Government Clown Can’t (Or Won’t) Tell Solar Panels & Buildings Apart From Each Other

---

Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

---

Among all the lies and dissimulations vomiting out of the clown car that used to be known as the US government, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. But, somehow Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins found a way. Last week she declared that banishing solar panels from two USDA loan programs will help save our vanishing farmlands. Farmland is disappearing faster than you can shake a stick at it, to be sure. Only … well … nope, solar panels are not the problem, not by a long shot.

Solar Panels Are Making Our Farmland Disappear, Says USDA

The numbers don’t lie. The US does indeed have a vanishing farmland problem. However, that’s not a solar panel problem. It’s an urban and suburban sprawl issue that has been swallowing up our nation’s agrarian past in a steady march for decade upon decade, far predating the solar industry of today.

Anyone traveling the highways and byways of rural America for an extended period of time has witnessed the trend into the 21st century, with rows of crops replaced by rows of tract homes, warehouses, corporate campuses, and shopping malls. Solar panels, not so much.

Take Tennessee, for example, where Rollins staged a press event to publicize her new directive. Farm conservationists list the state among those most at risk of losing land. However, the main culprit by far is real estate development, not solar panels.

Nevertheless, in a press release explaining the new loan restrictions on wind turbines and solar panels, USDA stated: “Within the last 30 years, Tennessee alone has lost over 1.2 million acres of farmland and is expected to lose 2 million acres by 2027.”

Wow, that’s a lot of farmland. And somehow this is connected to the loan restrictions for wind turbines and solar panels, right? Yes, that’s right, according to the USDA.

“This problem is not just in Tennessee, since 2012, solar panels on farmland nationwide have increased by nearly 50%. That is why the Department is taking action,” the USDA continued in the next breath.

Say what now? A 50% increase sounds pretty alarming, ermigod! Call out the National Guard! Round up the usual suspects! Two if by sea! The solar panels are coming!

“Our prime farmland should not be wasted and replaced with green new deal subsidized solar panels. It has been disheartening to see our beautiful farmland displaced by solar projects, especially in rural areas that have strong agricultural heritage,” Rollins emphasized.

Farmland & Solar Panels By The Numbers

Oh, Brooke, Brooke, Brooke. Where to begin with this? Let’s start with the numbers. As any school child knows, a 50% increase over practically nothing is still practically nothing.

The real question is how much is practically nothing, and researchers at the University of Tennessee have the answers. They crunched the numbers in their state a couple of years ago and found that the total acreage taken up by utility-scale solar arrays, both in operation and under contract as of 2023, would take up only 0.137% of farmland in the state, requiring somewhere in the range of just about 8,200–14,700 acres to produce a total of 1.474 gigawatts of solar energy.

So much for the situation as of 2023. The researchers also took a look ahead to the coming years. They based their calculations on the rather ambitious goalpost of an additional 10 gigawatts of utility-scale solar energy set by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA supplies electricity across six other states in addition to Tennessee. However, for the sake of argument, the research team based their calculation on all 10 gigawatts being located within Tennessee.

The result? Still next to nothing. For an extra 10 gigawatts of clean energy from the sun, the state would have to give up another 0.52% to 0.93% of its farmland, taking into account new, more efficient solar panels that require less space to produce more energy than those installed in previous years.

So, Why Is Our Farmland Really Vanishing? Right Answers Only!

So, what happened to the rest of those 1.2 million acres that Rollins is so concerned about, to say nothing of the additional acres she expects Tennessee to lose over the coming years?

Again, the answer is staring anyone in the face who spends any time at all driving around rural America for any amount of time. “From 1997 to 2017, Tennessee’s land in farms decreased from 11.99 million acres to 10.87 million acres, a reduction of 1.11 million acres or about 9% of Tennessee’s farmland,” the University of Tennessee researchers observed.

Sure, go ahead and blame the US solar industry for the loss of 1.11 million acres of farmland in just 20 years, because solar developers were so very, very busy papering over the farms of Tennessee with solar panels from 1997 to 2017 — except, not. As of midway through last year, the state barely had 600 megawatts of installed solar capacity under its belt, including rooftop solar panels and other non-farm installations.

Solar Panels Are Not The Problem, Low-Density Residential Development Is

The conservation organization American Farmland Trust has also been tracking the vanishing farmland trend. In 2020, they issued a state-by-state report in which they listed Tennessee as the 4th-most threatened state in the US due to the loss of agricultural land to poorly planned real estate development (emphasis added).

The urban sprawl visible from highways is just part of the problem. AFT analyzed 660,000 acres of agricultural land lost in Tennessee between 2001 and 2016. Approximately 78% was replaced or restricted by LDR (low density residential) development.

Aside from the direct loss of farmland, AFT noted that the encroachment of both conventional sprawl and low density development drives up nearby land prices. Retiring farmers in those areas are more likely to sell their land to non-farmers who can afford to pay more. “This means that new and beginning farmers have a hard time finding land, threatening the very future of agriculture,” AFT emphasized.

The real estate-related bleeding continues to this day, with Rutherford County among the hotspots in Tennessee where local land use planners are facing a torrent of opposition from “home builders, real estate professionals and developers.” If the planners do manage to save some farms, it’s a day late and a dollar short. Rutherford County lost 22,044 acres of farmland between 2014 and 2023.

Facts, Schmacts! Solar Panels Are Bad!

Like her boss in the Oval Office, Rollins lives in alternative reality where actual problems don’t exist, and neither do their solutions. How else to explain the misdirection on solar panels?

“Subsidized solar farms have made it more difficult for farmers to access farmland by making it more expensive and less available,” Rollins asserted last week, blithely ignoring every fact and figure about real estate sprawl and population growth.

As if the misdirection on solar panels and real estate was not enough, Rollins and her coterie of state officials at last week’s event also conflated small-scale solar arrays with the kind of utility-scale solar development that anti-solar foes love to complain about.

At the very tail end of a very long press release, USDA finally cut to the chase and named the two loan programs in question: the Rural Development Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program and the Rural Development Rural Energy for America Program Guaranteed Loan Program.

Restricting solar panels from these two programs won’t stop farmers from leasing their land to solar developers for utility-scale solar power plants. Government solar loans and private solar leases are two entirely different and separate transactions.

Instead, Rollins has only made it more difficult for farmers to afford the up-front cost of small solar arrays for their own use, on a scale consistent with the barns, sheds, silos and heavy machinery that characterize the agricultural operation of today. If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Better yet, find your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think.

Image: Courtesy of NREL via CleanTechnica archive.