Energy Matters

  Agriculture and Solar Energy Are Not Rivals Paul and Cynthia Stancioff The spectral image of vast quantities of prime American farmland being suffocated by photovoltaic arrays has recently gained traction in the popular imagination. People are led to fear that pursuit of solar energy will destroy our food security: In repurposing the landscape, will we be left with solar powered kitchen appliances but NO FOOD to cook? For anyone concerned about this alleged competition between solar energy and American farmland, there is abundant reassurance to be found in some simple facts and numbers, which we share here, inspired partly by a recent letter addressed by Congressman Jared Golden to the Secretaries of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy. The concern Golden expressed to them was that we are on a trajectory toward covering half of America’s  prime farmlands with solar arrays. He apparently inferred this from the American Farmland Trust’s observation that if current t...