EXCLUSIVE: Legacy Ranchers Fear Solar Industry Razing Farmland Into ‘Dust Bowl’

The solar industry is bulldozing over legacy farmland in Arizona, leaving the land barren as the sector pursues a so-called green solution to America’s energy crisis, several local ranchers told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Near Joseph City, Arizona, several ranchers have lost land to the solar industry, as companies secure leased farmland through offers far beyond what local ranchers could afford. Several local cow-calf ranchers told the DCNF that Obama– and Biden-era green energy initiatives have coincided with farmland being leveled and laid waste as solar companies lease the land and rake in generous tax credits.

“They [landlords and solar utility companies] just move us out, and we’ve been taking care of the land forever,” Kiley Reidhead, a legacy Arizona rancher whose grandfather initially purchased the lease for his ranch, told the DCNF. “I don’t know how to stop it… I’ve spent my whole life buying this from my grandpa and my dad, and now I’m just going to lose it.” (RELATED: Town Tries To Seize 175-Year-Old Farm Land From Family For Affordable Housing)

Wind farm via Arizona Rancher Kiley Reidhead

Reidhead has lost some sections of his leased land to wind turbines and added that his neighbors’ ranch has about 100 wind turbines that are a “terrible eyesore.” Though he stressed that those who own the land retain the right to lease it out, he noted that ranchers like him have been “taking care of the land forever.”

Another legacy rancher, Rusty DeSpain, has lost several sections of his ranch to solar panel development, which he says decimates the farmland as companies sterilize the ground, drudge up grass and kick dirt into the air, creating a “dust bowl” that drives away critters and leaves the land unusable. DeSpain and his family moved to the ranch in 1972 and have been “good stewards” of the land for years.

Several ranchers explained to the DCNF that around Joseph City and across much of Arizona, almost all the land is owned by the federal or state government and ranchers depend on “allotments.” Solar companies are outbidding ranchers on their allotments, shelling out amounts the ranchers told the DCNF they could never hope to match.

Casey Murph, a multi-generation rancher told the DCNF that transmission lines left behind from the retired Cholla coal plant give solar companies a ready-made opportunity to connect new installations and that he had not seen solar panel companies move in to develop at this pace until the Biden administration. The Department of Energy (DOE) has also marked the land around Joseph City on its website as a “census tract with a coal closure.”

“What they are doing [solar and utility companies] is they’re going to the state and attempting to outbid me as a rancher with these crazy amounts of money that I could never match for these lands,” Murph told the DCNF. “And if they get them, I will be evicted from them and it pretty much puts me out of business here.” (RELATED: Major Utility Admits That Complete Green Energy Transition Could Wreck Power Grid)

In an aerial view, the Kayenta Solar Plant is seen on June 23, 2024 in Kayenta, Arizona. (Photo by Brandon Bell via Getty Images)

Solar companies outbidding ranchers for their leased land include Invenergy, Ørsted and GoSolar, among others, according to the ranchers. GoSolar reportedly initially looked to develop projects around the retiring coal plant in 2016 and later strategically placed its solar projects in areas eligible for tax credits under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to North American Clean Energy.

“Those ranchers who are within a few miles of that power plant are all kind of at risk,” Murph said. “At the end of the day, one of these facilities is going to be a parking lot covered with glass. It’s not going to have any type of vegetative life within the enclosure of it, within the lifetime of anybody who’s on the planet now.”

DeSpain speculated that extreme winds in the area mean that solar farms aren’t likely to last long and that in a few decades “it’s going to be a wasteland.” He said there are about six solar panel companies around Joseph City that are looking to “grab up” land and take advantage of the available transmission lines.

“It’s hard when you’re on lease country. You treat it like your own for years, you’re proud of it, you treat it like your backyard and then they just come in and take it out from underneath you overnight,” DeSpain told the DCNF. “It’s devastating.”

For 53 years, DeSpain’s family has tended to the cow-calf operation, hosting public visitors and wildlife like antelope, though the increasing solar development has shifted the landscape. Several sections of DeSpain’s land are now occupied by solar projects, and he told the DCNF that he hasn’t seen an antelope in a long time. (RELATED: Trump Admin Reportedly Set To Slash Billions In Biden Solar Grants)

Solar panel testing/ via Arizona Rancher Rusty DeSpain

“There’s probably a lot in my fight that’s been exhausted,” DeSpain said, noting that ranchers in the area are now “numb to it all” and that he hopes the solar projects could be completed quickly so that he could know how much his family will have left. “The damage is done,” he said.

The solar industry has yet to encroach upon Murph’s ranch, though he noted that he has been receiving notices since around 2021 from the Arizona State Land Department about solar utilities expressing interest in his property for a potential project. Murph told the DCNF that his retirement is bound up in his ranch, and without it, he isn’t sure where he would go.

“My grazing allotment is a state allotment that’s been in the family since territorial times. … It’s on this state allotment that the solar utility companies are trying to get themselves set up on,” Murph told the DCNF. “There’s old fence posts that I know my great-grandfather put in that I’m still maintaining. It almost feels like some kind of spiritual connection you have with the land when your family’s been on it for so long.”

Though the Biden administration pushed for intermittent energy sources like solar and wind through massive subsidies, grants and loans as part of Biden’s climate agenda, the Trump administration has sought to dismantle what it terms the “green new scam.” Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly stated that climate change is a problem, though frames energy poverty as a more imminent threat.

Biden blocked and heavily regulated reliable forms of energy like oil and gas as well as coal, saying in November 2022 that “we’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.” (RELATED: ‘A Hazard All The Way Around’: Small Town Locals Bristle As Wind Farm Waste Piles Up)

Solar panel testing/ via Arizona Rancher Rusty DeSpain

The retired Cholla coal plant by Joseph City used to provide jobs and never once alarmed the ranchers in the surrounding area, though several ranchers told the DCNF that they could not say the same of wind and solar development. Trump has signaled interest in getting the Cholla plant reopened as the DOE keeps issuing emergency orders to keep power plants across America humming while the U.S. teeters on the verge of an energy crisis.

“That power plant probably sits on maybe 100 acres and produced three times the power. Now we’re looking at five miles of solar panels just to try to equal it,” DeSpain told the DCNF. “And they call that clean? What they’ve done to this country is not cleaner.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has been moving to defend America’s farmland from taxpayer-funded solar panel development as part of an administration-wide crackdown on the federal government pushing green energy technology.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) told the DCNF, “On Aug. 19, the Secretary announced USDA will no longer provide solar and wind funding, loans, and grants for projects on prime farmland. This directly addresses the concerns of ranchers by removing taxpayer-backed incentives. However, this does not impact private land transactions. USDA’s move marks a regulatory shift to preserve farmland access and food security.”

Since many ranchers and farmers in Arizona and several other Western states live and work from leased land, these USDA protections cannot extend to all of them, especially those who lease lands from private cattle companies.

Invenergy, Ørsted, GoSolar and the Arizona State Land Department did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

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