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A drone view shows how Todd Tracy is converting 2,600 acres of his Buttonwillow farm to solar for lack of water. Top and right are wheat and cotton.
A canal cuts through farmland in Buttonwillow. Farmer Todd Tracy is converting 2,600 acres to a solar project because the lack of water prevents him from growing some crops.
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A drone view shows how Todd Tracy is converting 2,600 acres of his Buttonwillow farm to solar for lack of water. Top and right are wheat and cotton.
A canal cuts through farmland in Buttonwillow. Farmer Todd Tracy is converting 2,600 acres to a solar project because the lack of water prevents him from growing some crops.
California’s Central Valley is one of the country’s richest farming regions, blessed with fertile soils, sunny days and a massive man-made system of irrigation canals and reservoirs.
But as climate change intensifies, droughts deepen, and water restrictions kick in, growers in much of the valley are getting less water for their fields. They also face new limits on how much they can pump from underground, forcing them to leave hundreds of thousands of acres dry in the coming years. Some are turning to an answer they never thought they’d embrace: solar.
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