Agrivoltaics: Farming For the Future

In 2014, Chad Higgins - Associate Professor at Oregon State University's College of Agricultural Sciences - would perform the same daily lunchtime ritual on campus: He would take his sack lunch and stroll down to Oak Creek to eat, taking in the natural beauty, before heading back to his office to dive back into his research on wind turbines.

On his route, he would walk past six acres of former pasture land where the college had set up about a megawatt-and-a-half of solar. Over time, he began to notice ecological changes to the landscape.

"The grass under the solar panels stayed greener later into the season," says Higgins, "and the sheep grazing in the field would congregate under the solar."

Eventually, he started taking photos to document the changes he was seeing over time. As the plant life around the panels continued to thrive, it finally hit him one afternoon:

"I could deduce from what I was seeing that the solar was reducing the plants' water needs," he says. "I realized I needed to pivot my lab's research away from wind turbines and to solar. So I skipped lunch and ran back to the lab to get started."

Chad and his students gathered their tools, and installed instrumentation to measure soil moisture, light sensing, and weather stations to track the changes he was witnessing take place. After years of research and data collection, they published the first U.S. paper on agrivoltaics , which has since been cited hundreds of times.

What is agrivoltaics?

At its core, agrivoltaics is really quite simple. It's the practice of using solar arrays on farms to harness solar power for the benefit of the plants below. Or, in Chad Higgins' words, "It's the realization that you can manage sunlight as a farm resource." But as simple as it is, the impact can be profound.

Since publishing their first agrivoltaics paper in 2018, Chad Higgins and his students have stayed busy studying the effects - and they've found a myriad of benefits that go far beyond greener grass and better grazing. They've observed changes in flowers blooming, pollinator behavior, and nutrient density of the crops below the panels.

The process at play here boils down to shade. Solar panels shield crops from direct sunlight, taking away a significant stressor and slowing the evaporation of moisture from the soil. The panels can be elevated, spaced farther apart, mounted vertically, or programmed to track the sun in ways that accommodate farm equipment and agricultural production.

The result? Up 30% less water use, and three times the water-use efficiency.

The same principle applies to livestock. Sheep can graze among the panels, getting shade and shelter while keeping vegetation under control. Plus, the plants they graze on may be more nutritious, and the extra shade means the animals need less water to survive.

But the benefits don't end with the crops. Agrivoltaics also has the potential to generate a huge amount of electricity - for use on the farm, and potentially far beyond.

" Less than 1% of farmland adopting agrivoltaics could meet our country's energy demand," says Higgins.

Powering ahead

The benefits of agrivoltaics are crystal clear and backed by the research of Chad Higgins and other experts in the field - but making it a reality through implementation is another beast entirely.

Right now, Yosafe and Itanna Murphy are trying to lead by example at Sheba Farms , which has been in Itanna's family since the 1860's. While the farm has traditionally focused on rye grass and fescue, they're hoping to start producing other food crops thanks to the added boon of solar.

"We want our farm to be a demonstration hub of what agrivoltaics can look like," says Itanna. "The data is there: Solar panels lead to happier plants, which lead to happier animals, which lead to a better product. That shows when you go to market."

While the Murphys have the blueprint laid out for their agrivoltaic development (they plan to start with 20 solar panels on about 10 acres of land), they've faced obstacles along the way. Because the technology is so new, there aren't ample financing options available. But perhaps an even bigger barrier arises when it comes to feeding the power they generate back to the grid.

"Because a lot of farms are in rural America, we're often at the very end of a grid," says Yosafe. "So the closest substation does not have the capacity to offload the energy that we would be able to produce at this point. We were told it would cost $1 million to upgrade it."

Simply put: The state needs substantial changes to infrastructure and regulation to make the dream of agrivoltaics a reality. But thankfully, we're taking strides in the right direction. In 2025, Oregon's Agrivoltaics Task Force was formed to study the technology and provide recommendations by December 2026. OEC is supporting forthcoming legislation in 2027 to better facilitate agrivoltaics development in Oregon.

But the change needed to see the true benefits of agrivoltaics doesn't just come from regulation - it also comes from community. If Oregon is going to make the most of this technology, agriculture communities will need to have a say in what responsible agrivoltaics actually looks like, and farmers will need to be treated as partners rather than simply hosts for solar infrastructure.

For the Murphys, that part of the equation is front and center to their plans.

"The whole point of the technology is to build community," says Yosafe. "If we can build community around agrivoltaics, people will see it for what it really is: good for the farm, good for the wallet, and good for the planet."