I drove across a couple of states this week, and something along the highway stuck with me. Mile after mile of good, flat farmland — the kind that grows food — with low, wall-to-wall solar panels bolted across the whole field. Not over a parking lot. Not on a warehouse roof. On cropland. And once you build a solar field like that, that ground is out of food production for 25 to 30 years, at least.
Let me be clear up front, because this gets misread fast: I am for solar. Our energy plan is all-of-the-above — nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, and a modern grid. Solar is cheap, it works, and we should build a lot more of it. This isn't an argument against solar. It's an argument against building it the lazy way.
We Talk About Food Shortages for a Reason
We talk about food shortages in this country occasionally, and around the world constantly — especially since the war in Ukraine wrecked one of the planet's breadbaskets and disrupted grain exports that millions of people depend on. Farmland is not just real estate. It's food security. It's leverage. It's one of the things that makes America strong. Taking prime cropland out of production for three decades to save a developer the cost of a slightly harder site is exactly the kind of short-term thinking we started this movement to end.
And it's happening at real scale. Prime agricultural land is a developer's favorite target for solar precisely because it's open, flat, dry, and cheap to build on. In New York, a Cornell analysis found that 44% of solar projects were sited on crop, pasture, or hay land. Even the current USDA has moved to stop steering federal dollars toward solar on prime farmland. When a Republican administration and clean-energy advocates are both circling the same problem, that's usually a sign there's common sense to be found in the middle.
We Are Not Short on Places to Put Panels
Here's what makes this so frustrating: we don't need the farmland. We are surrounded by surfaces that will never grow anything and are just sitting there in the sun:
- Rooftops. Warehouses, big-box stores, strip malls, distribution centers, factories, schools. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates U.S. rooftops alone have the technical potential for about 1,100 gigawatts of solar — roughly 40% of all the electricity the country uses. We've barely scratched it.
- Parking lots. Solar canopies over parking do double duty — they generate power and shade your car and keep it cooler. Acres of asphalt at every mall, stadium, and office park are begging for it.
- Land that genuinely can't be farmed. Old industrial sites, capped landfills, quarries, brownfields, highway margins, rock and desert that was never going to grow a crop.
None of that competes with dinner. A roof that generates electricity is a roof doing two jobs. A cornfield covered in fixed panels is a cornfield doing zero.
If Solar Does Go on Working Land, Do It Right
There's a smart middle path, too, and the case studies are real. It's called agrivoltaics — and the version that actually works is solar you can farm under, especially for grazing livestock. Mount the panels higher, space the rows farther apart, and let sheep graze between and beneath them, and something surprising happens:
- The shade conserves soil moisture and slows evaporation, so the grass stays green later into the season and needs less water.
- Research has found the forage growing under panels can be higher in protein and more digestible than forage out in the open.
- The panels give animals real relief from heat — studies measured sharply lower wool-surface and skin temperatures in ewes with panel shade, and the sheep even drank less water.
- And the grazing keeps the vegetation down, so the solar operator doesn't have to mow. Both sides win.
That's the difference between using land and wasting it. Elevated, spaced panels over a working pasture keep the land productive. Low, wall-to-wall panels bolted across a cropfield — the kind I keep passing on the highway — leave ground that can't be used for anything else without tearing the whole installation out and starting over.
Think Smarter, Not Just Easy
This is the whole philosophy in one image. The easy choice and the smart choice are usually not the same choice. Bolting panels flat across a farm field is easy — cheap site, quick build, done. Putting that same solar on the ten million roofs and parking lots we're ignoring, or building it elevated over a pasture so the land keeps working, takes a little more thought and a little more effort. But it gets us the clean power and keeps the food, the water, and the land.
We can have abundant, affordable, clean energy without trading away our food security to get it. We just have to be willing to think one step past the easy answer. That's the job.
Read our full all-of-the-above energy plan →
Sources
• U.S. rooftop solar technical potential: ~1,118 GW, ~39% of national electricity sales — National Renewable Energy Laboratory
• Cornell analysis: 44% of New York solar sited on crop, pasture, or hay land — Farm Progress
• USDA blocks taxpayer dollars for solar panels on prime farmland (2025) — U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Combining solar panels and lamb grazing increases land productivity — ScienceDaily / Oregon State
• Herbage yield, forage quality, and lamb growth in an agrivoltaic system — Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
• What solar grazing is and why it works — American Solar Grazing Association