Illinois Team Tests the Costs, Benefits of Agrivoltaics Across the Midwest

Mar 04, 2026

By Diana Yates

In a world where increasing demands for food security and energy strain existing resources, scientists are looking for new ways to maximize both. One potential option, agrivoltaics, integrates solar photovoltaics with crops. A new study examines the agricultural and economic trade-offs that come with installing solar arrays on working farms across the Midwest.

The study found that agrivoltaics can increase or reduce yields and profits, depending on the crop and where such agrivoltaic systems are deployed.

The new findings are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the team first developed a process-driven model to quantify the impacts of agrivoltaics on energy, water and plant-soil dynamics. The model was first validated and published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

The team integrated an economic model to estimate annual net profits per acre from crop production and energy generation for agrivoltaics, conventional agriculture and stand-alone solar energy systems.

Source : illinois.edu

Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.