China’s solar farms are crowding out much-needed crops

With demand for renewable energy surging, solar projects have become so lucrative — especially when government subsidies are factored in — that some companies, local officials and farmers are trying to cash in by repurposing areas once zoned for farming, defying Beijing’s dictate that arable land be developed.

The issue gained nationwide attention after state broadcaster China Central Television aired a report on it earlier this year.

In rural Muzi in Hubei Province, a major grain-producing region, CCTV surveillance found that several hundred acres that were once designated as “high-quality farmland” had been covered in solar panels, even as local authorities announced plans in 2019 to build irrigation canals, drainage and roads to boost crop yields and improve connectivity.

While the solar sector deserves support, “no matter how good the industry is, it should not violate state laws and oppose central government policies,” CCTV warns. “Protecting agricultural land is an important issue related to national security strategy.”

Campaigns collide

The report and others like it have shown that Xi’s priorities can sometimes clash with practical needs.

Food security is top of mind for Chinese leaders, given the country’s limited water and arable land. Previous food shortages, including the Great Famine of 1959-61, have threatened stability, while climate change is raising concerns about new threats to agriculture, and drought is hitting parts of the country this year. Despite some gains in food production in recent years, it hasn’t been enough to keep up with rising demand.

Xi said officials must “resolutely defend the red line” of China’s arable land, some 300 million acres nationwide, to ensure the country does not become more dependent on imports, including soybeans from the United States and other countries.

The rate at which farmland has been lost due to urbanization, illegal encroachment and other factors has accelerated in recent decades, according to state media. The government’s latest land survey found that China lost more than 18 million acres of farmland in the 10 years to the end of 2019, reducing the total to about 316 million acres.

“I said as early as 2013 that we must protect farmland just as we protect giant pandas,” Xi said in 2020.

But Xi has also urged local officials to promote renewable energy as part of China’s goals to curb carbon emissions and reduce reliance on imported oil and coal. Government support includes subsidies, cheap loans and tax incentives for solar and wind companies, from small startups to large publicly traded companies and state-owned enterprises.

While there is no official figure for the amount of land occupied by solar farms, government data shows that nearly 217 million kilowatts of new solar capacity was added last year, a 55% increase compared to 2022.

China accounted for more than half of global solar capacity growth in 2023, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie. Analysts estimate that China will need to increase its solar power capacity by about 14 times its 2020 level to meet Xi’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2060.

In other countries, including the U.S., solar installations also occupy farmland — a problem that has existed for many years.

According to a recent study by Chinese scientists, in 2018, food production losses due to the installation of solar power plants on arable land worldwide amounted to enough to feed 4.3 million people for a year, with a third of these losses attributable to China’s solar energy expansion.

“As solar energy expands, the loss of arable land will become a pressing problem that requires urgent attention,” another group of researchers warned in a November commentary published in the journal Nature Geoscience. “Countries grappling with renewable energy development and facing spatial imbalances like China need to be aware of the potential conflicts between energy and land.”

Competition for land

While solar developers have less trouble with agriculture in western China, where there is more open space that is unsuitable for farming due to low rainfall, their expansion into eastern China puts them in more direct competition with agriculture.

“There is a lot of money to be made in renewables, whereas agriculture is a low-value, low-profit business,” said Cosimo Ries, a renewables analyst at consulting firm Trivium China.

Authorities have tried to balance the competing demands by promoting nongguang hubu, or “farming and solar complementing each other.” The idea is to encourage the creation of “agrivoltaic” facilities, in which solar panels are installed in a way that allows land to continue to be used for farming or grazing.

According to a Chinese academic study, in 2019, grid-connected dual-use agrivoltaic projects accounted for about 7% of China’s PV capacity.

The idea has also caught on in parts of Europe and the US, including California. But experts say the presence of solar panels limits what can be grown, with crops like lettuce and broccoli doing better than grains that require a lot of sunlight.

In practice, experts say, some Chinese solar developers pay little attention to crops. Local governments, burdened with heavy debts amid a nationwide real estate crisis, often look the other way as long as solar developers bring in investment, tax revenues and jobs.

“They are willing to sell and lease land for immediate and temporary benefits,” Zhu Qizhen, a professor at China Agricultural University, told state media.

Government repression

While Beijing continues to subsidize solar projects, it is fining companies and officials it says are exploiting government support at the expense of agriculture.

Beijing issued a directive last year that solar projects should not be built on farmland, grasslands or protected forest areas, prompting at least 10 regional governments to release new or updated regulations on land use for solar energy. The directive follows actions in 2021 in which several provinces halted new solar projects pending reviews to assess whether they were not inappropriately encroaching on arable land.

In October, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources reprimanded authorities in the northern county of Huanglong for failing to prevent a renewable energy company from illegally installing solar panels on farmland. Authorities in the southern province of Guizhou in January ordered a local company to pay a fine of nearly $100,000 for illegally building a solar power plant on shared farmland.

In Hubei, CCTV broadcast aerial footage of vast arrays of solar panels covering acres of land in Muzi commune that residents said was previously used for rice farming. Residents said they had been persuaded to lease the land to a Hong Kong-listed solar farm for an agrivoltaic project, but the operator of the facility made only superficial attempts to grow rice — which is not suitable for shade farming — and yielded significantly lower yields than before.

Local farmers told CCTV that agricultural yields in the region have fallen by about 80%.

When contacted by CCTV, an Agrivoltaic employee said there was no protected farmland nearby, a claim denied by local residents and signage indicating the area was designated as “high-quality” farmland for agriculture. The solar company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CCTV found similar problems elsewhere in Hubei, including in Huaxi commune, where large fields of solar panels have been installed on farmland. A local land resources official told CCTV that authorities had changed the land use to ordinary and compensated by allocating other plots for food production.

Write to Chun Han Wong at [email protected]