Rebekah Pierce

Freelance Writer, Specializing in Agriculture, Sustainability, & Food Policy

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

America has many problems. A chronic inability to grow enough food is not one of them.

We're really good at growing things. So good, in fact, that we've managed to create the uniquely American situation in which we can produce enormous quantities of agricultural commodities while 47.9 million people live in food-insecure households.

Hunger in America is not usually caused by the physical absence of food. It’s caused by a lack of access, a lack of money, poor transportation. Whether the food is where people need it, whether they can afford it when it gets there, and whether they have the resources to keep it on the table consistently.

Growing another bushel of something does not automatically feed a hungry person.

Corn is one of the best examples of this. American farmers plant around 90 million acres of corn in an average year. So what do we do with it all?

We feed a huge amount of it to livestock. We export some, and we also process quite a bit (into things like high-fructose corn syrup, for example). We also turn a LOT of it into ethanol.

Soybeans have a similar story. Historically, we’ve exported roughly half of the soybeans we grow. Today, we crush more of them domestically, largely to produce soybean meal for livestock and soybean oil, including oil used to make biomass-based diesel.

When I post about sheep or cattle grazing under solar panels, I’m inevitably told by at least one person that “pasture isn’t really farmland.”

It counts until it doesn’t, huh? When somebody proposes putting solar panels on land - any land, even unproductive land that has never been used for farming in the first place - suddenly every acre is a precious food-producing resource standing between America and starvation.

Guys. Pick a lane.

Pasture IS agricultural land. Cropland is too. So is hay ground. No, they’re not interchangeable, and their productive capacity and best uses can be wildly different.

I know sheep aren’t out there grazing among soybeans. I also know that corn used for ethanol still produces valuable coproducts, including distillers grains that go right back into livestock feed.

But that’s why simply counting “acres of farmland” tells us very little about what happens to the food supply when land use changes.

What gets grown on an acre depends on soils, markets, prices, infrastructure, policy, input costs, and about 7000 other things farmers worry about when they should be sleeping. And sometimes our problem isn’t that we can’t grow enough, but that we grow more of a commodity than the market wants at a profitable price.

I have a hard time accepting “we need every acre to grow food” as the end of the solar-and-farmland conversation. We need pasture. We need cropland.

We also need farmers who can afford to keep farming. And we need to be honest about what America's food problem actually is.

If growing more corn automatically solved hunger, we would have defeated hunger approximately several billion bushels ago.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Folks in my comment section keep telling me that solar grazing is a scam cooked up by renewable energy companies.

Bad news: the sheep are in on it now, too.

Talk about getting fleeced, huh?

All jokes aside, I had a great conversation on the Energy Empire podcast with Jamie Nolan and Lauren Glickman (who happens to work for Encore Renewable Energy, the company that owns one of the sites we graze).

We talked about how 1 in 50 American sheep now work in “the energy industry,” grazing solar sites nationwide, and how it’s allowing first-gen farmers like ourselves to build viable businesses.

The sheep declined to comment on the allegations, presumably on the advice of their legal counsel. Go figure.

Have a listen for yourself!

https://t.co/jOTav4TJZE

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Nothing lasts forever.

The average operational lifespan of a solar panel today is somewhere around 25 to 35 years. My five-year-old likes to remind me often that 35 is VERY old, so based on his assessment, the average solar panel is already collecting Social Security and complaining about its knees.

(I am also 35).

It’s a little hurtful, TBH. But fine. Point taken.

Things do wear out. They get old. They break. And in the case of solar panels (I’m hoping we can end the personal analogy here), they have to be replaced.

“BUT YOU CAN’T RECYCLE SOLAR PANELS.”

Except…you can.

85% of a solar panel is materials we already know how to recycle, including glass and aluminum. There’s an entire economy built around people collecting beer cans and exchanging them for cash. (Iif anything, folks may be TOO enthusiastic about unattended copper).

Do we currently recover 100% of every material from every panel? Nope.

Folks often point to the EPA (linked) as “proof” that solar panel recycling “does not exist.” But that’s not actually what they say. Many major components of a solar panel are already easily recyclable through established glass, metal, and electronics recycling industries. The more specialized process of separating and recovering materials such as silicon is newer, and solar-specific recycling hasn’t reached a large scale in the United States yet.

TL;DR: what we DON’T have yet is a mature industry that can economically recover every possible material from every panel.

There’s a pretty logical explanation for that: most panels aren’t old yet.

70% of all solar energy systems have been installed since 2019. Given an operational lifespan of roughly 25 to 35 years, most of the panels currently generating electricity aren't close to retirement.

I could build a state-of-the-art facility for recycling flip phones tomorrow. But unless everyone has a drawer full of Razrs they’ve been waiting to unload, I probably shouldn’t start shopping for my yacht.

Right now, recycling a solar panel can cost more than sending it to a landfill. The economies of scale haven’t caught up yet. Am I saying we should wait until millions of panels reach end of life and then figure it out? No.

I’m saying I’d like to see this same level of concern applied to everything else.

I've yet to see someone standing outside a natural gas plant demanding to know whether every bolt, pipe, turbine component, and piece of equipment will be recycled when the plant is decommissioned.

Every energy system uses “stuff.” Stuff wears out. I don’t think “this technology produces waste” is a great argument. If that’s our standard, I want you to give me an end-of-life analysis of your cell phone, car, television, washing machine, and whatever device you’re currently using to tell me solar panels can’t be recycled.

Nothing lasts forever. Not power plants. Not solar panels. And according to the tyrannical first grader under my roof, certainly not me, either.

https://t.co/rIweBqfrOu

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Solar panels contain heavy metals.

Yep. I said it.

Not trying to pull the wool over your eyes (especially because, if you’ve been following along, we raise hair sheep, not a wool breed. See what I did there?),

Lots of folks ask us whether we’re worried about the “toxic chemicals” and metals from solar panels “leaching” into the soil and making the meat our animals produce unsafe to eat. And the answer is no, we’re not.

Research on solar grazing has found higher-quality forage beneath panels, and even measurable heat-stress benefits. There have been no studies to date showing bioaccumulation of the metals found in small quantities in solar panels in the organs of animals raised on solar sites.

Anecdotally, we haven’t seen problems in our animals, either, including the breeding ewes we retain from year to year. No fertility issues (our twinning rate has improved), no growth problems (also improved).

The presence of a dangerous substance does not automatically create a meaningful exposure to it.

A tractor has a lead-acid battery. It carries diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, lubricant, and plenty of other things I don’t really want my sheep to eat. Galvanized fencing contains zinc, and pressure-treated lumber contains chemical preservatives.

None of those substances are ending up in your beef tenderloin or lamb chops just because the animals grazed alongside them.

Solar panels are no different. The concerning materials are contained inside an encapsulated module designed to keep moisture out for decades, which also does a good job of keeping what’s inside, inside.

And yes, hail comes up every time I talk about this. Panels can be damaged. That’s why damaged panels are identified, removed, and managed. Per the DOE, PV modules are certified to withstand impacts from 1-inch hail traveling at about 51 mph.

This is also where an EPA page gets passed around as proof that solar panels are “hazardous waste.” What that page actually says is that discarded solar panels can sometimes qualify as hazardous waste if they leach enough under specific laboratory tests used for waste disposal. Working solar panels do not leach those toxic metals because the materials are encapsulated.

Those are two very different scenarios, and pretending they aren't is where a lot of the scary claims come from. Scientific literacy is cool.

Would I recommend eating a solar panel? Probably not. They’re tough, chewy, and I’d imagine the glass really ruins the mouthfeel. Maybe with a nice glass of Cab. Who knows.

But sheep eating grass underneath a solar panel is not the same thing as sheep eating the solar panel itself.

And no. They don’t do that, either.

Here’s the full version of this post, with citations: https://t.co/uIRfiLGdN9

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

This is a Roosevelt quote displayed at the American Museum of Natural History that I’m particularly fond of.

We tend to talk about conservation and development as though they’re opposing forces. Either you develop the land, or you protect it. You produce energy, or preserve open space. You farm it, or conserve it. Build something, or leave it alone.

I like Roosevelt’s framing because it rejects that false choice. Conservation doesn’t require us to stop using land and natural resources. Instead, it asks us to think much harder about how we use them, what we gain in return, what we waste in the process, and what condition we leave them in for the next generation.

The distinction is especially cogent in the debate over solar on farmland.

If you oppose solar because of its perceived environmental footprint, what energy source are you recommending to replace the electricity it would have produced? Natural gas requires wells, pipelines, compressor stations, and power plants, while hydroelectric power alters rivers and aquatic ecosystems. Nuclear power requires mining, plant sites, waste management, and substantial infrastructure of its own. Every form of energy has a footprint.

If the objection is the public money supporting renewable energy, that’s also a fair conversation to have, but then let’s also compare subsidies, tax incentives, infrastructure spending, and other forms of public support across energy sources.

If your concern is farmland loss, that's worth discussing too. But then we should be talking about the other pressures permanently removing agricultural land from production: housing, warehouses, commercial development, roads, and the economics that make selling or developing farmland more attractive than continuing to farm it.

And yes, there’s always the suggestion that we should “just put solar on rooftops,” but this, too, misses the point. We SHOULD put a lot more solar on rooftops. We should put it over parking lots, on brownfields, wherever it makes economic and engineering sense.

But “use rooftops instead” doesn't answer the question of how much electricity those sites can realistically produce, how quickly they can be developed, what they cost, whether the grid can accept that power where it's generated, or how we meet the rest of our energy demand.

There’s no impact-free option.

We need food, and we need energy. We also need housing, infrastructure, roads, businesses, communities that can support the people living in them.

To pretend we can simply stop developing land or using natural resources isn’t a serious conservation strategy. Folks who advocate for solar on farmland know that there are downsides. I certainly do. We understand that there are tradeoffs and that land changes.

Roosevelt’s conception of conservation wasn’t that natural resources should never be touched; it was that we have an obligation to use them without squandering them, to meet the needs of the present without unnecessarily diminishing what remains for the people who come after us.

That standard demands more from us than simply being “for” or “against” development. The harder question is what development should look like, and I think this is where most public conversations fall apart.

Saying “no” to a project is easy. Building a workable alternative is harder, because eventually, somebody has to answer the next question: okay, then what?

Where should the electricity come from instead? Where should the infrastructure go? What impacts are we willing to accept? What will it cost? And are we applying the same scrutiny to the alternative that we already applied to the thing we opposed?

Harder conversations? Yep. But more useful ones.

Agrivoltaics is compelling to me because I understand that putting solar panels on farmland changes that land.

But change and destruction aren't synonyms.

Done thoughtfully, the developed acre can remain agricultural land. Livestock can graze and pollinators can use it. Soil can remain covered and biologically active. A farmer can earn income from it while that same acre produces electricity for homes and businesses.

Development is inevitable. Stewardship is a choice.

More than a century ago, Roosevelt understood something I think we’ve lost in the way we talk about conservation in 2026. Conservation requires more of us intellectually than simply drawing a line around something and declaring that nobody should touch it.

We still have to live here. We still have to eat, build homes, move people and goods, produce electricity, and use natural resources.

Our responsibility is to figure out how to do those things without being wasteful or needlessly destructive.

Use resources. Develop them. Benefit from them.
But don't squander them.

And don’t leave the next generation to solve the problems we avoided because the solutions available to us weren’t perfect.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Why graze a solar farm when you could just mow it?

This is a question we get often, not just from the general public, but from solar companies themselves.

First, let’s talk about why vegetation needs to be managed in the first place. It’s not just an issue of aesthetics. Too-tall vegetation can shade the lower portions of solar panels, reducing electricity production. It’s also a matter of safety; tall, dry vegetation can increase the amount of fuel available to a fire.

The latter piece tends to be a sticking point when companies are considering mowing over grazing: grazing doesn’t produce a uniform cut like mowing does.

However, shorter and uniform isn’t automatically better, and mowing produces risks of its own.

Vegetation is an important part of protecting the soil on a solar site (which is why it’s extremely uncommon to see sites that are left unseeded after construction or broad application of herbicides). Mowing, too, can be hazardous; trimming too tight can increase erosion risk, particularly on slopes, and heavy equipment can disturb and compact soil.

In the North Country, where we graze, this latter piece is a huge advantage of grazing over mowing: we can get sheep onto sites in early April, in some cases, when fields are still wet and waterlogged. Driving mowing equipment onto those same sites that early would result in an ineffective cut and a whole lot of mud (if we could ever get the tractor unstuck).

But the sheep can get in there early and tend to the spring flush, meaning the vegetation doesn't get unruly and out of hand like it might if you had to wait until late May to mow (and late May is probably being generous). The same applies late in the season, too.

Mowing also cuts vegetation, rather than removing it. Depending on the site and management method, that can leave cut plant material behind as thatch or dry biomass.

Another consideration: mowing equipment itself can be an ignition source. In dry conditions, mower blades striking rocks can create sparks, which is why mowing during periods of high fire risk requires additional caution.

Sheep don’t create any of those risks. They consume vegetation instead of cutting it and leaving all that material on the ground. With good rotational management, we can keep vegetation within the required range while maintaining living ground cover and putting nutrients back onto the site through manure.

That doesn't mean mowing has no place on a solar farm. We still use mechanical trimming where the sheep can't do the entire job, and hybrid grazing-and-mowing programs are the norm. We don’t aim to keep the grass as short as possible, but to manage vegetation at the right height, at the right time, while protecting the equipment, soil, animals, and site.

One issue we’re seeing is that solar asset owners often establish minimum and maximum vegetation heights, often in response to requirements from their own insurers. Solar grazing is expanding fast, but it’s still unfamiliar territory for most insurance providers.

We’re trying to fit an agricultural practice into an industry and insurance system that wasn’t originally built around livestock being part of solar operations, and that system also doesn’t include regional context: a six-inch grass height might make a lot of sense on a dryland solar site out west, where vegetation grows slowly, and wildfires are a very real threat.

In the Northeast, maintaining a six-inch grass height during the height of the growing season would do more harm than good (not to mention require an enormous amount of expensive mowing).

This is a larger conversation the industry needs to have as solar grazing grows. We shouldn’t be measuring good vegetation management by whether every blade of grass is the same height, but by the site-specific outcome: are the panels clear? Is fire risk being managed? Is equipment accessible? Is the soil protected?

As long as the answer to all those questions is “yes,” then a solar farm doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) look like a golf course. It should look like a pasture.

Because it is one.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Bringing home the bacon is just as much a land management strategy for us as it is a way to fill the freezer.

Our pigs are almost finished out for the year, and so is their work preparing another piece of ground for future pasture. Rather than raising pigs in a barn, or on the same ground year after year, we move them into rougher areas we want to reclaim. Their natural rooting and foraging behaviors disturb thick vegetation, till the soil, and help us begin transitioning underutilized ground into productive grazing acreage.

Once the pigs move out, we can follow with seed and continue improving the ground for the livestock that come next. Instead of fighting the pigs’ natural instinct to root, we put that behavior to work where we need it.

The end product is locally raised pork, but along the way, the pigs help us build the next piece of our grazing system.

Another benefit? No poop to shovel. 😉

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

A bit of a delayed post (the reason: I forgot to do it).

But we added goats to the payroll a few weeks back!

With the sheep and cattle spending their summer working solar sites, we needed a little extra help keeping our brushier, more wooded pastures at the home farm under control.

We always said we'd never have goats. But we also said we'd never have sheep or cattle or guardian dogs.

We have therefore decided to stop making public statements about our future livestock holdings.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

“All this green energy is being built, so why does my electric bill keep going up?”

First, your electric bill is not simply the price of generating electricity. It has two major pieces: supply and delivery.

Supply is the electricity itself. Delivery pays for the poles, wires, substations, maintenance, and other infrastructure required to get it to you. According to NYISO, supply is one-third of the typical bill; the other two-thirds consists of utility delivery charges, taxes, and fees.

So we could theoretically generate electricity for free tomorrow, and your bill still wouldn’t be $0.

Second, New York still relies heavily on natural gas. That means gas prices can have an outsized influence on wholesale electricity prices.

Think of it like an auction: NYISO calls on increasingly expensive generators until there’s enough electricity to meet demand. The last generator needed helps set the market price, and in New York, that generator is frequently powered by natural gas.

So when gas gets expensive, it can pull electricity prices up with it, even though it didn't suddenly become more expensive for the sun to shine.

And natural gas prices fluctuate. A lot. This January, NYSEG reported that its electricity supply rate was 44% higher than on the same date in 2025, citing elevated natural gas prices and increased demand.

And look at what's happening globally right now. Disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz have constrained LNG supplies from Qatar and sent natural gas prices soaring in Europe and Asia. The U.S. is exporting record amounts of LNG.

A tanker in the Persian Gulf doesn’t automatically determine your NYSEG bill, but it does illustrate the problem with relying heavily on a commodity whose price responds to geopolitical events thousands of miles away.

Third: our grid needs a LOT of work. Renewables contribute to some of those costs because new generation can require new transmission. But they’re far from the only reason for the spending. About 80% of New York’s transmission system was built before 1980, with some infrastructure approaching 100 years old.

Utilities are replacing aging poles, wires, substations, and other equipment that needs to be replaced even if New York never built another solar panel. And all those investments show up in
delivery rates.

And yes, New York’s clean-energy policies cost ratepayers money. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.

But for perspective, NYSERDA’s initial 2026 Tier 1 renewable-energy obligation is about $2/MWh, or roughly 0.2 cents/kWh.

One tiny piece of a much larger bill. Renewables have an advantage when we’re talking about price stability: sunlight and wind don’t have a commodity price. Adding more generation without fuel costs can reduce our exposure to price swings.

So yes, your electric bill can go up while New York builds more renewable energy. But correlation isn’t causation.

The solar panels are easy to see. The natural gas market, century-old grid, and infrastructure spending buried in your bill aren’t.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

@crowley_k gonna need a citation on "most native species do very poorly." We haven't found that to be the case.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

A love letter to those who say, “nothing grows under solar panels”:

I regret to inform you that you are wrong. The sheep, the forage, and the bees all vehemently disagree with that narrative.

So does the research. Not as romantic, I know, but the data shows that forage beneath solar panels can have higher crude protein and improved nutritional quality (with greater digestibility for ruminants) compared to forage in full sun (Florentino et al, 2025). That partial shade can reduce heat stress and moisture loss, creating a different (and sometimes, more productive) growing environment.

Pair that with increased moisture retention and improved carbon sequestration, and it’s a match made in heaven for livestock, pollinators, and plants.

Again, not every solar array is automatically great farmland simply because the solar exists. Good agricultural management is still a cornerstone.

But the idea that “nothing grows there” is a talking point that we need to break up with.

With love.

-the sheep.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

A few weeks ago, I joined the @SEIA Good Energy podcast to talk about solar, agriculture, and what this conversation needs to start looking like.

Regardless of your opinion of solar, the dialogue around farmland needs to pay more attention to the farmer. Whether we're talking about data centers, renewables, housing, or any other use for the land, we need to take a step back and remember that farmland doesn't exist independently of the people trying to make a living from it.

If we want land to remain productive and agricultural, farmers need viable businesses, access to land, and opportunities to generate enough income to keep farming.

Solar grazing has given our farm access to land we otherwise couldn't afford, provided another source of farm income, and taught me a lot about what can happen when energy production and agriculture are designed to coexist.

You don't have to be pro-solar to care about that. You just have to be willing to ask whether the policies we're advocating for are helping farmers stay on the land, and to listen to farmers when we talk directly about what we need.

https://t.co/QhTg6wN35D

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

I just brought my son to Manhattan for a few days. We took the same Amtrak I rode home as an NYU freshman to visit my family and Josh in Lewis.

I transferred after a year. I guess you could say the Adirondacks had a grip on me.

But the Adirondacks can’t survive as a place that exists primarily for people who don’t live here.

Tourism and second homeowners bring value, but we’ve built so much around the visitor and the view that it’s increasingly difficult for the people who teach, farm, run businesses, and raise families here to afford to stay.

I see the same tension in our energy debates.

People want electricity, renewables, reliability, and lower emissions. But too often, the infrastructure required to produce that energy is acceptable only when somebody else has to look at it.

There’s a term for this: energy colonialism. Historically, energy-producing regions have supplied the land, labor, resources, and environmental burden while much of the energy, wealth, and decision-making flowed somewhere else. Think coal towns that powered distant cities or oil-producing communities that absorbed pollution while profits left the region.

And while we like to think those days are behind us, the pattern continues. Appalachian communities still live with the health, environmental, and economic legacy of supplying coal that powered the rest of the country, while oil and gas communities from the Gulf Coast to the Permian Basin bear disproportionate exposure to the pollution and industrial infrastructure that comes with producing the energy the rest of us consume.

The energy transition gives us a chance to do better.

Community solar allows us to produce more of our energy close to where we use it. It can be incredibly valuable, particularly when projects create tangible benefits for the communities hosting them. That can mean income for local landowners and farmers, host-community revenue, local jobs and contractors, continued agricultural use through agrivoltaics, and storage where it makes sense.

But local control has to include the people who actually live and work here. It can’t mean preserving the Adirondacks as scenery for people who visit while making it progressively harder to earn a living within that scenery.

I don’t want the Adirondacks to become somebody else’s power plant any more than I want them to become somebody else’s playground.

I want this to remain a place where people can afford to build lives. And renewables, when sited responsibly, may be able to help us do just that.

Read the full version of this post>> https://t.co/R5v7nAMXfK

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

When I first started freelancing seriously, I found myself writing, as a then-hobby farmer, about topics that interested me. Gardening, raising livestock, cooking from scratch. Home canning.

Naturally, that led to me getting a lot of work initially in the “homesteading” niche.

What’s interesting about the homesteading content arena (something that at first served as a boon for my growing content writing business, but later became the reason why I pivoted away from that sphere) is that so many of the websites dedicated to DIY content and homesteading aren’t DIY at all.

There are so many people teaching other people how to homestead who aren’t actually doing that work themselves. All of my early pieces were ghostwritten for websites telling people “the right way” to raise chickens, grow food, preserve a harvest, manage livestock, or become self-sufficient. And the advice sounded fantastic…until you actually tried it yourself.

Because real life has grey areas. It has weather. Animals die, often in ugly, unpredictable ways. Equipment breaks. Money runs out. The garden doesn’t care what the Internet says it should do when you apply x, y, or z organic remedy.

Eventually, I stopped writing homesteading content for hire because it felt inauthentic. Truth be told, there’s some element of inauthenticity to all ghostwriting because the whole point of ghostwriting is that somebody else besides the listed author is writing the piece.

But with the homesteading category, it felt particularly icky because the whole point was supposed to be DIY and lived experience. Not passing off someone else’s DIY and lived experience as your own, then packaging it in a sheen of sponsored links and “buy-my-homemade-chicken-starter-feed.”

While my work has changed slightly, I’m seeing the same thing happen now in the regenerative agriculture arena. There are lots of theories about how farmers should graze, what soil should do, which inputs you should never need, and which practices are supposedly right or wrong. Of course, most of this advice (like the aforementioned homesteading advice) comes from a place of true expertise and quantifiable research.

In Gabe Brown’s “Dirt to Soil,” one of the seminal texts on regenerative ag (in my opinion), he’s careful to call out that what worked on his farm might not work on yours. That’s the whole point. There’s no right or wrong. There’s right for one particular farm and wrong for another one.

But it gets lost on social media.

I’m seeing it now with agrivoltaics, too. Everybody “knows.” They “know” the right way to farm (and it’s not under solar panels). That solar destroys farmland. Solar saves farms. Agrivoltaics is the future. Agrivoltaics is a scam. Nothing grows under panels. Everything grows better under panels.

Folks, we’re becoming remarkably certain about things we’ve never tried ourselves.

The people willing to try something first are often the ones walking around with targets on their backs. Organic farmers got it. So did farmers experimenting with no-till, cover crops, and rotational grazing long before those practices became grant priorities and conference topics.

Not every experiment works. That’s the point. Someone has to try it to find out.

The longer I farm, the less interested I am in absolutes. What works beautifully on one farm can fail miserably on another.

So read the research. Listen to experts. Ask hard questions. But leave room for the people actually testing the theories.

Because this brings me right back to what frustrated me about homesteading writing years ago: there’s a big difference between knowing how something should work and knowing what happens when you actually do it.

Theory gives us somewhere to start. Experience tells us what works.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a steward of the land.

Often, we talk about stewardship as if it’s simply a matter of caring enough. Of planting some seeds for pollinator plants in your backyard, starting a compost bin, not mowing your yard in the month of May.

All of those things are wonderful, beneficial actions that have real, beneficial impacts.

But they only exist because someone can afford to do them.

The elephant in the room is that stewardship requires cash, and it requires time.

Healthy soil isn’t free, and it takes years to build.

Rotational grazing isn’t free. Replacing fences, planting trees, restoring streams, maintaining pastures, controlling invasive species, buying better genetics, repairing equipment, paying taxes, and passing a farm on to the next generation all cost money.

A farm that can't stay in business can't steward anything for very long.

That's one reason I find it interesting when people dismiss solar grazing by saying, "Well, of course you support it. You're paid to graze there."

Yes.

That's exactly the point.

Farmers have always been paid for managing land. We get paid to raise cattle. We get paid to grow corn. We get paid to harvest hay. We get paid to lease hunting rights. We get paid for conservation easements. We get paid through government conservation programs.

Why is it only controversial when the income comes from managing vegetation on a solar farm?

The implication seems to be that the only "honest" stewardship is stewardship that loses money.

I don't buy that.
In my experience, the farms doing the most for soil health, wildlife habitat, water quality, and long-term resilience are usually the farms that have figured out how to stay financially viable.

If we want farmers to care for the land for generations to come, then we should stop treating financial sustainability as something to apologize for.

Because the best steward in the world can't protect land they can no longer afford to keep.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

What does it mean to “protect farmland” if the farmer can’t afford to keep farming it?

Solar isn’t the whole story here. Farm viability, landowner choice, and who gets to decide what happens to rural land deserve a larger share of this conversation.

New op ed in the Times Union today. Give it a read. I’d love to hear what you think.

https://t.co/xYhVGOUunK

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

"If solar can't survive without subsidies, it shouldn't exist."

I hear that all the time. Now, let me ask a different question: What major American industry doesn't receive some form of public support? And what major American industry can survive without it?

Let me list a few that do: agriculture, oil and gas, nuclear, hydropower, manufacturing, homeownership (ex: mortgage interest deductions), healthcare, education, research and development, public transit, bridges, roads, highways, airports, broadband, rail infrastructure…

The issue has never been whether subsidies exist. The question is whether they're accomplishing what taxpayers were promised.

The purpose of a subsidy isn't to prop up a failing industry forever. It's to encourage outcomes that benefit the public: domestic food production, energy security, infrastructure, manufacturing, innovation, conservation, or rural economic development.

Agriculture is a perfect example. Crop insurance, conservation programs, disaster assistance, commodity programs, research funding, agricultural loans, and ethanol incentives all exist because we've decided that a stable domestic food supply is in the national interest. Most farmers don't apologize for that, and they shouldn't have to.

Energy policy works the same way. Oil and gas have received tax preferences and federal support for more than a century. Nuclear has benefited from federal research, loan guarantees, production tax credits, and liability protections. Hydropower was built with enormous public investment. Wind and solar have their own incentives.

So why does the conversation almost always stop at solar?

Why aren't we asking:

~Which subsidies are creating American jobs?
~Which ones help farmers stay on their land and in business?
~Which ones strengthen rural economies?
~Which ones improve energy security?
~ Which ones reduce dependence on foreign imports?
~ Which ones no longer make sense?

Those are policy questions. They’re productive. Targeting one industry alone is not.

Now, I know the other piece is almost inevitably going to pop up in the comments, so let’s tease it out: “solar is only 20% efficient.”

That statistic is one of the most misunderstood numbers in the energy conversation.

Panel efficiency measures how much sunlight a panel converts into electricity.

Capacity factor measures how much electricity a power plant produces over time compared with its maximum possible output.

They are not the same thing.

A solar panel can be 22% efficient and perform exactly as designed over its entire lifetime. A nuclear plant has a capacity factor above 90%, but that doesn't mean it's converting 90% of the energy in uranium into electricity. A gas plant can have a high capacity factor one year and a much lower one the next because it only runs when demand calls for it.

Comparing panel efficiency to capacity factor is like comparing a car's fuel economy to how many miles someone drives each year. They're measuring completely different things.

If we're going to debate subsidies, let's debate them honestly. Let's compare costs, reliability, domestic manufacturing, emissions, land use, resilience, grid performance, and return on taxpayer investment across EVERY industry receiving public support.

Not just the one people happen to be angry about this week.

One reason I wrote Agri-Energy: Growing Power, Growing Food was to move these conversations beyond memes and headlines. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope it encourages people to wrestle with the evidence instead of the talking points.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

If your neighbor painted their house a color you hated, would you expect the town to stop them?

If they built a barn? Put up a fence? Installed a pool?

Probably not.

Yet when a farmer decides to lease land for solar, suddenly many people argue that the neighbors should get to decide what happens on someone else's private property.

What's interesting is that farmers have been living with the opposite reality for decades.

Housing developments keep expanding into agricultural areas. Warehouses and data centers are increasingly doing the same.

Farmland disappears, new neighbors move in, and then the complaints begin: tractors start too early, work too late, or take up too much of the road. Irrigation pumps run at night, manure smells, livestock make noise, and harvest creates dust.

I know a farmer whose irrigation generators have been running in the same fields for decades. The generators didn't move. The houses did.

Guess who complained? Guess who had to make the concessions to keep the peace?

To be clear, this isn't an argument against public input. Every major project, whether it's solar, a subdivision, a warehouse, or a data center, should go through zoning, permitting, and environmental review. Communities do deserve a voice.

But there's a difference between having a voice and having veto power over someone else's lawful and safe use of their land.

The question we should be asking is: What fight are we really fighting?

If the concern is protecting farmland, then we should be just as concerned when subdivisions, warehouses, and other developments replace it as when solar does.

If the concern is property rights, then those rights have to apply consistently.

You don't get to celebrate private property until your neighbor makes a different decision than you would. Then it isn't much of a principle at all.

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

I keep seeing solar construction photos offered as proof that developers are “stripping away the topsoil.”

But removing topsoil during construction ≠ permanently removing it.

It’s like moving the furniture to replace the floor.

A photo of the empty room doesn’t prove someone threw away the couch.

Here's what's actually going on:

https://t.co/kCARqqZDiR

[Rebekah Pierce @RPierceWriter]

Thanks to ADK Talks and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County for including me in this special Women in Agriculture series. We talked farming, food, solar grazing and why innovation matters for the future of family farms. https://t.co/gihG7K2ft7