The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will no longer deploy programs funding solar or wind power projects on productive farmland, effective immediately, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in an Aug. 18 X post.
“Millions of acres of prime farmland is left unusable so Green New Deal subsidized solar panels can be built. This destruction of our farms and prime soil is taking away the futures of the next generation of farmers and the future of our country,” she said.
The Biden administration had promoted wind and solar deployment across the country, a decision that has been mostly reversed by the current Trump administration.
Rollins’ decision comes as hundreds of thousands of acres of American farmland have already been converted for solar and wind power usage.
“From 2012 to 2020, more than 90 percent of large-scale, commercial wind turbines and 70 percent of solar farms in rural areas were installed on agricultural land,” USDA said in an earlier Sept. 12, 2024, post. These projects took up 424,000 acres of farmland as of 2020.
“Solar panels, also, are frequently installed in small-scale systems typically built on existing structures such as rooftops and do not directly affect land cover or lead to concerns about land use competition,” said the Biden-era report, which noted that less than 0.05 percent of the total 897 million acres of farmland is used for solar and wind purposes.
Similarly, for wind projects, the USDA had said that direct land cover impacts of wind farms are restricted to smaller areas.
Farmers and ranchers can continue agricultural production near wind turbines for revenue purposes, it added. However, it also pointed to the disadvantages of converting land to wind farms.
“At the same time, wind developments can be associated with noise disturbance, altered views, and effects on wildlife,” said the 2024 report.
USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program was given over $2 billion to support agricultural producers and rural small business owners through renewable energy grants. The funds came from the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Biden administration in 2022.
It is unclear how much of the funds were used for productive farmland. According to the USDA website, the agency has currently stopped accepting grant applications for the program.
In her Aug. 18 post, Rollins also said that halting renewable projects on American farmland ends “the use of panels made by foreign adversaries like China.”
At present, China controls the supply chain of critical materials necessary for solar and wind power technologies. For instance, China refines 50 to 70 percent of lithium and cobalt, around 35 percent of nickel, and nearly 90 percent of rare earth elements globally, according to the International Energy Agency. Lithium, nickel, and cobalt are critical components of batteries used in storing solar and wind power. Rare earth elements are a crucial component for wind turbines.
Share your thoughts by scrolling down to leave a comment.
