Solar panels could help make farms more resilient to climate change, but they need cash to make it work

At Thistle Whistle Farm in Hotchkiss, farmer Mark Waltermire grows a wide variety of crops on his 16 acres.

“A lot of greens, onions, shallots, cabbage, kohlrabi, carrots, beets, parsnips, burdock root, scorzonera and saltapie, and then heirloom tomatoes…” he lists when prompted.

He’s also planning on having over 250 varieties of peppers this summer, which prompts me to ask if it’s fair to say that peppers are his favorite thing to grow.

“It would be fair to say that, but if you ask me about potatoes, when I'm harvesting and eating potatoes, I'd say they're my favorite thing, as most every other vegetable is,” he said. “I don't play favorites very well, or I have many favorites.”

Waltermire’s farm is in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, in the West Elk Range of the Rockies. The growing season is short, and the climate is semi-arid. As Waltermire notes, climate change is impacting how he operates.

“I've noticed over the past few years that temperatures have increased here in the summertime, peak temperatures, and that is a problem for quite a few things that I grow,” he said.

Waltermire is considering a solution that would create a dual use of his land. He wants to build five acres of solar panels on his land — about a megawatt of power — and continue growing his tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, and leafy greens under them. The solar panels would provide shade, something that would benefit his many crops, as well as his goats, chickens, and ducks.

“Many of the things that I like to grow would benefit from a little less intense heat and sunlight,” he said. “And the water needs would be reduced under partial shade. So I can benefit…many of the crops I grow, by having partial shade from solar panels.”

It’s called agrivoltaics, combining agriculture with photovoltaic, or solar, panels.

“Agrivoltaics is a way to help ensure the climate resiliency of the agricultural activities that occur in whatever region, whatever community that a solar array is being built,” says Byron Kominek.

Kominek is the owner and operator of Jack’s Solar Garden. He’s been running his agrivoltaics project in Boulder County since 2017. Like Thistle Whistle, it’s a small, family-run operation.

“You don't really make money on hay on 24 acres, you lose money,” he said, recounting when he first got started farming eight years ago.

He explains that selling the energy from these solar panels can help farmers, even during bad years. But he says his family wanted to keep the land’s agricultural character.

“It helps to match our history and it helps to... match how we view land stewardship by keeping the land productive underneath the solar panels,” he said of his own family’s decision to try agrivoltaics.

Now, Kominek does outreach and education through his nonprofit, the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center. In many ways, he’s a resource for projects like Thistle Whistle, with his expertise on the red tape that goes into starting up an agrivoltaics project.

He says there are a few key obstacles that people encounter when they want to do agrivoltaics, ranging from financial to bureaucratic.

“Is the utility willing to work with them? Is the county willing to work with them? Are they in a spot that works for being interconnected? Do they have the money to do it? And then is there an economic case to it?”

At Thistle Whistle, Waltermire has a lot of things going for him. He’s got community buy-in, and the local electric co-op is willing to buy the solar power. He even has scientists at the CSU extension school who want to do research on the crops under the panels.

His biggest obstacle is financial.

“Right now we're looking at in the neighborhood of two and a half million dollars for the whole project, which for a small farm is unfathomable,” he said.

He had hoped to take advantage of programs through Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, like its expanded Renewable Energy for America program, or REAP.

Pete Kolbenschlag with the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance has been working with Watermire on the funding (COFA helped Waltermire secure $200,000 from the Department of Energy). He says programs like REAP are being drastically reduced in budget talks in Congress, cutting off pathways for smaller farms like Thistle Whistle. That, he says, effectively prevents local communities from kick-starting their own solutions to big problems.

“We need to have stacked benefits that benefit rural communities and help provide renewable power to power our farms and to power America,” he said.

Kolbenschlag says Colorado’s congressional delegation has been enthusiastic about Waltermire’s project, but…

“Enthusiasm only goes so far.”

But Waltermire is determined to keep going to make this project a reality. For him, this is about more than just climate resiliency, though that is an attractive prospect. It’s about helping his community.

“I can generate some electricity to provide power to my farm and a wide variety of other farms and low-income farm workers and some farm-related businesses and nonprofits as well,” he said.

He’s waiting to see what happens with federal money, and is considering other avenues to secure funding. Ultimately, Waltermire hopes that other small family farms in the region can learn from his process, and share the benefits with their communities.

“We're … intending to make this replicable,” he said. “We want to make sure that other people can do something similar, and show them where the potential pitfalls are and what avenues they have to pursue something like this.”

The House of Representatives voted to approve its version of the federal budget bill in late May with a razor-thin margin. Senate Republicans have been working for the past month on their version of the massive spending package. Senate leadership has said they want a bill on the president’s desk by July 4th. The bill will decide the fate of many of the rural agricultural and renewable energy programs from which Waltermire and other farmers could benefit.

Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.