Instead of plowing fields, Raines spent the year ferrying his flock of sheep to solar farms, to munch on the grass that grows around the gleaming panels. The deals he struck for this natural lawn-mowing service with five solar companies were more lucrative than growing cotton, he said.

“Cotton prices have been terrible for so long, I had to do something different,” said Raines, 52.

Why it matters: With many Canadian farms working with razor-thin margins, Texas cotton farmers could provide inspiration for diverse, value-added revenue streams

As U.S. farmers grapple with soaring debt and slumping incomes, some crop producers are trading their tractors for flocks of sheep, and starting up solar grazing businesses to help make ends meet.

Sheep-herding for solar is one of the ways farmers are scrambling to diversify their income, as a multi-year slump in the U.S. agricultural economy has hit crop producers particularly hard, economists said.

If Raines had raised cotton last year, his farm would have seen a $200,000 loss (C$287,800), he said. Making money farming sheep only for meat would be tough too. Instead, Raines cleared a profit of about $300,000 (C$431,700), thanks to the solar sheep grazing payments and starting to sell lamb meat to a restaurant supplier, he said.

“Every expense I have, from the labor to the $2,000-a-month I spend a month on dog food for the guard dogs, is covered by solar,” said Raines, whose son came back to the farm to help.

But such opportunities may slow. President Donald Trump issued an executive order that, among other things, ends clean energy-related appropriated funds, which could impact a swath of clean energy incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the future.

IRA funding has been frozen, as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping push to review all government grants and loans. A recent court order led to some IRA funds being unfrozen, but many groups have reported still being unable to access them.

“Farmers and ranchers should not have to rely on far-left climate programs for grazing land or ‘economic lifelines’,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email statement to Reuters, adding the agency is focused on rural prosperity and is “putting a stop to spending that has nothing to do with agriculture.”

Slumping crop prices

U.S. cotton future prices have slumped nearly 40 per cent over the past two years, as hefty global stocks have overwhelmed global demand. U.S. exports have dropped sharply, losing out to cheaper Brazilian supplies and falling Chinese demand, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows.

“The last three years have been brutal for Texas cotton growers,” said Louis Barbera, a managing partner at cotton broker VLM Commodities.

While U.S. farm income overall is expected to improve this year, the upturn is being driven by high livestock prices and a massive boom in anticipated government aid from the American Relief Act of 2025, a USDA forecast in early February showed.

But when adjusted for inflation, corn and soybean farm businesses will see incomes at the lowest levels since 2010 – even if producers receive that aid, said Jennifer Ifft, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University.

Farmers who rely heavily on debt to operate were slower to pay back their loans in 2024, and a growing number are selling assets to stay afloat, according to data from Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City and Minneapolis.

“Income diversification in ag downturns can mean saving the farm,” Tait Berg, senior examiner and agricultural risk specialist at the Minneapolis Fed, said in an interview.

For farmers faced with pricey seed bills and expensive equipment parts for repairing their machinery, these solar land-management contracts can be an economic lifeline, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen farmers.

It can mean they run their farm at a profit, rather than try to get a supplementary job in town to pay down their bills or find some other gig, they said.

Sheep grazed on more than 129,000 acres of U.S. solar panel sites last October, compared to 15,000 acres in 2021, according to the non-profit American Solar Grazing Association. The number of solar-site sheep jumped from 80,000 to more than 113,000 between January and October last year, the group said.

While that represents a tiny fraction of the nation’s total 5.05 million sheep and lamb herd, the new business opportunity has helped herd numbers tick higher for the first time since 2016, said Peter Orwick, executive director of the trade group American Sheep Industry Association.

New opportunities

The U.S. solar industry grew under President Donald Trump’s first term, and development surged after a 2022 law passed under former President Joe Biden provided subsidies for new clean-energy projects, said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The sector expects to continue to grow under Trump’s second term, she said.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly in a statement to Reuters: “Ultimately, President Trump will cut programs that do not serve the interests of the American people and keep programs that put America First.”

In Indiana and Illinois, the solar boom has attracted twenty- and thirty-somethings eager to jump into farming, without taking on millions of dollars in debt to rent land and machinery, industry analysts said.

In Virginia, Marcus and Jess Gray put their planting dreams on hold after securing lucrative contracts with Dominion Energy and Urban Grid. Now, they graze their 900-head flocks across 4,000 acres where solar is being built.

“It’s steady income, where we get to set and negotiate the price, rather than taking our grain from our bin to the local elevator and they tell us what it’s worth,” said Jess Gray, 39.

Substantial savings

Using sheep for clearing local flora can mean substantial savings once a site is up and running.

The initial capital expenditures can be higher, depending on the project site, said Reagan Farr, chief executive officer of Tennessee-based solar firm Silicon Ranch. Some locations require wells to be drilled for water supplies or more complex gating systems for corrals, he said.

Still, the company saves about 20 per cent in operating expenses once a site is running by using managed grazing, Farr said.

“The economics work, when you’re not trucking a flock of sheep across the country or hauling in trucks of water,” Farr said. “It’s much easier and less costly to pay our shepherds a living wage, than it is to hire someone to sit on a lawnmower for 10 hours a day, day in and day out.”

Demand for solar grazing animals prompted Silicon Ranch, in which Shell owns a stake, to launch its own sheep breeding program in Georgia to bolster local farmer supplies.

For Raines and his family, the decision was simple economics.

“If I had kept row crop farming, our family farm would be out of business,” Raines said.

— Additional reporting by Marcelo Teixeira in New York City

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One approach to decarbonizing the agricultural sector is agrivoltaics. It involves integrating solar panels – or photovoltaics (PVs) – into fields of crops, greenhouses and livestock areas, which can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint while continuing to produce food.

Agrivoltaics can also mitigate one of the main criticisms often made of solar power – that solar farms “waste” vast tracts of agricultural land that could otherwise be used for food production. In reality, solar farms currently occupy only 0.15 per cent of the UK’s total land – not much compared to its 70 per cent agricultural land.

The simplest example of an agrivoltaic system would be conventional, crystalline silicon PVs (the market-leading type of solar panels), installed in fields alongside livestock. This method of farm diversification has become increasingly popular in recent years for three main reasons.

First, it enhances biodiversity as the fields are not seeing a regular crop rotation, being monocultured, or being harvested for silage. Second, it increases production as livestock benefit from the shade and the healthier pasture growth.

Finally, the solar farm has reduced maintenance costs because livestock can keep the grass short. All this is achieved while the solar panels provide locally-generated, clean energy.

But if they’re not set up properly, agrivoltaics may cause problems. One of the most important challenges is balancing the need for sunlight between crops and solar panels. Crops need light to grow, and if solar panels block too much sunlight, they can negatively impact crop yields.

This issue varies from place to place. In countries with fewer sunny days like the UK, the panels need to let more sunlight through. But in places like Spain or Italy, some shade can actually help crops by reducing the stress of intense heat during summer months. Finding the right balance is tricky, as it depends on local conditions, the type of crop, and even the needs of pollinators like bees.

The complexity deepens when we consider the type of PV material used. Traditional solar panels aren’t always suitable because they often block the wavelengths (colours) of light needed by plants.

This is where newer materials, like organic semiconductors and perovskites, are ideal as they can be customised to let crops get the light they need while still generating energy. Unlike traditional inorganic semiconductors, which are essentially crystals of metal and metalloid atoms, organic semiconductors are molecules mainly made of carbon and hydrogen. Perovskites, meanwhile, are like a hybrid of the two.

But there are thousands of combinations of these materials to choose from, with scientific literature containing a plethora of options. Figuring out which one works best can be a daunting task.

This is where computational tools can make a big difference. Instead of testing each material in real-world conditions – which would take years and be incredibly expensive – researchers can use simulations to predict their performance. These models can help identify the best materials for specific crops and climates, saving both time and resources.

The tool

We have developed an open-source tool that helps compare various PV materials, making it easier to identify the best options for agrivoltaics. Our tool uses geographical data and realistic simulations of how different PV materials perform.

It considers how light travels through these materials and reflects off them, as well as other important performance measures like voltage and power output. The tool can also take lab-based measurements of PV materials and apply them to real-world scenarios.

Using this tool, we simulated how much power different PV materials could generate per square metre over the course of a year, across various regions. And we calculated how much light passed through these materials to ensure it was enough for crops to thrive.

By running these simulations for multiple materials, we could identify the most suitable options for specific crops and climates.

Tools like ours could play a critical role in decarbonizing the agricultural sector by guiding the design of agrivoltaic systems. Future research could combine these simulations with economic and environmental impact analyses. This would help us understand how much energy we can expect from a solar panel over its lifetime compared to the resources and costs involved in producing it.

Ultimately, our tool could help researchers and policymakers in selecting the most efficient, cost-effective and eco-friendly ways to decarbonize agriculture and move us closer to achieving global net-zero emissions.

—Austin Kay is a researcher in sustainable advanced materials at Swansea University

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Despite her best efforts, unpredictable temperatures, humidity and air quality changes led to the deaths of thousands of chicks, a lesson that would propel her to commit her life to making African farms more climate-resilient.

“Nigeria’s unprecedented rainfalls and weather patterns are not predictable, and with heat and cold stresses our birds were dying,” the 34-year-old agricultural engineer said in a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We understand that innovation is pivotal to combating climate-related issues around food insecurity,” she said.

Akpagbula last year launched a remote-sensing device called PenKeep that monitors and controls environmental conditions in poultry farms. She is now extending the technology into aquaculture and greenhouse farms.

Alongside container farms in South Africa cultivating soldier flies for animal feed, solar-powered fish and crop dryers in Tanzania and machine-learning pest detectors in Kenya, Africans are coming up with innovative solutions to overcome the effects of climate change on food production.

Such solutions are going to be needed as Africa, according to a new United Nations report, is the continent most impacted by hunger.

Together with conflict and economic crises, climate shocks are leaving Africa at the epicentre of a hunger crisis, with one in five – some 300 million people – short of food.

It is also the continent most vulnerable to climate shocks, while contributing the least to carbon emissions.

“Current societal inequalities, such as resource constraints, make it even more difficult to source funds to adapt to these changes,” said Mulako Kabisa, from the Global Change Institute research platform at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

“Home-grown solutions matter because they take into cognizance the local context … and what will be sustainable in the long run,” she said in emailed comments.

Sensors and solar

PenKeep’s solar-powered device interprets data from sensors that monitor environmental changes including temperature, water levels and air quality in poultry coops. Farmers are alerted of condition changes through SMS, email or an alarm.

It is being used by more than 1,200 chicken farmers in western and northern Nigeria, with more than 100,000 chickens monitored in the company’s first six months. Subscriptions of around $15 a month make it more affordable for farmers, Akpagbula said.

Users can also use an artificial intelligence (AI) management app called FS Manager that provides farmers with information including management advice, weather updates and book-keeping services.

“Nigeria has millions of poultry farmers … but they are not producing enough … because they are spending so much on energy and they have a lot of poultry mortality as a result of their environment,” said Akpagbula.

Farmers using PenKeep have seen poultry mortality rates decrease by 72 per cent, Akpagbula said.

In east Africa, Tanzanian Evodius Rutta also utilizes the continent’s abundance of sun through his MAVUNOLAB Solar Dryer that helps subsistence fish processors and farmers rapidly dry out produce including fish, fruits and vegetables, preventing post-harvest food loss.

Small-scale fish processors at Lake Victoria in western Tanzania have begun using his dryer, reducing the drying time of 250 kg of fish from 12 hours to four.

Climate variability has led to erratic rains that can spoil up to 50 per cent of fishermen’s harvests as they do not have access to cold storage, said Rutta, a sustainability researcher and MAVUNOLAB innovation hub founder.

“Because of the rains and high tides, it has also become very dangerous for fishermen that go to the sea and the lakes,” Rutta, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

“We need low-cost solutions for farmers to adapt to changing climate patterns because it’s going to be unavoidable,” Rutta said, adding that he was getting requests from farmers in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya to use his invention.

Pest detection

Climate change can impact environmental factors such as temperature and humidity that can in turn influence the life cycle and spread of crop pests, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Pests are already responsible for at least 40 per cent of crop loss worldwide.

Kenyan computer scientist Esther Kimani witnessed this first-hand growing up when pests decimated up to one-third of her family’s pea, potato and maize crops in the south of Kenya.

By the time the pests were detected, the destruction was so severe that even using pesticides became pointless.

Kimani was inspired to invent the Early Crop Pest and Disease Detection Device – a solar-powered tool that uses AI and machine learning-enabled cameras to rapidly detect and alert farmers of pests and diseases.

Kimani’s invention is being used by more than 5,000 farmers across Kenya since its launch in 2020. A group-leasing model reduces the cost to each farmer to $3 per month.

The device also advises farmers about which pesticides to use when, according to predicted climatic changes.

Kimani estimates that more than 3,000 acres of land have been protected from pest infestation by her invention.

She recently won the Royal Academy of Engineering’s African Prize for Engineering Innovation, for which Akpagbula and Rutta were also short-listed.

Climate crisis

Some home-grown innovations are also focusing on protecting agricultural output while reducing carbon emissions.

South Africa’s Philafeed helps build tailor-made black soldier fly container farms. The fly larvae feed on food waste, diverting planet-heating methane emissions from landfills.

The larvae can also be used as a protein feed for livestock, reducing the need for carbon-intensive soya and fish meal.

The larvae manure, a byproduct known as frass, helps increase soil and plant tolerance against drought and flooding, and in turn can increase crop yield in times of climate uncertainty.

“Through black soldier flies we want farmers to be able to diversify their income if there is a failed season due to climate change,” said Maya Zaken, Philafeed co-founder.

Philafeed is currently piloting its new container model in Cape Town.

Despite initial funding challenges and struggles to get farmer buy-in, Akpagbula has faith that her innovation, alongside others on the continent, will soon become essential to farmers as climate shocks become more severe and more frequent.

“People always say why now? Why you doing this now?” said Akpagbula. “I tell them it’s because of the urgency of the climate crisis.”

—The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. 

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