On the Changala family farm in Tulare County, California, a dirt road and a barbed-wire fence separate two very different ways of using the same land. On one side, wheat grows with little irrigation. On the other, rows of solar panels turn sunlight into electricity for thousands of Southern California homes. For Alan Changala, the choice was not sentimental. The solar lease paid about ten times what the dry-farmed wheat could earn. Changala leased 300 acres of his father’s 1,400-acre farm to solar developers at $1,000 per acre, while the wheat operation generated roughly $100 per acre annually, reported The Sacramento Bee. The deal, negotiated at the family kitchen table in 2014, became part of a wider shift across California’s San Joaquin Valley, where farmers facing water shortages and rising costs are looking to solar as a way to keep their businesses viable.
The Changala farm had water available from wells and an irrigation canal, but using it was expensive. Instead, Alan Changala said nearly the entire property was dry-farmed, relying on rainfall rather than irrigation. That approach allowed wheat to be planted on about half the farm every other year, using a rotation system that preserved soil moisture. The economics were modest. Changala told The Sacramento Bee that the wheat business worked out to an annual income of about $100 per acre. In a region where water has become both scarce and costly, that limited return made it difficult to justify expanding irrigation or relying entirely on traditional crops. When solar developers began showing interest in the property, Changala saw an opportunity rather than a betrayal of his farming roots. He described himself as “a farmer, through and through,” but acknowledged that the lease was simply more profitable than continuing to farm every acre.
The lease covered 300 acres and paid $1,000 per acre, giving the family an income roughly ten times higher than the wheat operation. Changala said the arrangement did not take much persuasion, even though he negotiated carefully. Hal Dittmer of Sacramento renewable-energy developer Wellhead Electric personally negotiated the deal with the Changala family in 2014, as per the report. Construction took place in 2015 and 2016. The completed project, technically made up of two facilities called Nicolis and Tropico, has a generating capacity of 34 megawatts and produces enough electricity to power about 9,000 homes in Southern California Edison’s service area. But Changala’s father, Si Changala, was less comfortable with the change. Still, he accepted the reality of the decision, saying farmers had to “go with the times.”
The shift toward solar is closely tied to California’s water crisis. The state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, known as SGMA, requires farmers to gradually reduce groundwater pumping in areas where aquifers have been depleted by decades of overuse. In the San Joaquin Valley, that could mean retiring large amounts of farmland over the next two decades. The Public Policy Institute of California predicted that at least 535,000 acres of Valley farmland could be permanently retired over 20 years as farmers cut water use. The institute also estimated that about 50,000 of those idled acres could be converted to solar farms. For farmers like Changala, solar offers a way to earn steady income from land that may no longer be practical to farm. He was even negotiating to lease another 400 acres for a second solar facility, a move that would further reduce the footprint of the family’s wheat operation.
The financial benefits for individual landowners are clear, but the broader economic effects are more complicated. Solar farms create substantial employment during construction, but once the panels are operating, they require relatively few permanent workers. On the Changala property, workers arrived in school buses during installation, but the completed site now depends mainly on occasional maintenance visits and remote operations based in Southern California. Local officials worry that this lack of permanent employment weakens the economic base of rural communities. In Kern County, where thousands of acres have already been converted to solar, planning director Lorelei Oviatt said land removed from farming “doesn’t pay for libraries,” pointing to the county’s need for jobs, services and quality of life for its 900,000 residents. There are also concerns about tax revenue. California allowed solar project owners to avoid property taxes on the value of installed panels, meaning many facilities were taxed as though the land remained agricultural. Critics said the break, which was set to run until 2025, shifted costs away from a mature industry and onto counties.
California still needs solar power. Utilities in the state received one-third of their electricity from renewable sources at the time, and state law required that share to rise to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045. The San Joaquin Valley, with its abundant sunlight and large tracts of land, could play a major role in meeting those targets. But converting farmland to solar is not a simple solution. Community leaders worry about unplanned patches of retired land, dust, weeds and air-quality problems. Some farm groups are working with environmental organisations to create conservation easements that would pay farmers to restore land as wildlife habitat rather than leave it idle or cover it with panels. For the Changala family, however, the decision came down to survival. Wheat still grows on one side of the fence, but solar panels now provide a far stronger financial foundation on the other. As Alan Changala put it, “We’re still farming the sun.”
