Limited impact of solar energy expansion on agricultural production and crop prices in the United States

In the United States (U.S.), the expansion of utility-scale solar facilities on farmland has generated public debate about the use of agricultural land for energy infrastructure, including potential implications for crop production and commodity prices. The issue is more salient because land acquisition represents only a small fraction of the total cost of photovoltaic installations, even on highly productive farmland. We use a partial equilibrium county-level agricultural model to simulate static counterfactual scenarios on how replacing cropland with solar farms could affect land allocation, crop prices, agricultural production, and farm revenue for major crops across the United States. For our baseline solar expansion scenario, we find that if 40% of future solar development is placed on cropland — a rate consistent with historical patterns — prices for maize, soybeans, and wheat would increase by less than 5.6%, which is about a third compared to long-term estimates associated with biofuel production. Even under the most aggressive solar expansion scenarios, and in the unlikely event that 80% of new solar development occurs on cropland, price increases remain below 18.4%. These results reflect the fact that the land area required for solar expansion is small relative to total U.S. cropland area. From a policy perspective, our analysis suggests that concerns over U.S. utility-scale solar development substantially affecting national agricultural production are largely unsubstantiated.