Farmers Hoping Congress Will Protect Them from Big Solar

Solar ‘farms’ chicanery exposed.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced legislation on Nov. 20 that would prohibit the use of federal funds or tax credits to support solar panel development on productive farmland. The Protecting American Farmland Act mirrors legislation introduced in the House in May by Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH). The bills effectively reverse tax and funding support for solar investments created under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Solar Arrays Undermining US Farmers

More than mere ideological posturing is at stake. Lucrative government subsidies and tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act distorted agricultural markets across many regions of the country as solar developers competed with crop farmers for land purchases and leases. The income from solar field arrays, augmented by government support, far exceeded the earnings of commodity farmers, pushing up land and lease costs.

It is not clear if Biden intended to displace actual farmers for sun-collecting technologies justified by a supposed carbon dioxide-fueled climate crisis, but that has been the effect. Farmers were already struggling with high costs for fertilizers, equipment, and especially land. Driving up land prices and lease costs prioritized solar panels above food production.

For years, greenwashing – when an organization or manufacturer promotes or advertises a product as being more environmentally friendly than it truly is  – has employed the misnomer “solar farms” to refer to vast ground-mounted facilities that displace food-growing farms. Greenwashing articles crowed about the benefits to soils and biodiversity from solar installations, and others touted sheep grazing under the shade of solar arrays as a nifty efficiency.

A Greenwashing Ruse

But this has been, as President Donald Trump has rightly called it, a scam. Improved soil health and biodiversity result not from installing solar panels but from ceasing to apply pesticides and glyphosate to the land. Pollinators return, plant diversity soars, and soils are replenished by decaying plant matter. The solar panels have nothing to do with this effect, though one day they will have to be disposed of – an ecotoxic nightmare never discussed in the literature.

The idyllic pics of sheep grazing under the comfort of (likely Chinese-manufactured and US taxpayer-funded) solar panels are a similar greenwashing ruse. It’s not like sheep need housing made of sheets of plastic tech manufactured using massive coal plants: They do fine under trees or wooden structures for shade. Sheep flocks in the United States have been steadily declining for decades, and most Americans don’t even eat lamb. There are not nearly enough sheep in the nation to service the explosion of solar arrays constructed. The idea that solar panels will “coexist” with food production is just a marketing palliative for solar installers, investors, and manufacturers.

One doesn’t see pictures of cows under solar panels because they either don’t fit or they’d rub against and destroy the things. Presumably, that would be called a “solar stampede,” and it wouldn’t be profitable for the investors who are raping US farmland for short-term profits.

Reducing Food Inflation Requires Investment in Farmers

It takes years to reclaim neglected farmland, and very little time to make it unusable with technocratic graft like the Inflation Reduction Act, which even Biden conceded was really about funding renewable energy, not reducing inflation. Food prices increase when farmland prices rise, as farmers pass along rising land and lease costs to commodity prices and in turn to grocery store shelves. Consumers will blame Trump for the result of Biden’s ill-considered renewable energy spending spree.

The Protecting American Farmland Act eliminates several favorable tax benefits for investors in solar projects. However, the changes are prospective: Existing installations are grandfathered and will continue to receive taxpayer subsidies while farmers sit out in the cold.

The proposed legislation will contrast Democrats who value renewables manufacturing above rural farming against Republicans who support food production over solar farm chicanery. Renewables manufacturing emits massive amounts of toxins in production, which are ignored in the pursuit of “net-zero” carbon. Consumers facing rising grocery prices may start to see the source of food inflation in disappearing US farmland. And if they buy lamb, it is more likely to have been raised in Australia or New Zealand and shipped to America than nurtured domestically under a shading solar panel array.