Crop and Energy Production Merge in Iowa Project

Solar power may be the answer to the world’s future energy needs. But its benefit is limited if it hampers our ability to produce food.

Using farmland for solar panels, especially in the agriculture-heavy Midwest, is fraught with controversy. “There is concern that solar energy will prevent land from being used for farming,” says Matt O’Neal, professor of entomology and Henry A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.

What if the two could co-exist?

A new study underway at Iowa State University seeks to answer that question.

“Solar panels don’t have to be disruptive. It doesn’t mean farming the land has to stop,” says O’Neal. “We want to look at possibilities and profitability.”

A multi-disciplinary team of ISU professors, graduate and undergraduate students is working with Alliant Energy through a public-private partnership to study the potential of agrivoltaics, the simultaneous use of areas of land for both solar panels and agriculture. The team includes horticulturalists, economists, environmentalists, sociologists, engineers and even entomologists.

The project is the first of its kind. “There has been research conducted, but not on a utility scale,” says Nick Peterson, Strategic Partnerships Manager with Alliant Energy, “and not in a public/private partnership with a land grant university.”

There has also been little research conducted in the Midwest, the heart of agriculture, where farmland is gold.

The solar farm

Alliant Energy completed construction on the 10-acre Alliant Energy Solar Farm on the ISU research farms near Ames, Iowa in the fall of 2023. Managed by the ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the research farms are used to study livestock production and the