Solar Power System Installations Impact Less Than 1 Percent of Arkansas’ Ag Land

May 30, 2025

Large-scale solar power arrays occupy about 0.2 percent of agricultural land in Arkansas, according to an analysis by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Solar energy production is increasingly being used to meet both energy needs and zero net emissions goals within the United States. Arkansas is following this trend with several utility-scale solar energy production systems built in 2023 and 2024, and more scheduled to come online in the following years. This has raised some concerns over the displacement of agricultural land for non-food production purposes.

“With the Arkansas economy more reliant on agriculture compared to the nation and surrounding states, diversion of agricultural land to other uses draws producer and consumer interest,” said Mike Popp, Harold F. Ohlendorf Professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness and co-author of a recently released fact sheet titled “Agricultural Land Footprint of Solar Photovoltaic Installations in Arkansas.”

While generally considered to have minimal impact on crop prices, other questions about proximal real estate value impacts, exposure to weather risk and land restoration considerations exist, the fact sheet noted.

By 2026, there will be 15 counties in Arkansas, mostly in the agricultural-dominated Delta, with utility-scale solar arrays. Utility-scale is defined as 20 megawatts or larger. Currently, 11 counties have these large-scale solar projects on lands defined by a U.S. Department of Agricultural census as agricultural land. Four more utility-scale projects are scheduled through 2026, including one in Grant County on land considered “woodland or timberland areas.”

Using information gathered from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the researchers show that utility-scale solar arrays will occupy 0.2 percent of the state’s 13.7 million acres of agricultural land under current projections through 2026. In counties where these larger solar arrays are used, land use ranges from 0.2 to 1.7 percent of agricultural land.

The utility-scale solar projects range from up to 445 acres for a 50-megawatt site to up to 2,670 acres for a 300-megawatt site.

As of 2023, the state had about 15,000 megawatts of electrical generating capacity, with natural gas, coal, nuclear and other energy sources like hydropower, solar and wind. According to the study, up to 133,500 acres of land would be required across the state to double the state’s electrical generating capacity with solar, offsetting demand for power from natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydropower during the day.

Source : eurekalert.org

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”