U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has announced that the Department will no longer fund solar panel installations on productive farmland, nor allow equipment manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA-backed projects.

According to Rollins, the decision comes in response to the growing concern that subsidized solar farms have made it harder for farmers to access farmland by driving up costs and reducing availability. She noted that in the past 30 years, the state of Tennessee alone has lost over 1.2 million acres of farmland and is projected to lose another 2 million acres by 2027. This issue is not unique to Tennessee—since 2012, solar panel installations on farmland across the U.S. have increased by nearly 50%.

The USDA will implement the following measures with immediate effect:

• Under the USDA’s Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loan Program for Rural Development, wind and solar projects will no longer be eligible.

• As part of the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) Guaranteed Loan Program, the Department will ensure that farmers, ranchers, and producers using wind and solar energy install systems appropriately sized for their operations.
  If a project proposal includes ground-mounted photovoltaic solar systems over 50 kW or systems that cannot document historical energy consumption, it will become ineligible for REAP and lose priority for REAP grants.

The measure was confirmed in Tennessee alongside Governor Bill Lee, Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, Representative John Rose, and USDA Under Secretary Stephen Vaden.

Governor Bill Lee stated that “Tennesseans know that our farmland is our national security, our economic future, and our children's heritage. We were honored to welcome Secretary Rollins to Tennessee this week, and I thank her for her leadership in defending America’s farmland from foreign adversaries and protecting our food supply.”