Several months ago, I heard from local farmers at a TVA board of directors listening session about their concerns with new solar installations on farm land. I share their concerns. Electrical generation from solar is predicted to grow from 4% of the nation’s energy total to 45% over the next twenty-five years and could require almost 11 million acres to install. At this point, flat, open land close to electrical distribution lines is the cheapest option for solar sites, and almost half the land needed may come from our inventory of tillable acreage. We could also lose as much as 18 million acres of farm land from development of all kinds (residential, retail, industrial) by 2040, adding to the loss of valuable land.
Farmers and ranchers are already experiencing the devastating effects of heat waves, drought, and flooding, so slow-walking through solutions is not an option. We need a plan—an alternative-energy Marshall Plan, if you will—to install new solar generation sites where they’ll have the least adverse impact on land needed for food. We cannot continue to install new fossil fuel plants—or continue to operate the ones we have—andhope they’ll tide us over until alternatives can be put in place. This is something we could have done twenty or thirty years ago, but that ship has sailed. We can’t continue to add to carbon pollution and think we can outrace its problematic effect on climate change.
TVA plans to bring on 10,000 megawatts of power generated by solar over the next ten years, development that would take up about 100,000 acres. This build-out would be done throughoutthe seven-state area that TVA services, but even if all of it was done in Tennessee, it would still amount to only 1% of the state’s farmland. Compare that to the 9% of farmland lost to residential development over twenty years starting in 1997.
That said, there are things we can do to reduce the impact of solar installations on food acreage. We need to start by looking at low-quality land that’s suitable for solar installations but not for farming, such as old landfills and strip mines. We all compete for the few shady spots in mall parking lots, so how can we fashion private/public partnerships to cover these lots with solar panels? Large urban installations like these would be closer to where energy is in demand than rural areas are and can reduce demand for transmission infrastructure. Although we need to encourage more small-scale residential power generation, rooftop solar on industrial buildings with large footprints would significantly increase our capability. 
Resistance from rural communities is currently the major reason why permitting of new solar installations has stalled. We need to create incentives for people to continue renting acreage to local farmers, so those farmers aren’t outbid by solar contractors.Agricultural education programs can provide information to farmers on how to till and graze under solar arrays.
Rural communities need well-developed plans to ease the burden on quality farm land. They may need funding to develop soil surveys so they can determine what land to use for solar installations and what land to protect. Legislators can support regulations that protect the quality of land beneath solar installations and ensure that it can be farmed again in the future. 
Finally, we need options to ensure some portion of generation income will go back into the rural communities who are hosting the future source of power that will serve us all.
Cynthia Holzapfel
Environmental journalist and activist, ThirdAct TN
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-solar-expansion-stalled-by-rural-land-use-protests-2022-04-07/
https://www.siliconranch.com/stories/tn-commission-finds-solar-no-threat-to-farmland
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/solar-energy-farms-ny.html
