In the push to produce more renewable energy, businesses and legislative bodies alike have looked to repurpose farmland for solar power generation. From town halls to the halls of Congress, the debate has continued over the use of such acreage for traditional agricultural purposes or green energy development. But, some folks are learning a new concept that aims to use the land for both: agrivoltaics. North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley recently met a couple in the Adirondacks doing just that and has this report.
“Agrivoltaics is kind of the blanket term for any kind of farming under solar panels.”
Rebekah and Josh Pierce have a contract with a solar company to provide vegetation management on about 25 acres of land where solar panels provide 5 megawatts of electricity off Route 22 in Beekmantown.
“The sign says ‘Sheep grazing on site. Please keep gate closed,’ Pat Bradley notices.
“Well right now there’s 87 head,” Josh Pierce notes. “Eighty-five of which are females and there’s two rams in here. So the rams are working to make next year’s lamb crop.”
The Pierce’s graze animals at 9 different community solar sites in Clinton, Essex, St. Lawrence and Franklin counties. The sheep come from their farm and Josh explains how they graze underneath and around the solar panels.
“We will come in with our groups of animals and we will subdivide with temporary electric fencing. That helps us keep everybody packed up. The sheep get a much nicer graze on the property as well as it’s also better for their overall animal health.”
Rebekah adds:
“The sheep are getting the benefit of shade when it’s really hot out, but then also protection from the rain, the wind and whatever other elements might be. And so that’s really beneficial for them too. In some years we’ve had animals onsite in late April. And then they can be here really as late as November in many years depending on when we get that first heavy snowfall and things like that. And so that’s huge because the more time we don’t have to spend feeding hay, it saves us money, it’s better for the animal health and we’re just able to utilize the land a little bit better I think.”
Rebekah Pierce notes that the idea of solar grazing began in Germany in the early 1980s but has only gained ground in the U.S. over the last couple of decades.
“I had written an article for Acres USA magazine back in 2019 where I interviewed some folks who were doing this in like the Finger Lakes area, which has really been the genesis of solar grazing in the United States. Which is cool to have that so close to us. We thought it was cool. Kind of tabled the idea. And then in 2022 the farmers that own this field that we’re standing on here, they approached us because they were putting this land into solar and thought that this would be a cool co-utilization for the land that would allow it to still remain agricultural.”
“Why not put solar panels on your farm property and do it there?” asks Bradley.
I would love to,” Josh replies. “That being said we only own 20 acres. So when we started this we has a couple sheep as a hobby. We were both working full-time jobs that had nothing to do with farming. But we really wanted to pursue having a farm as a sustainable business that I could then just do full time. And the solar, and taking the solar contracts, is what’s made that possible.”
Rebekah Pierce says the secondary income from grazing their animals is essential for their farm’s bottom line.
“It’s beneficial for us in a few different ways and one of the biggest is in years like this where input costs are extremely high for farmers, having that secondary income stream from the vegetation management contracts does provide us a nice buffer so that we’re not necessarily having to rely on operating loans just to pay our bills throughout the year. We have some secondary income to fall back on.”
Rebekah writes extensively about solar grazing and has found the idea is somewhat controversial.
“There’s a ton of misconceptions, you know, that solar panels are eating up prime farmland. As you can see, the land is not out of production here. In many cases it’s made better because you’re allowing those farmers to access additional land and additional revenue streams that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. And as far as concerns like the panels are toxic, those concerns just aren’t true. So solar panels are glass, aluminum, silicon and they’re fully sealed. So there’s nothing that is going to harm the animals. And the infrastructure on these sites is no different than having sheep at home grazing around galvanized fence posts. The metals are the same, the risks are the same, but the benefits are tremendous.”
Josh Pierce says there are numerous ways farmers are successfully using land under and around solar panels.
“It’s not just animals. There’s folks in the Midwest that have row crops, soybeans and corn. They just expand out the alleys, they change the angles of the panels or have them so they can get equipment underneath. There’s people doing vegetable crops, berry crops. They’re putting them over cranberry bogs in Massachusetts. The sky is really the limit as far as how we can be adaptable and how we can be innovative to keep moving forward in the economic climate that we’re in.”
