Solar Panels Over Cropland in Colorado: What the Black Belt Can Learn

In Longmont, Colorado, a farmer named Byron Kominek watched hotter summers and thinner rainfall cut into his grass production. In 2016, he tried something few people had seen: he installed 3,276 solar panels across five acres of his 24-acre farm, and kept farming underneath them.

The panels at Jack's Solar Garden sit six to eight feet off the ground. Crops, pollinators, and researchers work below. The array generates 1.2 megawatts for the local grid, enough to power more than 300 homes.

Then came the part nobody fully expected. Researchers from Colorado State University and Cornell spent four years studying the land under the panels. The partial shade lowered plant stress and kept more moisture in the soil. During drought years, overall plant growth rose about 20 percent. In some spots, grass productivity jumped 90 percent over unshaded ground.

Farm country usually treats this as a choice between food and power. One farm in Colorado shows it doesn't have to be. For small farms in the Black Belt, where agricultural income has declined for decades, solar revenue without giving up the crop changes the financial picture entirely.

Colorado took notice. In 2023, the state passed a law supporting agrivoltaics, with property tax exemptions and $300,000 for five pilot projects. The research keeps building. Policy is starting to catch up.

At Little USA Solar, we believe the Black Belt deserves this model. Bullock County is one of the most persistently under-resourced counties in Alabama, and its land is its greatest asset. Generations of farmers and families have worked this ground. The clean energy transition should strengthen that connection, not sever it. Our agrivoltaics work in Union Springs is built on the same idea Byron Kominek proved in Colorado: solar can support food sovereignty and rural resilience instead of threatening them.