Iowa farmers who are looking for new ways to use their existing cropland might consider agrivoltaics, where solar energy projects are combined with agricultural production.
Whitney Stockwell, policy manager at the Center for Rural Affairs, says dual-use agriculture can be a win-win for producers and for landowners.
“That can take various forms, whether it’s grazing livestock underneath solar panels or finding ways to support crops or specialty agriculture underneath solar panels,” Stockwell says. “Vegetable farming or fruit farming under solar panels. It can also include beekeeping under solar panels as well.”
With demand rising for renewable energies in the rural Midwest, she says opportunities to combine solar energy and ag production can create pathways for economic and environmental benefits.
“We see this as a space for a lot of growth and there’s a lot of interest in it,” Stockwell says. “We just want to help make it more feasible for farmers to explore this. There’s a couple of different models, whether that is having your own on-farm solar or also using utility-scale solar and still creating a way to have agriculture happen in that space as well.”
The Center for Rural Affairs is offering a free webinar this week to help producers who might be interested in exploring the options.
“We’re going to be sharing a little bit about an overview of agrivoltaics and then covering some of the resources that we have,” Stockwell says. “We have a toolkit, and that includes some of the research we’ve done on agrivoltaics, as well as some of the model ordinances and citing guidance that we have for dual-use agriculture.”
The hour-long webinar is scheduled to start at noon on Wednesday. Learn more at: https://www.cfra.org/agrivoltaics-toolkit-overview-online