Why farmers are pairing crops with solar panels

Traditionally, solar panel farms are quiet — save for the faint hum of the inverter. But on about one in ten of American solar farms, there's a new sound reverberating through fields: baaaa. 

Letting sheep roam under solar panels is just one of many forms of a burgeoning strategy called agrivoltaics, where crops grow or livestock graze in tandem with renewable energy infrastructure. 

It's not only of potential benefit for the animals, which get additional shade. The panels can also protect crops from the elements as well as divert water to them, creating cooler, damper conditions that even boost yields. 

And even the solar panels themselves tend to respond well to this co-existence — as the cooler they are, the more electricity they produce per watt of sunlight. 

"Having concrete or something underneath the solar panels — you're going to have lower efficiency than having something like plants that are transpiring and cooling off on the land surface," Carl Bernacchi, professor of plant biology and crop sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told DW. 

While the potential is enormous, especially as climate change puts more and more heat stress on agriculture, the practice is still in its infancy. In Europe, if agrivoltaics were implemented on just 1% of available agricultural land, the continent could exceed its solar energy targets for 2030.   

But uptake has been slow: agrivoltaics represents just 18.4 gigawatts of energy worldwide as of mid-2025, less than 1% of the world's solar capacity.  

What thrives under the panels 

The idea for agrivoltaics dates back to 1981, when two German scientists published an article titled "Kartoffeln unter dem Kollektor" (or "Potatoes beneath the collector"). But the first pilot project didn't begin until 2004 in Japan, a land-constrained country, where there's particular concern over balancing solar deployment with the protection of farmland. 

There are three main types of agrivoltaics: horizontal, where panels look directly up at the sky, vertical, where they're placed in large rows, perpendicular to the ground, and integrated, often installed atop greenhouses. 

Research suggests shade-tolerant crops stand to benefit. That includes berries, grapes and tomatoes — where the panels' steel framing often doubles as trellises — as well as peaches and peppers. 

The panels can also prevent water from fully evaporating, creating a more humid microclimate that benefits the soil — though humidity is a double-edged sword, sometimes introducing plant disease. 

Sheep have also proven to be a particularly good match. Compared to cattle or goats, they're generally easier to manage around solar infrastructure, less likely to damage equipment, and small enough to fit comfortably beneath panels. The practice has other sustainability upsides too: sheep manure fertilizes the soil, and sites require less herbicide. 

"If we look at the sheep industry, this has been a real paradigm shift for them, where instead of having to pay to lease land to graze their animals — now they're actually getting paid to graze," Kinzer said. "So it completely puts the economics on its head and is a huge opportunity for the sheep industry, which is really struggling in the US pretty much since World War II." 

A double climate win 

Agrivoltaics sit at a rare intersection of climate mitigation (cutting emissions) and adaptation (adjusting to a warming planet). 

"It is both, which is pretty unique as far as climate solutions go," Kinzer said.  

The practice offers one answer to where solar panels could go, helping to produce cheaper and more efficient energy, while also benefiting crops that might struggle due to rising temperatures or volatile weather. 

And research suggests that climate change will only make regions grow drier, "broadening areas where agrivoltaics can mitigate crop yield penalties (even boosting yield) and improve overall profitability," writeresearchers in a journal article for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  

A dual-income stream can also offer farmers some insurance should temperature or weather knock out a season's plantings. 

"Being able to have that alternate form of income, it's massive for folks who are depending on weather to make their living that is becoming increasingly more extreme and varied," Kinzer said. 

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Not every farm benefits 

So why has adoption been so slow? 

"In theory, it's a win-win scenario," Bernacchi said. "But of course, with any technologies, there are always caveats and issues." 

One reason is that agrivoltaics don't work everywhere. In America's arid West, where heat stress and less available water can threaten crops, yields stayed the same or even rose under panels. In the humid Midwest, on the other hand, panel shading limited photosynthesis and led to reduced yields in maize and soybeans.  

For cash crops, where there's a very small margin for profit, even a minor reduction in yield is a no-go for many farmers.  

Then there's the expense. For solar producers, every added inch to mount panels higher means more labor and steel costs. And farmers might need to find new equipment or change methods to adapt to a new system. 

"Farmers want to learn from other farmers," said Kinzer, who works with farmers across the US to see how agrivoltaics are being adopted. "They want to hear from folks who are doing it. And so there's a little bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem for farmers: In most cases, they can't just go across the street or into the next county over and see a project like this and talk to the farmers doing it." 

Bridging the divide between farmers and solar 

Solar power's land footprint has made it controversial in certain communities — some farming associations have protested converting farmland into acres of solar panels, arguing their members cease to be farmers and become energy producers instead.  

It's a tension agrivoltaics helps to address. 

One surveyfound that more than 80% of Americans would be more likely to support solar development in their community, if it allowed for the co-production of energy and agriculture — about 10% more than those that support solar development in general. 

"There's this cultural conflict between the farmers who want to farm and the solar companies that want to produce electricity," Bernacchi said. "And agrivoltaics really does bill itself as sort of a middle ground. You can still farm and still get the electricity from the same land."  

Agrivoltaic combines solar power and agriculture