US President Donald Trump is pulling out all the stops in a supposed attempt to save farmers from the high cost of fuel, but he’s shooting at the wrong target. Instead of wheedling a measly few shiploads of diesel from Russia he should be working to help farmers take advantage of new cash crop opportunities in the agrivoltaic movement. Agrivoltaics is where farmers get solar panels and — oops! We lost him at solar panels. Oh, well…maybe Trump doesn’t like farmers after all…
CleanTechnica has been following the agrivoltaic movement since 2017, when researchers began to compile evidence that arrays of solar panels can be designed to make room for grazing animals and crops, enabling farmers to continue using the land for agriculture. Scaleup has been slow, but indications of a breakthrough began to surface in 2022 when the firm Doral Renewables broke ground on the 1.3 gigawatt Mammoth solar power plant spread among land leased from more than 65 families in Starke and Pulaski counties, in the northwest region of Indiana (see more agrivoltaic background here).
The project was constructed in phases. With the final 900 megawatts taking just 18 months to build, Mammoth checks the speed-to-power box demanded of today’s surging thirst for more electricity.
“In the world of economic development right now, every project is looking for speed to electrons. With demand for electricity skyrocketing, we need every electron we can get on the grid,” Indiana Secretary of Energy Suzanne Jaworowski enthused in a press statement marking the start of commercial operations for the 900-megawatt phase on October 7.
While solar panels take some space from agriculture, other opportunites emerge. By the time the first 400 megawatts were commissioned, Mammoth was playing host to 2,000 head of grazing livestock including sheep, donkeys, alpacas, and small pigs called kunekunes. The grazers serve as natural vegetation managers, keeping plants from overgrowing the solar panels while paring down the use of diesel equipment needed for mowing.
Jaworowski was also among those emphasizing that solar power is a land preserver. Unlike other forms of real estate development, solar power plants require minimal surface disruption. Once the solar panels are removed, the land can be returned to farming if desired. “We want to create an energy infrastructure that will draw economic development and do it in a way that preserves our way of life and our agricultural environment. This project is a great example of that,” Jaworowski emphasized.
Perhaps Jaworowski could have a conversation about that with US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, who somehow got the notion into her head that solar power plants are destroying farmland.
On the other hand, never mind. In addition to preserving land in northwest Indiana from destructive forms of real estate development, the Mammoth project has also made a major contribution to the state’s manufacturing sector. Solar panels require racking systems and other hardware, and the Indiana steel industry produced 20,000 tons of steel for these elements of the project.
Doral has stated that it will continue exploring agrivoltaic opportunities in the Mammoth project, “Among others, the company is exploring specialty crops, sheep and cattle grazing,” the firm notes.
Doral is also informed by another subset of the agrivoltaic field, in which solar power plants double as native plant restoration and habitat conservation projects. The firm’s 1.3 gigawatt Vista Sands solar power plant in Wisconsin, for example, received support from conservation groups including the Audubon Society for partnering in a connected grasslands conservation project on private lands.
Conservation groups have also pointed out that the Vista Sands project will enable more than 50 wells to shut down, conserving water in a stressed area while sharply reducing the chemicals leached from fertilizers and insecticides. Doral additionally cited an engineering report indicating that Vista Sands would contribute public health and ecosystem benefits of $630 million in its first year of operation alone.
Work on Vista Sands will reportedly commence now-ish, if it hasn’t done so already. Meanwhile, back in Indiana, Doral has joined an agrivoltaic partnership led by Purdue University aimed at making the case for solar panels on farmland even better.
Under the umbrella of the newly formed Midwest Agrivoltaics for Resilient Communities, the partners are focusing on the energy security angle. “MARC is focused on the transformative potential of agrivoltaics – harvesting food and energy on the same land – to enhance the economic resilience and power security of rural Midwestern communities in the face of severe weather,” Purdue summarizes.
“Producing both food and energy locally can help diversify and stabilize landowner income, reduce power outages, and ultimately create a more prosperous rural Midwest,” the school adds.
“When hail ruins a harvest, heat strains livestock, or windstorms cut electricity, farmers and their communities are hit hard. Our goal is to understand how agrivoltaics can make our nation’s rural communities more resilient and prosperous,” explains Dr. Dan Chavas of Purdue, who holds the post of principal investigator on the project.
For its contribution to MARC, Mammoth has staked out a demonstration zone for the exclusive use of research activities, including robotics testing and advanced monitoring systems as well as crop trials. The project also engages the solar tracker firm Nextpower  (formerly Nextracker) and the utility NiSource.
Somehow the MARC project escaped the Trump chopper, having received funding from the National Science Foundation at its launch. Other federal support for farm-based solar power practically vanished, though, when Secretary Rollins wrote new rules practically shutting farmers out of the low-cost loans and grants that used to support rural solar projects under the longstanding REAP (Rural Energy for America) program.
Or not, as the case may be. Last month two environmental organizations, the Environmental Law & Policy Center and Earthjustice, sued Rollins and the Agriculture Department over the new rules. In addition to shutting down the future solar pipeline, the new rules also retroactively deny payment to existing loan and grant recipients.
“USDA has imposed unlawful anti-solar eligibility criteria on REAP while abruptly changing the rules of the program such that farmers and rural small businesses across the country have been individually stuck with tens of thousands of dollars of unexpected expenses,” the two organizations charged.
Will Rollins back down? Stay tuned…
Photo: The agrivoltaic movement combines solar panels with agriculture, providing farmers with new opportunities to improve their financial situation at a time of skyrocketing fuel costs (cropped, courtesy of Doral Renewables).
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Tina has been covering advanced energy technology, military sustainability, emerging materials, biofuels, ESG and related policy and political matters for CleanTechnica since 2009. Follow her @tinamcasey on LinkedIn, Mastodon or Bluesky.
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