Central Valley farmers reluctantly turn to solar as water supplies dry up

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-07-20/as-water-restrictions-hit-farmers-solar-is-making-sense

by littlexsparkee • 18 hours ago

8 2 18 hours ago

The same land can produce for 25 years with zero labor and OpEx. The best passive investment ever. Plants capture solar energy at 6% efficiency but required a LOT of OpEx, solar panels capture it far more efficiently (15 - 20%) with zero OpEx.

toomuchtodo• 18 hours ago

Culture takes time to change. Farmers and their communities have their identity bound to agriculture vs solar production, regardless of the math. In this case, we’re lucky the decision is forced by water shortages that are predicted to make it more economically optimal to lock in long term utility scale solar PV land leases than continue to farm the land. Progress comes eventually (there are more farmers over 75 than under 35 in the US, per the USDA).

Lots of other land in the US this will apply to in our lifetimes.

https://www.newsweek.com/the-largest-us-groundwater-supply-i...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155074242...

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/t...

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou...

(if you replaced all of the farmland/ag land, the size of the state of Oregon [~61.6M acres], harvested for ethanol with solar, you would have ~5-12x more electrical generation than all current US electrical generation combined as of this comment; this equates to roughly 7TW–12TW of solar PV capacity)

Central Valley farmers reluctantly turn to solar as water supplies dry up

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