Expert: Solar panels help farmers save water, earn income  

California’s Central Valley is home to some of the most productive farmland in the nation, growing nearly all of America’s almonds, olives and sweet rice. But with rising temperatures, persistent drought and mounting water restrictions, many farmers are facing an uncertain future. Increasingly, they’re turning to an unexpected lifeline: solar energy. New research including Michigan State University researchers reveals how solar panels are helping farmers reduce costs, conserve water and stabilize their operations — and, in some cases, helping them earn up to 25 times more per acre than traditional crops.

Jacob Stid, Annick Anctil and Anthony Kendall from MSU have studied how solar energy development is transforming agriculture in California’s Central Valley. Together, they explain how farmers are using solar to conserve water, diversify income and adapt to the growing challenges of climate change and water scarcity.

How many farmers in California’s Central Valley are considering solar energy?

Thousands of farmers across the country, including in the Central Valley, are choosing solar energy. A 2022 survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that roughly 117,000 U.S. farm operations have some type of solar device. Our own work has identified over 6,500 solar arrays currently located on U.S. farmland.

What are the economic trade-offs of installing solar panels on farmland?

Turning land used for crops to land used for solar usually means losing agricultural production. We estimated that over the 25-year life of the solar arrays currently located on U.S. farmland, this land would have produced enough food to feed 86,000 people a year, assuming they eat 2,000 calories a day.

There was an obvious benefit, too, of clean energy: These arrays produced enough renewable electricity to power 470,000 U.S. households every year.

Farmers who owned their own arrays had to pay for the panels, equipment and installation, and maintenance. But even after covering those costs, their savings and earnings added up to $50,000 per acre of profits every year, 25 times the amount they would have earned by planting that acre.

Farmers who leased their land made much less money but still avoided costs for irrigation water and operations on that part of their farm, gaining $1,100 per acre per year — with no up-front costs.

How does solar energy help with water conservation?

Converting segments of farmland to solar arrays helps farmers conserve water and support compliance with the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act water use reduction requirements because most of the solar arrays were installed on land that had previously been irrigated. By turning off irrigation on this land, farmers saved enough water every year to supply about 27 million people with drinking water or irrigate 7,500 acres of orchards. Following solar array installation, some farmers also fallowed surrounding land — that is, they chose to leave arable land unused to recover, store organic matter and retain moisture — perhaps enabled by the new stable income stream, which further reduced water use.

Can solar energy and farming coexist long-term?

Farmers and landowners are finding new ways to protect farmland and food security while supporting clean energy. One such approach is agrivoltaics, where farmers install solar designed for grazing livestock or growing crops beneath the panels. Solar can also be sited on less productive farmland or on farmland that is used for biofuels rather than food production.

What makes solar energy a valuable option for farmers?

Farms are much more than the land they occupy and the goods they produce. Farms are run by people with families, whose well-being depends on essential and variable resources such as water, fertilizer, fuel, electricity and crop sales. Farmers often borrow money during the planting season in hopes of making enough at harvest time to pay off the debt and keep a little profit.

Installing solar on their land can give farmers a diversified income, help them save water and reduce the risk of bad years. That can make solar an asset to farming, not a threat to the food supply.

What does this mean for farmers in Michigan?

While Michigan’s farmlands differ from those in California, its farmers face many of the same threats to their livelihoods. Michigan is in the early stages of solar energy buildout and policy, but already its farmlands are highly sought after for renewable energy development. Despite this demand, we know little about how agricultural lands and communities in the state are affected.

For instance, where and how is solar already being built and on what land is it sitting? How will it shape the landscape and the people who depend on it? These are the questions our research is now working to answer. But what we do know is that when farmers install solar on just a portion of their land, it can support livelihoods and food security, rather than threatening them.