When Dave Duttlinger (Dave Duttlinger) saw a thick layer of yellow-brown dust over his Indiana farm, his first thought was: I warned them this would happen.

His approximately 445 acres of land near Whitfield, Indiana are covered with solar panels and associated machinery—in April 2019, Dutringer leased this land to Dunns Bridge Solar LLC, one of the Midwest's largest solar development projects.

Dutringer said that on a windy spring afternoon in 2022, his phone rang, and his frustrated neighbors asked him: Why is the dust from your farm in my truck? in my house? Who should I call to clean it?

According to Duttlinger's solar rental contract seen, Dunns Bridge said it will take “commercially reasonable efforts to minimize damage and interference to growing crops and crop land due to construction activities outside the project site” and “will not remove topsoil from the property itself.” Despite this, the subcontractor graded Duteringer's fields to help build roads and install columns and panels, he said although he warned that this could make the land more susceptible to erosion.

Dutringer said the staff reshaped the landscape and sprinkled fine sand on a large area of fertile topsoil. When Reuters visited his farm last year and this spring, most of the land under the panel was covered with yellowish brown sand, and no plants were growing.

“I can't grow anything on that plot anymore,” the farmer said. His farm covers an area of about 1,200 acres, where his family grows corn, soybeans, and alfalfa for cattle, about one-third of which has been rented out.

The Dunns Bridge Solar Project is a subsidiary of NexTERA Energy LLC, the world's largest wind and solar renewable energy generation company. Duttlinger said when he raised the issue of damage to his land with NexTera, the company said it would review any required remediation work at the end of the 2073 contract under the terms of the agreement.

Nextera declined to comment on this matter or Duttlinger's future promises, and the author is unable to independently confirm these promises. The project developer Orion Renewable Energy Group LLC submitted an inquiry to NEXTERA.

The solar industry is moving towards the Midwest, attracted by cheaper land rents, easier electricity transmission, and plenty of federal and state incentives. The region also has what it needs for solar energy: vast tracts of land.

Based on an analysis of federal, state, and local data, and based on hundreds of pages of court records, and interviews with more than 100 energy and soil scientists, agricultural economists, farmers and farmland owners, and local, state, and federal legislators, it is believed that the boom in renewable energy may damage some of the most fertile soils in major US agricultural states such as Indiana;

According to the analysis, some of Duttlinger's farms, including the part now covered by solar panels, are located on land classified by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the best place to grow crops.

For landowners like Duteringer, the promise of profit is attractive. According to a review of solar leasing and interviews with four solar project developers, solar leasing in Indiana and surrounding states can provide $900 to $1,500 per acre of land rent per year, and rents are rising every year. In contrast, USDA data shows that in 2023, the average farmland rent in major corn and soybean producers in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa was about $251 per acre.

Publicly traded farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs) have leased around 9,000 acres of land to solar companies across the country. Executive Chairman Paul Pittman (Paul Pittman) said most of the land is highly productive.

“Do I think this is the best use of the land?” Probably not. But if we don't do that, our investors will kill us,” he said.

Some renewable energy developers say not all leases have turned into solar projects. Some companies are designing their sites to grow crops between solar panels, while companies like Doral Renewables LLC (Doral Renewables LLC) say they graze livestock around solar panels as part of their land management. Developers also believe that in the Midwest, more than one-third of the US corn crop is used for ethanol production, and that solar energy is a key driver for future electric vehicles.

Some agricultural economists and agronomists countered that even using a small portion of the best farmland for solar energy development and damaging valuable topsoil could affect America's future crop potential.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (Environmental Protection Agency) and the Justice Department (Justice Department), common solar farm construction practices, including cleaning and grading large tracts of land, may also cause severe erosion and large amounts of sediment flowing into waterways without proper remediation measures.

The background to solar energy development is increasingly fierce land competition: USDA data shows that due to farmland being converted to residential, commercial, and industrial use, the farm area in 2023 was reduced by 76.2 million acres, or nearly 8%, compared to 1997.

In response to the findings, the US Department of Agriculture quoted research reports funded by the Department of Energy and agencies as saying that urban expansion and development is currently the more prominent cause of farmland loss rather than solar energy.

Built on the best farmland

No one knows how much farmland across the country is currently equipped with solar panels or leased out for possible future development. Land transactions are usually private transactions.

Scientists from the US Geological Survey and the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been compiling a database of existing solar facilities around the country. Work on the US large-scale solar photovoltaic database began in 2020, including data from 3,699 facilities in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

Although the project is unfinished and ongoing, they have found that as of 2021, approximately 0.02% of the continental US farmland intersects in some way with the large ground-based solar panel sites they have identified.

The total power capacity of each solar facility tracked in the data set represents over 60 gigawatts of electricity capacity. According to a report published by the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie in December 2023, solar power generation will almost triple in the next two years.

To better understand future land use patterns, the author analyzed federal government data to determine whether the US Department of Agriculture divides primary, unique, or locally or statewide important farmland. At the same time, more than 2,000 pages of solar-related documents submitted by local county records offices in four midwestern counties (Pulaski County, Stark County, and Jasper County, Indiana, and Columbia County, Wisconsin) were also reviewed.

These counties are slightly larger than the state of Delaware, and some of America's largest projects are being developed or built here. This sample isn't necessarily representative of the entire US, but it gives an idea of the potential impact of solar energy projects on major agricultural counties.

The analysis found that by the end of 2022, the proportion of highest-yielding farmland obtained by solar and energy companies in these counties was as follows: Pulaski accounts for 12%, Stark accounts for 9%, Jasper accounts for 4%, and Colombia accounts for 5%.

Jerry Hatfield, former director of the National Agriculture and Environmental Laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture Research, said the findings in these four counties were “worrying.”

“What matters is not the amount of land converted to solar energy,” he said. “What matters is the quality of the land responsible for production and what this means for the local economy, the state economy, and the country's future crop production capacity.”

More than a dozen agronomists, renewable energy researchers, and other experts consulted said that the method for measuring the impact of solar energy is fair. The findings were also shared with six solar developers and energy companies working in these counties. Three of them said that the sample size of the survey was too small, and the survey results were too broad to fairly reflect industry site selection and construction practices.

By 2050, to meet the Biden administration's decarbonization goals, the US will need as much as 1,570 gigawatts of solar power.

Although the land required for terrestrial solar development will not be divided by state to achieve this goal, according to the “Solar Futures Study” (Solar Futures Study) released by the US Department of Energy in 2021, it is not expected to exceed 5% of any state's land area by 2050, with the exception of the smallest state, Rhode Island (Rhode Island), where the land area of the state may reach 6.5%.

Researchers at the non-profit farmland conservation organization American Farmland Trust (American Farmland Trust) predicted last year that 83% of new solar development in the US will take place on farms and ranches unless the government changes current policies. The US Farmland Trust promotes smart solar energy. They warned that nearly half of the land would be on America's best land for producing food, fiber, and other crops.

Continuing arguments

The five renewable energy developers and solar energy companies interviewed countered that the industry's use of farmland is too small to affect the overall impact of domestic food production, and should be balanced with the demand for decarbonization in the US energy market under climate change.

Dora Renewables, the developer of the $1.5 billion Mammoth Solar Project in Pulaski and Stark County, does not consider corn or soybean production in its site selection decisions.

Nick Cohen (Nick Cohen), president and CEO of Doral, said the company will consider the land's topography, zoning, and whether it is close to the grid or substation, and avoid wooded areas, ditches, and environmentally sensitive areas as much as possible.

Converting corn cultivation area to solar energy? “I don't think it will replace something critical to our society,” Cohen said. He added that solar energy can “increase the productivity of farmland from an economic perspective.”

Indiana farmer Norm Welker (Norm Welker) said he leased 60% of his farmland to Mammoth's company more cost-effective than growing corn, and corn prices fell to a three-year low this year.

“We have piles of corn, and our costs are lower than production costs. Now, if you rent land to grow corn, you're losing money,” Wilke said. “If it were like now, my financial situation would be great.”