Sustainable Springfield

No one questions a farm if they sell maple syrup in April, pumpkins in October, and hay all summer long.

Different ways of making a living from the land.

Solar is another form of diversification.

Whenever the conversation turns to solar on farmland, it eventually comes to this criticism: “Farmers are just greedy.” Or the favorite, “but it’s taking prime farmland out of production,” territory, a topic I’ve written about so often myself that it now feels like I’m bordering on cliché.

But the most successful farms have always diversified.

Maybe it was milk and eggs, or hay and beef, or timber and maple syrup. Hunting leases, or custom harvesting. Renewables.

Every additional enterprise helps spread out risk. If one market struggles, another can carry the farm through.

This isn’t a new idea. It’s one of the oldest business strategies around, agriculture or not.

And today, it’s more important than ever. 96% of US farm households, according to the USDA, earn income from off-farm sources. Farming has become so financially challenging that most farm families rely on additional income just to make ends meet. Farm bankruptcies are at an all-time high, and net farm income is highly volatile. Most farms operate on razor-thin margins even in profitable years.

It’s not a matter of being “lazy” (every farmer I know considers a 12-hour workday a “slow” day), nor, clearly, is it a matter of being “greedy.”

The median farm income for 2026 is forecast to be -$1,161.

Yes, that’s annually. Yes, that’s a negative sign. No, it’s not a typo, and it’s based on the USDA’s data. And it’s consistent with numbers from the last several years, so it’s also not a statistical anomaly.

For many farms, solar isn’t replacing agriculture. It’s helping pay for it.

Solar lease revenue can help cover taxes, equipment payments, veterinary bills, fencing, seed, and everything else that keeps a farm operating year after year. Livestock can still graze under the panels, crops can still be grown, and the farm can remain exactly what it has always been: a working business adapting to changing markets.

You don’t have to think solar is right for every farm. If it’s your farm, and you’d rather not have solar on it, that’s your choice, just like growing pumpkins (or not), cutting hay (or not), going organic (or not).

And obviously, zoning and environmental regulations still need to exist. A solar lease is not carte blanche to be irresponsible. Nobody is saying that.

What we’re saying is that we need to stop pretending that social media knows better than the farmers who have farmed that land for generations. They know that they can’t survive by putting all their eggs in one basket.

So let them diversify. The farms that last are the ones that find more than one way to keep the lights on.

More Agrovoltaics

"Australia discovered that sheep are better at maintaining solar farms than any machine — and built 4 gigawatts of agrivoltaic projects with them.

Australia's solar farm industry adopted sheep grazing as its primary vegetation management strategy almost by accident. A 2016 trial at the 106-megawatt Mugga Lane Solar Farm near Canberra introduced Merino sheep to graze beneath the panel arrays instead of the mechanical mowers that had been damaging panel wiring and creating fire hazards from cut grass accumulation. The sheep proved effective at maintaining uniform vegetation height, reducing fire risk, eliminating the fuel and emissions cost of mechanical mowing, and generating a small but not insignificant income stream from wool and lamb production.

By 2024, an estimated 4 gigawatts of Australian solar capacity uses sheep grazing as the primary vegetation management method — representing over half of Australia's total utility-scale solar fleet. The sheep provide a measurable financial benefit: a 100-megawatt solar farm carrying 200 Merino sheep generates approximately AUD 60,000 to AUD 80,000 annually from wool and livestock sales, while eliminating AUD 150,000 to AUD 200,000 in annual mechanical mowing costs. The net benefit per farm exceeds AUD 200,000 annually.

Australian solar developers now routinely include sheep management provisions in their land lease agreements with farmers, who often see the arrangement as restoring partial agricultural income from land diverted to solar generation. Several Australian farmers have publicly stated that solar-plus-sheep generates higher combined income per hectare than either solar alone or sheep farming alone on marginal agricultural land.

Australia found the perfect maintenance crew for its solar farms. They work for grass.

Source: Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) & Clean Energy Council Australia, 2024