developing property in Georgia, Harris questioned how the solar field would affect the area.

“He actually asked the question, ‘What if solar energy was not just clean and renewable, but regenerative?’” Beasley said. “What started off as a pretty contentious discussion between neighbors turned into a handshake deal and, ‘Why don’t you just graze our neighboring property?’”

Silicon Ranch contracts with or employs farmers, ranchers and land managers to have sheep graze on its solar properties.

But Sarah Mills, a University of Michigan professor who studies land use, said not every solar company creates projects like Silicon Ranch and Doral.

“Is this a threat or an opportunity?” Mills said. “It depends on what we mean by farmland preservation.”

Occupying the land with solar panels means it’s not going to get developed with something irreversible like subdivisions, Mills said. The expectation is the panels will be taken down at the end of the lease.

But if farmland preservation means maintaining a rural vista, solar panels might not pass muster, Mills said.

And if the solar company does earth moving on the site — to create stormwater basins or to build berms for screening from neighbors — the land’s productivity can be difficult to restore.

Not much data is available on how much revenue farmland owners receive from hosting solar panels on their farm.

Anecdotally, Mills said farmers get about $1,000 to $1,500 per acre a year in Michigan.