The good folks over at Agricultural Economic Insights (AEI.ag) have managed to answer a question that is weighing more heavily on rural communities with each passing year – how much of America’s farmland has been converted to solar production?
The answer is approximately 302,000 acres, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Notably, farmland accounts for nearly half (47%) of utility-scale solar projects, which covered nearly 650,000 acres across the U.S. at the end of 2024. What’s more, the rate of farmland conversion is significant, averaging more than 46,000 acres per year since 2020. That expansion since 2020 has been nearly three times the pace observed in previous years, according to AEI.
Other key takeaways:
- The accelerated expansion of solar production has been driven by larger projects, which averaged 270 acres in size in 2024.
- The distribution of solar projects varies considerably across the country and within states.
- Solar leases are a new demand on farmland and agricultural resources broadly. While policymakers and society will debate the appropriateness of converting farmland to electricity production, the acreage magnitude, even if the U.S. were 100% solar production, will likely be limited in scope.
Before 2016, coal was the largest source of U.S. electricity. However, natural gas has recently become the largest source by a considerable margin. In 2024, 2.7 times more electricity was generated from natural gas than from coal. Wind and solar production increased as well but not as fast.
Natural gas production increased by more than +730 billion kWh, while wind (272 billion kWh) and solar (274 billion kWh) contributed a meaningful but minority share of the increase. However, if recent growth rates are sustained, by 2035, AEI says combined solar and wind outputs could be greater than natural gas.
AEI states that the increased expansion rate is due to the dramatic growth in average plant size over recent years. Before 2020, the average capacity of newly commissioned plants was around 15MW. In 2021, the average size exceeded 20MW and approached 50MW in 2024. These larger plants generate more need for – and attention to – farmland.
Before 2020, the average footprint of an added solar plant was often 50 acres. By 2020, though, the average size of new plants regularly exceeded 100 acres, and in 2024, the average exceeded an estimated 270 acres per footprint.
AEI says it’s the rate of change that is the most eye-catching component of farmland transition to solar development, which covered 302,000 acres at the end of 2024. In 2019, fewer than 100,000 acres of farmland were covered by panels, meaning that most of the conversion and development have occurred in recent years. Before 2020, the conversion rate was 12,000 acres of farmland annually. Since 2020, the pace has exceeded an average annual rate of 46,000 acres.
The footprint of solar development in the U.S. – at this point at least – hasn’t been enough to trigger widespread shifts in commodity production or prices, says AEI. However, as the scale of solar energy production increases, the societal questions faced by the CRP and RFS programs will become more prevalent and consequential, including indirect land use changes, increased commodity and food prices, and implications for rural economies.
The full report with many more valuable details is available to AEI premium subscribers HERE. A free trial is available for those who aren’t subscribers. Key insights from the report – and the implications for the farm economy in 2025 and beyond – will be discussed during a FREE webinar on August 8, 2025 at 1 pm CST. Learn more HERE.
Thank you again to our friends at “Agricultural Economic Insights” for all the great research and information they provide.
