Bryant Parker opens the gate of his trailer in Dunlap, Illinois, and lets his flock out to pasture.
The sheep step out, gingerly at first, then loping as a herd toward green fields. If they notice the rows of solar panels overhead, the 75 lambs and ewes don’t show it. They’re too busy chowing down.
“They like eating grass,” Parker said. “As long as they’ve got good, clean grass in front of them, it don’t matter to them where they’re at.”
The sheep are grazing a 7.1-megawatt solar farm that came online late last year. It covers about 35 acres of what used to be fields of corn and soybeans, and produces enough energy to power about 1,200 homes
Parker, who runs Tin Can Farms with his wife Jessica Parker out of nearby Glasford, brings his sheep to graze at several solar sites around central Illinois. He had been seeking more pasture for his growing herd when he had an idea.
“At the time, solar farms were popping up around our area,” he said, “and I kept looking at them thinking, ‘Man, that’s a lot of grass. There’s something that could be done with that.’”
Parker cold-called solar companies until he found someone willing to let his sheep mow their lawn.
“I am now fattening my lambs using somebody else’s grass, and getting paid in the process,” he said.
Angie Burke, director of operations and maintenance at the Denver-based Pivot Energy, the developer of this site, said Parker’s flock provides a service.
“We want good establishment of vegetation on site to avoid erosion concerns. But then we also don’t want the vegetation to get too high so that it’s shading the solar panels and we’re losing energy production,” Burke said. “Sheep kind of meet in the middle and strike the right balance.”
Community-scale solar farms are booming in Illinois thanks to state incentives. Pivot Energy has developed dozens of similar projects in Illinois and elsewhere, almost all of which combine solar power and farming in a practice called agrivoltaics.
The company signed a lease for at least 20 years, Burke said, agreeing to pay the landowner several times more than they had been earning from corn and soybeans. Faced with rising costs and tanking prices for their products, many farmers and rural landowners are making that trade when renewable energy developers come knocking.
Agrivoltaics could help states meet renewable energy goals while preserving farmland and benefit some small farmers by diversifying their businesses. As of 2024, however, they accounted for less than 5% of the country’s solar power.
Competition for land
The American Solar Grazing Association said at least 113,050 sheep are grazing about 129,000 acres of solar sites across the U.S. Cows can graze around panels, too, but goats have a tendency to climb where they’re not supposed to and chew on wires.
“It was attempted, and I think enough lessons were learned,” said Angie Burke, director of land stewardship at Pivot Energy. “We’ve defaulted back to sheep.”
There are additional costs for solar developers pursuing solar grazing, but Burke said there is a business case for keeping the land agriculturally productive.
“We spend a little more on fencing, maybe burying wires or more time on wire management,” she said, “but then in the long run, we’re saving about 10% to 15% year over year by using sheep instead of mechanical mowing. Yes, these sheep are cute – and they’re effective at doing the job that we’re paying their grazers to do for us.”
Brooke and Chauncey Watson IV also raise sheep and shop them to solar farms with their business Illinois Solar Grazing. With solar expanding in the Midwest, the Watsons encouraged other farmers interested in solar grazing to pitch their services before developers break ground.
“You’re more likely to have success the earlier you get connected with the energy company,” Brooke Watson said. “No one wants to go back and revisit the permitting process, or mess with something once it’s already done.”
While graziers like the Watsons and the Parkers see solar farms as a win-win, the Trump administration has cast renewable energy as a threat to American farmland. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said last year that the agency “will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland,” and ended federal loan guarantees for some wind and solar development.
The number of U.S. farms is in decline, and in some rural areas there has been a backlash to solar development. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates 1.25 million acres of farmland have been converted for solar – less than half of 1% of the country’s farmland, and about as much land as is lost every year to urban sprawl.
While they often compete for the same land, renewable energy and agriculture can also work together. In the Midwest, 70% of solar farms built between 2012 and 2020 were on cropland, but according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it had little effect on agriculture in the area.
“It’s no secret that farmers are facing economic challenges right now,” said Bill Bodine, director of business and regulatory affairs for the Illinois Farm Bureau. “If they’re being approached by a developer, they may look at that as an opportunity. Others look at it differently, and nothing forces them to be a part of it.”
Agrivoltaics could reassure rural communities and local regulators that renewables and farms can coexist, said Paul Mwebaze, an economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“Allocating the whole land to doing solar means taking land away from agriculture. And so agrivoltaics can ease community opposition,” Mwebaze said. “We’ve been attending county hearings, Champaign County public hearings, and that question comes up a lot.”
Grazing sheep between rows of solar panels may be the most efficient form of agrivoltaics – Mwebaze called it “a marriage in heaven” – but he and his colleagues are also studying designs that incorporate crops.
“If you choose the right crops, the right land, agrivoltaics will work,” he said. “It’s not about whether it’s feasible or not, but under what conditions.”
Researchers are studying that question at the University of Illinois and at the University of Arizona, testing taller solar arrays that leave room for crops, but cost more to build. They are breeding short-stature “dwarf” corn that won’t block as much sunlight, and crunching the numbers on vegetables and herbs that benefit from shade under the panels, like spinach and basil.
“This land is all competing for the same sunlight,” said Tim Mies, director of the University of Illinois’ Energy Farm in Urbana. “So what’s the trade-off? How far do you have to space them apart? We have to understand that balance to properly make recommendations and let the community know how they can apply this.”
Bill Bodine of the Illinois Farm Bureau said agrivoltaics will need to be adapted for row crops before the idea can scale in the Midwest.
“I do think there are some challenges for agrivoltaics,” he said. “Are there ways to grow more traditional row crops, things that could be mechanized to cover larger areas? A lot of what’s happening, at least in Illinois, is at a smaller scale and a lot of it is associated with livestock grazing, specifically sheep. So that is a bit of a limited universe.”
Scientists studying agrivoltaic systems in Indiana found they “could play an important role” in producing food and energy in the Corn Belt, but are likely to remain niche without government subsidies because of higher costs.
For farmers who can make it work, however, agrivoltaics can be an opportunity.
The Riggs family has been farming in Champaign County since 1874. Fifth-generation farmers Matt and Darin Riggs have turned the family farm into a laboratory for higher-value products — mainly beer.
“Growing up, my brother and I knew that we would have to add more value to our farm’s products than just selling commodity corn and soybeans,” Matt Riggs said. “We saw that coming.”
They run Riggs Beer Company almost entirely on solar power and grow their own grain. Now they’re waiting on approval for an 18-acre agrivoltaic array next to the beer garden. In between rows of solar panels, the Riggs want to test new cash crops, like berries, lettuce and edamame.
“It’s more labor-intensive, but you can cover down on those costs,” Matt Riggs said. “If the sun stops shining, we’re in trouble for a lot of reasons. And if it is shining, you’re getting paid. I like that math, it’s pretty low risk.”
He can afford to experiment thanks to income from the brewery. Even without that backstop, Riggs said the money solar companies pay to lease farmland is enough to keep some small farmers in business.
“Without these agrivoltaics, we’re going to lose more family farms,” he said. “Every one that I see built as a single-use, I think if that was awarded to the family farm down the road and they built it as a dual-use, we would be making more revenue, keeping it more local, and that family would stay on their farm instead of selling.”
Illinois is one of at least nine states with laws guiding solar development on farmland, from fast-tracking community-scale installations and incentivizing those with agrivoltaics, to requiring developers to set aside money for decommissioning so land isn’t permanently taken out of production. Illinois also joined New York and California in preempting local bans on solar installations, giving the state more control over renewable energy siting.
While there are efforts to roll back some of those laws, rural communities are reaping tax benefits from renewables, said David Loomis, president of Strategic Economic Research, an economic consultant for renewable energy projects across the U.S. based in Bloomington, Illinois.
“The number one benefit to the local community is property tax revenue. If you look at the increase in the assessed value of farmland versus the assessed value of utility-scale solar, it is orders of magnitude higher to the local community,” Loomis said. “Communities have to decide for themselves whether those benefits outweigh the perceived costs of having wind and solar. I live in McClean County. We have more wind turbines than any other county in Illinois. Once you get used to wind or solar in your community, you kind of stop seeing it, like you don’t see telephone poles and cell towers. It’s just part of the landscape.”
Kiersten Sheets develops community solar installations with Trajectory Energy Partners, and serves on the Peoria County Farm Bureau. She said rural America could benefit from solar developers spreading the wealth.
“We need more power sources, and we need clean power sources,” she said. “These really small projects have really high tax revenue for the surrounding community. They’re like little popcorn energy plants — they’re here, there, and everywhere.”
Those “popcorn energy plants” include the solar farm where Bryant Parker is rounding up sheep with the help of his border collie, Pearl. His sheep will graze this land until winter. Some of them will go to market, the rest will return to the Parkers’ farm, and he’ll bring another flock back next spring.
Grazing power plants is not how Parker expected to be farming when he started out, but he said it works for him. In addition to raising sheep, Parker and his wife Jessica grow corn, soybeans and pumpkins. They still have jobs off the farm, too, but Parker said if this business of grazing between solar panels keeps growing, they can focus all of their time on the family farm.
“The way we farm now, it is night and day different than it was 50 years ago. So farming 50 years from now is going to look a lot different,” Parker said, “and I believe this will be part of it.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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