From the road, a utility-scale solar site can look well kept. Neat rows of panels, a fence, a strip of grass along the road. Walk the site and the land tells a different story. The soil is compacted. The ground cover is thin and weedy. Seed mixes germinated unevenly and have not been touched since planting. No one is farming this land, and in many cases no one is stewarding it.
Emily Cole, a soil scientist at American Farmland Trust, named that gap in a Civil Eats op-ed on September 16, 2026. Her argument is not anti-solar. The United States added nearly 27 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity in 2025, and the country needs more of it. Her argument is about what happens to the ground underneath. Solar developers need to treat the land beneath their panels as a working agricultural system, not as a surface to stabilize and forget.
That starts before construction. A soil scientist walking a site early can spot where heavy equipment is most likely to damage the land, make sure the topsoil is protected, and catch problems before they become expensive fixes. It continues through the life of the project: monitoring, vegetation designed for pollinators and grazing, and partnerships with farmers that last as long as the array does. Managed this way, the soil gets healthier, water moves better, and reliable plants take hold. Left alone, the same site sets itself up to fail. Compacted soil sheds water, roots cannot penetrate it, and vegetation too sparse and low quality to support livestock is the result.
The survey data in Cole's piece shows why this is also a permitting question. Projects with farming or grazing around solar installations earned 14 percent more support among rural Americans. Native plantings under panels pushed support up by about 17 percent. Projects that earn community trust get permitted faster and face less opposition. The support is not abstract. It comes from what people can see: crops or animals on the land, plants that belong there, and a farm that is still a farm.
The systems lens here is the gap between guidance and obligation. The research is advancing, and the framework already exists. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service published conservation guidance for utility-scale solar sites in 2024, covering soil health, compaction, vegetation management, grazing, and decommissioning. But developers are not obligated to use it. In Washington, the conversation has stalled. Agency staff have briefed congressional staff, legislation has been proposed, and farm bill drafts have carried relevant provisions. None of it has crossed the finish line. That is why Cole points to the county level, where most solar projects are approved. Before a project breaks ground, a planning board can set clear conditions: a soil health plan, money set aside for removal of the array, and a requirement that the land must be farmable again when the panels come down.
Some developers have already figured this out on their own. Doral Renewables built agronomic management into its projects, with soil health monitoring, structured farmer partnerships, and proper vegetation plans. Hyperion Systems built some of the first agrivoltaic projects in the country in close partnership with the farmers who own the land. On those sites, vegetation establishes more reliably and farm operators generate real income. The problem is that these developers are in the minority, and a model that depends on the goodwill of a minority is not a system yet.
The same tension runs through the Black Belt. Families there have farmed the same soil for generations, and the land question is never abstract. The flat, fertile ground that makes Bullock County strong farmland is the ground developers look at first. The work being built in Union Springs starts from Cole's premise: a solar project should not force a choice between clean energy and keeping a farm. Lease payments can help an existing operation stay viable. Grazing under panels can give a beginning farmer access to land they cannot afford to own. And a soil health plan, written before construction and honored for the life of the array, is what keeps that land farmable for the farmer who comes next.
A solar array lasts 25 to 30 years. The soil underneath it has to last longer than that.
