Getting Corny: Here’s Why Losing Farmland to Solar Might Not Be as Big of a Problem As We Think

Today, we're getting corny with you.

There's a lot of talk about all the agricultural land that's going to be converted into solar within the next 5, 10, 15 + years. The US Department of Energy has estimated that the country will need about 10 million acres of solar panels by 2050 to meet our net zero carbon emissions goals.

I've written about this before - the concern that we're losing valuable farmland that needs to be here to feed our people. I entirely agree with that.

The dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about, however, is that so much of our agricultural land in the United States doesn't go to food production at all - nor does that final crop that's produced even stay in the United States.

Where Is All the Corn We’re Growing…Going?

Around 90 million acres of corn is grown each year in the United States. Of that, between 7 and 20% is exported. Some is ground into animal feed and some (much) is distilled into biofuel (ethanol).

How much corn actually ends up on our table, in the form of "actual" corn, sweeteners, oils, starches, and beverages?

Only about 10% of what remains in the country.

So it wouldn't be a huge leap to say that converting 10 million acres of corn into solar wouldn't impact food prices here much - if at all.

What it would impact, however, is how our government deals with energy subsidies.

Solar is often criticized as being a heavily-subsidized industry, more so than oil and gas. That is true.

About 46% of the total federal energy subsidies are spent on renewables, including solar. However, we need to read between the lines here.

One: that 46% is on ALL renewables, not just solar, but also including things like wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric. That means that the lion's share still goes toward NON-renewables.

Further, it could be argued that many of the subsidies for renewables are likely because this is a fledgling area - one that's leaning a bit more heavily on research and development than industries that have already been around for 50+ years. It's new, and there naturally needs to be more R&D funding funneled into it as a result. The argument that much of the solar industry is privately held doesn't really hold water, since this is true across the entire energy sector.

There's also a sneaky detail hidden in how these subsidies are disbursed. Even though the federal government might be subsidizing renewable energy at a rate of about $15.6 billion per year (the rate for 2022), it's subsidizing corn, too.

The federal government spends around $30 billion a year on subsidies for farm businesses and agriculture. $2.2 billion of this goes to corn.

A Brief Overview of Corn Subsidies

Why is corn so heavily subsidized? There's a deep history of agricultural subsidies in this country, with most modern subsidies originating during the Great Depression, when the government (nobly) tried to protect the American people through social spending.

The good: subsidies theoretically make it possible for low-income farmers to survive and raise unreasonably low returns to farm investments. Some say they play a part in ensuring national food security and that, without corn subsidies, in particular, the supply of food in the US would be endangered.

However, it bears mentioning that this is a cost that the taxbase must bear, and the benefits of subsidies rarely trickle down as well as they should. Farm subsidies can distort planting decisions, inflate land values, and induce overproduction. The largest farms that own the most amount of land tend to be the ones that benefit most from these subsidies. Nearly 90% of all agricultural sales come from 12% of farms. 9% of farms receive ⅔ of all subsidies.

On average, subsidies represent less than 5% of gross cash income for small farms. Plain speak? They're really not doing what they're meant to do, and certainly not what the average American consumer assumes they're doing - helping to support small American farms.

To quote Kevin D. Walker in his book, 'The Grand Food Bargain…and the Mindless Drive for More,' (a wonderful book I recommend everyone should read), when things don't go the way they should, "consumers end up paying twice: once through higher store prices if widespread losses caused supplies to fall, and again through higher taxes to subsidize the insurance."

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into vehicle fuel each year - guaranteeing demand at a time when corn prices were low and the market was oversaturated. Ethanol presented a new market for farmers.

What Does the Future Hold?

Today, the United States is the world's top ethanol producer, at nearly 60% of global production. So here's the question: how many dollars out of the corn subsidies we fund, as taxpayers, are going to produce corn for ethanol that will be sent to other countries?

Quoting Walker again: "Like the handful of banks who ruled Wall Street and intimidated Washington, corn rule(s) over the nation's land, water, and fossil energy. Corn was agriculture's version of 'too big to fail'.The promise of moving the country toward energy independence was never sincere. Politicians were no more committed to it than Bernie Madoff was to looking after his clients."

So, yes. We might lose some cornfields in our conversion to solar. But again, that's not corn that's going in our bellies - it's corn that's going in our cars. 40% of domestic corn production goes to ethanol production. And 60% of that (if not more) isn't even staying in our country.

As I've said before, exports are great. But we need energy here, too. Why not opt for a more "local" solution?