Agriculture and solar energy have something fundamental in common: they both depend on land, sunlight and a long time horizon. A solar panel that has generated electricity for more than 25 years and a farm that has managed the same land for generations are not opponents. They are natural partners.
Sheep on an agrivoltaic installation. Credit: Encore Renewable Energy
This partnership, now called agrivoltaics, is one of the most promising tools available to keep working land in production while meeting the energy demands that are straining every power grid in the country. SEIA is new First land use map for agricultural land shows that for every hectare of prime agricultural land under solar energy, 43 hectares of abandoned prime agricultural land lies idle.
The American Farmland Trust Research into ‘farms under threat’ finds that the dominant threat to U.S. farmland is low-density residential development, not solar energy. Nationally, golf courses occupy 2.6 times as much farmland as solar, and suburban sprawl has consumed this land at twice the rate of solar development since 2014.
Solar energy is not the threat to agricultural companies that the public debate assumes. In many of the places I work, it’s what keeps farms alive. I have never seen a developer take land from active agricultural use and convert it to solar energy. As energy demand continues to rise, policies designed to promote agricultural voltaics continue to make the same mistake: not the wrong premise about who the enemy is, but the wrong assumption about what agricultural voltaics is.
One definition, too many boxes
Crops growing between rows of solar panels are also considered agrivoltaic energy. Credit: Green Development
A flock of sheep grazing under solar panels, a farmer harvesting crops between rows of modules, and a rancher running cattle under a dynamic racking system that clears the herd are all doing something called agrivoltaics. Other than that they have virtually nothing in common.
The sheep require standard stable equipment and a grazing contract. Co-located crops require a farmer who has been committed for years before the first harvest, and a well-designed system. Larger herds may require racking considerations and a model that understands the potential loss of production due to design limitations. These are fundamentally different activities with different capital requirements, risk profiles, timelines and levels of agricultural ambitions.
Virginia’s New Definitionwhich came into effect in June is a meaningful step forward because it seems broad enough to include them all. But a definition is an umbrella, not a framework. Every state that has tried to build on a definition has made the same mistake: one set of rules for everything. Rack-height mandates tailored to crops that no one grew serve as an example. That approach has failed. What states need is a multi-course menu that links incentives to the agricultural ambition and activity that suits the country.
What the menu looks like
Agricultural inputs include a wide range of activities in addition to solar energy, but these tend to group into three broader domains: livestock, crops and ecosystem services, each with its own economic profile and, in turn, its own natural policies. A single instrument or policy will be wasteful at the low end of this spectrum and insufficient at the high end of this spectrum. Therefore, the incentive structure must follow the economic aspects of all three instruments. The examples below are illustrative and not all-inclusive:
- Cattle ranges from smaller animals and secluded grazing to larger livestock and newer forage-based flocks with chickens or pigs. Sheep grazing is on the proven side: it is the most established agricultural activity nationally 130,000 hectares are already actively grazedmanageable additional costs (feed, fencing, water, a grazing contract) and no adjustments to the rack required. Because the practice is already so well established, it is not the financial incentive that is most important here, but the certainty described below, the certainty that the rules will not shift below a 25-year value. At the other end are the larger cattle, which can be integrated with specific racking considerations or, in some cases, with standard racking over well-managed herds. This configuration could mean absorbing persistent energy yield losses rather than just an upfront premium, which typically calls for stronger policy support, something like a higher power purchase price or direct compensation for yield losses.
- Washed range from retrofitted shade tolerant applications, to systems proactively designed around a specific crop, to buffer zones outside the fence line but still within the property. Shade-tolerant, hand-harvested crops like leafy greens, herbs and brassicas don’t need changes, but they come with real soft costs: contracting a farmer years before the first harvest, paying them compensation through construction, insurance, a management plan, the kind of profile that a timeline bridge fund or a forgivable loan might fit better than a tax credit. Standard crops that require a specific rack height and row distance add a structural premium; research puts elevated crop compatible systems at 20 to 50% more per watt than standard ground mount, pointing to a timeline bridge and hardware incentive in addition to the same early certainty on load status discussed below. Specialty and intensive crops often perform better under panels than in open fields, but require sophisticated design and years of investment before income materializes. New permits may be required to retrofit and use the buffer zone to take into account any changes in rainwater management.
- Ecosystem services treat pollinators less as a standalone resource and more as a cover crop, a crop that can support regenerative agriculture and serve as a foundation for bringing fallow farmland back into production, or creating entirely new farmland. Pollinator habitat with true ecological rigor (species research, adaptive management, third-party monitoring, sometimes beekeepers) costs significantly more than just a seed mix and requires funding mechanisms to help close that gap. At the far end is the toughest economics on the menu: revitalizing abandoned farmland, where land preparation, soil improvement and long pre-revenue timelines are piled on top of everything else. This case probably needs the fullest support: upfront financing, tax credits, CRP equivalent recognition for the incorporation period and the strongest regulatory certainty available. This allows solar energy to serve as the economic bridge that makes agricultural land viable again.
None of these buckets are waterproof. A well-designed framework should be flexible for projects that draw from more than one bucket at a time; a sheep grazing site with pollination corridors and a shade tolerant crop should be able to capture the full value of all three. That kind of layering is increasingly where the field is heading.
Project security without costs for the state
Across the spectrum, the most valuable things a state can provide cost it nothing. The first is the protection of agricultural land status: a guarantee that land eligible for a value-of-use tax assessment will remain in that designation for the life of the installation, regardless of solar leasing income.
Pollinator-friendly arrays like this one in southern Ohio can also be agrivoltaic systems. Credit: TMI Electric
Without this, a solar lease that makes agriculture viable could simultaneously trigger a property tax revaluation that undermines the economy. Maryland has already done that addressed this immediatelycreating a binding pre-construction determination process that establishes agricultural tax status before a project is built, giving developers a benefit they can factor into their financing from day 1.
The second is to allow certainty: a binding pre-construction determination that the project qualifies as agrivoltaic, combined with legal insulation against future changes to compensation, site requirements, or agricultural designation rules. Together these do not function as subsidies, but as contracts. The state is committed to keeping the ground stable. The developer commits to agricultural activities, documented and enforceable. A mutually beneficial agreement is implemented from day one.
Virginia is also moving in this direction. A bill that would have added agrivoltaics to the Commonwealth’s right to farm, giving eligible projects the same protections afforded to other agricultural activities, was introduced this session and continued through 2027. The definitional foundation laid by SB340 and HB508 makes that next step more feasible: Lawmakers will have criteria to refer to, a working group to develop the standards, and a growing body of evidence from projects already operating in the Commonwealth.
Communities can rely on agriculture if they can see what a project aims to deliver. Developers can invest if the criteria are clear before construction begins. Farmers can participate if the framework respects that agriculture is as varied as the land it takes place on, the people who work there and the markets they serve. American farmers have never depended on one crop, one market or one income stream to survive. They should also not need one definition of agrivoltaic energy. Build the menu with room for all our farmers to participate.
Lauren Glickman is vice president of policy and communications for Encore Renewable Energy, a leading solar energy developer and Certified B Corporation headquartered in Burlington, Vermont.
