Corn Growers Talk Solar Panel Expansion

Farm groups in several states are trying to figure out how to address the expansion of solar panels on productive farmland.  Minnesota Corn Growers president Richard Syverson says it’s a difficult issue:

“We have people who want to participate in that, there are a lot of dollars being pushed that way right now. We need to take a position (and) need to work on that, so we wrestle with that one as a group.”

Syverson says Minnesota Corn wants to be very careful to get the solar policy right:

“You’ve got huge government subsidies, and that’s kind of how we approached it if you take prime farm ground out of production you shouldn’t qualify for a subsidy. We shouldn’t have government dollars taking good land out of production.”

Syverson says there’s plenty of poor ground in Minnesota and elsewhere that would work for solar panel installation if incentivized properly.