Cornell Study Challenges the Idea That Solar is a Threat to Farming

By Beth Adams

To meet its ambitious goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades, New York state will need more large-scale solar facilities.

Farmland is a prime location for solar arrays because it's flat and unforested. And farmers can get lucrative contracts from solar companies that far exceed what they'd be able to earn by growing crops.

"If you rent out your farmland, and you might be able to get $100, $200 on the top end to rent out your farmland for someone to farm it, versus $800 to $1,000 per acre to put up a solar field," said state Assemblymember Andrea Bailey, a Republican whose district covers Livingston County and parts of Monroe, Ontario, Steuben, and Wyoming counties.

On WXXI's "Connections with Evan Dawson" talk show on Feb. 6, Bailey said she was concerned about what this means for farming.

"We are seeing our agricultural land being taken up by solar projects, left and right," she said. "We have prime farmland we are losing for that."

A research team at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences set out to determine if solar leasing is putting pressure on New York's agriculture industry. In a study published in "Rural Sociology," they surveyed 584 landowners, including farmers, in Genesee, St. Lawrence, and Washington counties. Their land was 30 acres or more, identified in property tax rolls as rural, vacant or agricultural, and at least 1.5 miles from existing transmission lines or within 3 miles of a substation.