\u201cA recent study by Cornell<\/a> found that the overwhelming majority of farmers who received solar lease payments used that income to continue or even expand farming on their land, not to exit farming or scale back operations,\u201d the leaders wrote. \u200b\u201cDiscouraging or inhibiting property owners\u2019 ability to independently make choices about what they can and cannot do with their land can cause financial harm and undermine fundamental property rights.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has more proof that solar and farming can work hand in hand, and outlined all that in a\u00a0major guidebook<\/a> it released last year. Sheep and cattle are munching below panels on several New York farms, the guidebook notes, and the state has zoning rules and protections in place to preserve undeveloped land.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s pushback squares with the findings of a\u00a0recent report<\/a> from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That study shows solar farms currently take up a\u00a0mere 0.13% of New York\u2019s roughly 13,000 square miles of federally designated prime farmland, a\u00a0stat that resonates across the country<\/a>. Solar covers just 0.07% of all U.S. farmland, according to SEIA. That\u2019s three times less than golf courses and six times less than suburban development.<\/p>\n And yet solar panels, not cul-de-sacs, are the focus of a\u00a0particularly potent campaign from upstate New York influencer Alexandra Fasulo<\/a>. Fasulo has amassed more than a\u00a0million followers across TikTok and other social platforms, where she\u2019s constantly posting videos that inflate solar\u2019s threats to agricultural and undeveloped land. Similar sentiments are being spread on social media by John Rich. He\u2019s one half of the \u200b\u201cSave a\u00a0Horse, Ride a\u00a0Cowboy<\/a>\u201d guys, and was recently hired<\/a> by the White House to advocate for landowners on a\u00a0national scale.<\/p>\n These and other anti-solar advocates often ignore the good that the clean energy source can do for farmers nationwide. In California\u2019s Central Valley, for example, years of drought have led hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land to go fallow. Economics and water availability have driven farmers to stop growing there, but they can still make money and hold on to their land by leasing their plots to solar developers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Plus, as New York\u2019s guidebook points out, farming is still happening alongside solar installations. I\u00a0recently visited an Illinois solar farm<\/a> where sheep were grazing underneath and around panels \u2014 an arrangement that the sheep\u2019s owners love because they don\u2019t have to maintain expansive pastures back at home. Meanwhile, researchers have found that tomatoes<\/a>, saffron<\/a>, and other crops can thrive below panels, and so can native plants<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to mention the climate benefits of ditching planet-warming fossil fuels, which are driving droughts, floods, and other weather disasters that are legitimately threatening farms in the U.S. and beyond.<\/p>\n More big energy stories<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s coal crusade has real-world consequences<\/p>\n The Trump administration keeps checking items off the coal industry\u2019s wish list \u2014 with dire consequences for Americans\u2019 health and wallets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In rural areas across the U.S., solar power opponents keep leaning on the argument that utility-scale arrays are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-310858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n I got to visit the Torrence solar site in Illinois this spring, where sheep graze under solar panels to keep vegetation in check. (Lisa Hymas\/Canary Media)<\/p>\n
![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image_2026-07-31-155126_muym.png\"\/)