In rural Tennessee, standing before more than 1,200 farmers, ranchers, and future farmers of America, I unveiled the next step in protecting our family farms and our way of life: ending taxpayer subsidization of foreign solar panels on prime farmland.
Over the past few years, the unchecked expansion of solar farms, heavily subsidized by the federal government and fueled by foreign adversaries like China, has proved a serious obstacle for new farmers. The massive amount of prime farmland consumed by these projects makes land more expensive, less available, and out of reach for the next generation of producers.
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One of the biggest barriers for new farmers is access to farmland. In a nation blessed with 880 million acres of farmland, it is unacceptable to price young families out of the American Dream.
That’s why the Department of Agriculture in the Trump-Vance administration is taking bold action to eliminate USDA programs that spend taxpayer dollars subsidizing solar panels on productive farmland.
In the last 30 years in Tennessee alone, farmers have already lost over 1.1 million acres and are projected to lose another 2 million acres by 2027. Across the country, solar panels on farmland have skyrocketed by nearly 50 percent since 2021. While cash rents are already climbing, averaging $160 per acre this year, solar companies are luring landowners with payouts as high as $1,500 per acre annually. That puts family farmers in an impossible position during tough economic times.
The consequences extend far beyond farmland loss. Solar panel construction damages the soil, compacts the ground, and changes drainage patterns, threatening nearby productive acreage. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and federal solar tax credits have only worsened this problem, accelerating competition for farmland and driving up costs.
This is perhaps one of the greatest moral crimes of the past administration, in that it enlisted both the American taxpayer and the government of the United States against the American farmer—and it now ends.
Ending these reckless subsidies is about more than protecting farmland; it’s about securing American energy dominance. For too long, Washington has forced taxpayers to underwrite unreliable and expensive energy sources like wind and solar, leaving our grid weaker and our nation more dependent on foreign supply chains controlled by our adversaries. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s July executive order on ending market-distorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources, those days are over. No American tax dollars will be funneled to Beijing for unreliable energy projects.
We are taking this action because agriculture is not only America’s first industry, but its foundational industry. And when I look out at today’s farmers, I also see the next generation, men and women who will carry forward the torch of liberty that has secured the promise of America for almost 250 years.
Through the next 41 months, we will leave no stone unturned in protecting our farmland, strengthening our family farms, and defending a way of life that has carried our nation through every challenge.
Brooke L. Rollins is the 33rd United States secretary of Agriculture.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
