Places

ITHACA, N.Y. — New York state farmers who signed large-scale solar leases were three times more likely to say they’ll use the revenue from solar to invest in their farms than to reduce operations, according to a new study.

Nearly half of the farmers with leases said they did not plan to change their agricultural practices at all.

The study, published Feb. 21 in Rural Sociology, dispels the myth that farmers will give up farming, with its unpredictable returns, when offered lucrative solar leases for their land

“People have been talking about this for a long time, but nobody had asked quantitatively: For farmers, if you sign a lease, what do you intend to do?” said principal investigator Richard Stedman, professor and interim director of the Cornell CALS Ashley School in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “It’s a reasonable conclusion from this study: Large-scale solar does not appear to be the death of farming.”

The findings were based on the survey responses of 584 landowners in three New York state counties most likely to have large-scale solar development. Landowners owned 30 or more acres that were classified as rural, agricultural or vacant and were adjacent to transmission lines or substations. The researchers found that nearly half of the respondents had been approached by large-scale solar developers; farmers were twice as likely than non-farmers to be solicited but were less likely to sign leases.