Researchers look to use solar farm sites also for farm production

  • June 3, 2024

A man in a white baseball cap and t-shirt holds a plant while standing in a field. Scott Thellman grows a mix of organic produce and conventional crops on land adjacent to a planned utility-scale solar farm north of Lawrence, Kansas. He says the project would take good farmland out of production.

(Frank Morris–Harvest Public Media)

It’s called agrivoltaics—the coexistance of solar farming with production agriculture.

As solar farming spreads radidly, it’s consuming valuable farm land in some instances. But in more and more cases, livestock are being allowed to graze and roam under higher placed solar panels.

A site north of Lawrence, Kansas is one example where developers of a recently approved 1,105 acre solar farm have promised to use sheep grazing around and under the solar panels.

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Jerry Bohnen