From 2012 to 2020, more than 90 percent of large-scale, commercial wind turbines and 70 percent of solar farms in rural areas were installed on agricultural land (either cropland or pasture-rangeland). The amount of rural land directly affected by wind turbines and solar farms, however, is small compared with the amount of farmland in the United States: 424,000 acres in 2020 compared with 897 million total acres used for farmland, less than 0.05 percent.
As development has expanded, some communities have raised concerns about the local effects of solar and wind projects. USDA, Economic Research Service researchers recently studied how solar and wind development affects land cover near wind turbines and solar farms.
Researchers examined the land cover in the three years prior to and following installation and found that cropland or pasture-rangeland usually stayed in the same land cover even after the addition of solar or wind development.
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