By Kari Lydersen for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Energy News Network-Public News Service Collaboration
When farmer Trent Gerlach found out a solar farm would be built on the land he had long worked in northwestern Illinois, he was disappointed.
"As a farmer, seeing that land taken out of production is difficult, when you farmed it for many years, you've been stewards to that land, fertilized that land, taken care of it as if it was your own," he said.
Gerlach's family had been raising corn, soybeans and livestock since 1968, and like many farmers, they leased farmland in addition to working their own land. And when the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.
"The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal," he said.
But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.
Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.
"We don't own the land, we don't get a say - that's landowners' rights, and I'm very pro that," Gerlach recounted. "In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying, 'that's how we've always done it so that's what we're going to do.' Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you're for or against it, it's coming, it's what's happening. As an agriculture producer, we're going to adapt with it."
A promising arrangement
Researchers around the country are exploring agrivoltaics, or co-locating solar generation with agriculture in a mutually beneficial way. Projects range from growing tomatoes in California to wild blueberries in Maine, with varying levels of success.
Acciona regional manager Kyle Charpie said that sheep grazing appears an especially promising form of agrivoltaics, and one that the company is likely to continue exploring globally. Solar operators need to keep vegetation controlled, and sheep are a more effective and ecological way to do it than mechanized mowing. Acciona has long had a sheep agrivoltaic operation in Portugal, Charpie noted, and two projects in Texas are underway.
"It's incredibly cost-effective - sheep don't break down like a tractor; if a tractor blows a belt, you've lost a whole day of cutting," he said. "These grasses grow wickedly fast, it's that constant presence of the sheep that's been super super effective. It aligns with our sustainability goals."
"It's tough to say we're the greatest renewable company in the world [if] we have a bunch of tractors running up and down our fields belching out CO2," he continued.
Another advantage, Charpie said, is that at the end of the solar array's lifespan, the land beneath it will be restored and refreshed.
"We have all these sheep now who will spend 30-plus years breathing, living, using their hooves to churn up ground, even dying; it's the circle of life," he said. "When these farms get turned back to the families, that soil condition will be wonderful."
'He saw an opportunity here'
Gerlach's family had about 50 ewes when the idea for grazing around the solar panels struck. He "hounded" Acciona, in Charpie's words, to bring an agrivoltaic deal to fruition.
"He saw an opportunity here, and he has been his own best advocate, banging down the door, checking how close are we, when will we get our sheep here," Charpie said.
Gerlach ultimately bought about 500 sheep of two types: Dorper and Katahdin, small breeds that can fit easily under solar panels.
"The panels create lots of shade - during the heat of the day, they'll all be underneath the panels for shade," Gerlach said. "In early mornings, late evenings they're out grazing aggressively. They don't bother the panels one bit."
Gerlach said his family "used to raise livestock like everybody did back in the day," and his farm has won awards for its cattle, but raising livestock has become less profitable in recent years. Agrivoltaics offer an opportunity to delve back into raising sheep, something Gerlach loves. A commercial sheep operation would only be possible with the payments for vegetation management, he said.
"Raising sheep in the United States is challenging because the market for sheep is not very high," he said. There's not much of a domestic wool market, and "the meat side of sheep and lamb never really caught on in the U.S. - we're a beef, pork, poultry-consuming country."
Gerlach sells the bulk of his lambs around the Easter season, and largely for kosher and halal consumption. Since that market is so limited, the ewes largely earn their keep being paid to graze.
"We love providing stewardship to the animals. That's what U.S. agriculture was built on hundreds of years ago," Gerlach said. "It marries really well with our crop production" on nearby land. "In agriculture you need diversification. By bringing sheep and livestock production in, we can afford to hire more full-time employees."
Sheep are the livestock best suited to agrivoltaics, stakeholders agree.
"You can't use cattle because they're too large, they would rub on the panels and break them," Gerlach said. "You can't use goats because goats would climb on the panels, and they're natural chewers, they would chew on the wires."
The High Point solar array is divided up into separate plots with fences, "like perfect little pens for the sheep," added Charpie.
In a bigger uninterrupted plot, a farmer would likely need to move water sources for sheep strategically around the area to make sure the animals cover the entire plot. Gerlach's flock only grazes about a fifth of the Acciona solar array. He's hoping to expand, though feeding and sheltering sheep during the winter when they can't graze is costly.
"I've got three young kids. Hopefully we raise them in agriculture. It's such a good practice for our young people to learn responsibility and stewardship," Gerlach said.
"[The animals] come first, they get fed and watered and taken care of before us. Sometimes agriculture gets portrayed in a poor light, especially larger production agriculture. I try to really push that that's not everybody. Talk to a local farmer, a local person - you generally see that we're stewards of the land, we want healthy ground and livestock. That can marry in fine with clean energy."
Kari Lydersen wrote this article for Energy News Network.
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Experts agree climate-smart agriculture will be critical in the fight against climate change. But with a divided Congress and no update to the Farm Bill since 2018, those who support New Mexico farmers are worried.
Sayrah Namaste, program co-director for the American Friends Service Committee, regularly meets with farmers who provide food to local schools. She said many tell her their mitigation efforts are outpaced and unlike the old days, they cannot ask experienced farmers for advice about such things as the best date to plant crops or when to expect the first frost.
"It's accelerating so fast that it's hard to even keep up with what they need to do," Namaste pointed out. "You know, it used to be you had guideposts, you had dates and it's not anymore. The climate is so chaotic that it's very hard to know, and that's just not happened for generations of farmers."
Congress was scheduled to update the 2018 Farm Bill in 2023, but a failure to agree on what's included delayed it to 2024 and now, again until next September. In addition to crop insurance, farm subsidies and U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs, the enormous farm bill includes the federal food stamp program, animal health, disaster preparedness and more.
Namaste noted to cope with climate change, New Mexico farmers plant a diversity of crops and sequence them to make sure they have at least one successful crop if others fail. She added the American Friends Service Committee will encourage lawmakers to support small-scale sustainable farms to give those who grow food a fighting chance.
"Record-breaking heat for weeks, or the largest wildlife in New Mexico history, or a drought that's the biggest in a century," Namaste outlined. "Those are really hard odds for farmers to be up against."
In 2022, New Mexico experienced its largest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history. Climate scientists recently confirmed 2024 was the hottest year on record, with damages from U.S. weather disasters estimated at more than $1 billion.
Disclosure: The American Friends Service Committee Southwest contributes to our fund for reporting. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
The revolving door isn’t just something you get stuck in while attempting to enter a hotel. It’s also a political phenomenon that creates all sorts of conflicts of interest throughout the American government. While not illegal, the revolving door is certainly unsavory, and even has deep impacts on the food we eat.
“Revolving door” refers to a cycle in which individuals alternate between working in the private sector and serving in the government as regulators of that sector; in this context, “regulator” can mean an employee of a regulatory agency, a lawmaker or any public official who plays some role in regulatory policy.
“Whether you are moving from the public sector to industry, or vice versa, there are incentives to look after your future self,” Silvia Secchi, professor and researcher at the University of Iowa’s Public Policy Center, tells Sentient. “You could be more lenient on the private sector in the way you implement regulations, or the way you assess fines in your regulatory capacity, because you think that’s going to help you in the future.”
The revolving door is usually a bidirectional, ongoing process, but it can also simply be a one-time switch from one sector to another.
Why Is the Revolving Door a Problem?
The revolving door gives industries an outsized, and sometimes even dominant, role in shaping the laws and regulations to which they are subject. In the worst-case scenarios, it can lead to something called regulatory capture — when an industry succeeds in fully co-opting the agency that regulates it.
Somebody who worked as a regulator has detailed insider knowledge of how the regulatory process works, loopholes and all. This knowledge is very useful for businesses seeking to avoid regulation, which gives heavily regulated industries a strong incentive to hire former regulators.
Meanwhile, the revolving door incentivizes lawmakers and regulators to implement industry-friendly policies while in government, as this can lead to well-paid jobs in those same industries after leaving government. These same folks might also be hesitant to enact regulations that would significantly disturb those industries, lest they jeopardize their employment prospects after leaving government.
“Basically, you remain friendly to industry,” Secchi says of those who move through the revolving door. “Not necessarily to one specific entity in the industry, but to industry as a whole. Which means that you remain marketable once you leave the administration, or once you leave government writ large.”
Corruption From the Revolving Door Can Be Hard to Trace
In one sense, the revolving door process unfolds transparently; hirings are usually a matter of public record, and are often announced eagerly in press releases. Even when they’re not, it’s easy enough to look at an official’s LinkedIn page and trace their employment history.
In another sense, though, the process is extremely opaque. Hirings may be public record, but the conversations and decisionmaking that results from those hirings are not. They take place behind closed doors, and usually stay that way; regulators generally don’t come out and say, “I’ve implemented weaker chemical regulations than I otherwise would have, because I want to get hired by a chemicals company after I leave government.”
As a result, it can be difficult to trace a precise path of causation from a revolving door hire to a specific public policy. But there are plenty of revolving door situations that, if nothing else, look mighty suspicious.
Revolving Door Case Study #1: School Lunches
Every five years, the USDA and HHS jointly publish updates to the Dietary Guidelines For Americans (DGA), a lengthy document of nutritional recommendations that influences wide swaths of public food policy. One such policy is the national school lunches program; by law, menu offerings in school lunches must adhere to the DGA’s recommendations.
In 2015, when it was time for the DGA to be updated, the committee that drafts the document recommended that the next version take planetary health, as well as personal health, into consideration. This would have been a radical change, and because plant-based foods are almost uniformly better for the environment than animal-based ones, it would almost certainly have resulted in plants comprising a much larger portion of school lunches than they do now.
But before the next version of the DGA could be published, Congress passed an appropriations bill stating that the DGA’s recommendations must be “solely nutritional and dietary in nature.” This effectively forbade the USDA and HHS from taking environmental factors into concern when drafting the new DGA, and so they didn’t.
Why did Congress squash the environmentally focused DGA? It’s impossible to know for certain, but it’s also impossible to ignore who was passing through the revolving door as this whole episode was playing out.
In the beginning of 2015, Sen. Pat Roberts hired a load of new staffers to run the Senate Agriculture Committee, which he headed. This committee would go on to draft the appropriations bill that restrained the DGA — and Roberts stacked it with food industry lobbyists.
As chief of staff, Roberts hired Joel Leftwich, a senior lobbyist for PepsiCo who’s passed through the revolving door many, many times. The new head of livestock and food safety issues on the committee was Chelsie Keys, a lobbyist for the National Pork Producers Council. Other new committee staffers included Julian Baer, a longtime food industry lobbyist, and Matt Erickson, formerly a lawyer for the American Farm Bureau.
If the DGA had been updated to include environmental concerns, it would have hurt the bottom lines of both PepsiCo, which has been sued for pollution by multiple state and local governments, and the pork industry, which has a strong presence in school lunches.
We’ll probably never know for certain if the Senate staffers who used to work for Pepsi and Big Pork played a role in killing a policy that would have hurt Pepsi and Big Pork. But they were certainly in a position to do so, and had an incentive to as well. They had, as Sherlock Holmes might put it, both motive and opportunity.
Revolving Door Case Study #2: Tom Vilsack
A classic case of a “revolver,” as the nonprofit information site Open Secrets likes to refer to them, is outgoing USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack served two terms as Iowa governor, briefly worked as a lobbyist, and was then appointed by President Obama to head the USDA. After eight years as Secretary of Agriculture, Vilsack left government to work for the dairy industry, becoming vice president of Dairy Management, Inc (DMI) and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, one of DMI’s subsidiaries.
These are just two of many interrelated trade organizations that exist to bolster the U.S. dairy industry and promote the interests of American dairy farmers. In his dual positions as vice president and CEO, Vilsack earned a salary of nearly $1 million, according to public records — more than four times what he made as a public official.
In 2021, Vilsack returned to the public sector, serving as Secretary of Agriculture under President Biden.
What sorts of policies were impacted by Vilsack’s movement through the revolving door? Secchi tells Sentient that it’s not a matter of “a specific policy that will favor one specific industry,” but rather, the fact that Vilsack “has always been incredibly friendly to Big Ag, of which Big Dairy is a manifestation.”
But Secchi does point out that, when the time came for the USDA to distribute Inflation Reduction Act funds to “climate-smart” initiatives, Vilsack opted to send much of the money to powerful, well-established organizations in the agriculture sector.
“He gave money to Tyson, he gave money to the National Pork Board, he gave money to Land O’ Lakes,” Secchi says. “If you look at the beneficiaries of that money, they are largely conventional, large scale entities.”
So, after making millions working for Big Ag in the private sector, Vilsack returned to the federal government and gave millions to Big Ag. He did so under the auspices of the USDA’s climate-smart program; the fact that beef, pork and butter production are nowhere near “climate-smart” is the icing on the cake.
Revolving Door Case Study #3: Pesticide Regulation at the EPA
The EPA’s pesticide division offers another helpful, if discouraging, example of the revolving door at work.
Jim Jones (no relationship to the cult leader) is a former pesticide regulator. He worked at the EPA for 20 years in a number of capacities, including Director of the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) and Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP).
During his tenure, a chemical company called Vive Crop Protection requested EPA approval for an insecticide containing bifenthrin, a Class C carcinogen. Normally, such approval would require extensive inhalation testing; however, the OPP waived that requirement, according to a report in the Intercept, and approved the insecticide.
After leaving the EPA, Jones joined the board of directors at Vive Crop Protection. In 2017, he became executive vice president of the Household and Commercial Products Association; while there, he boasted of the organization’s “strong and mutually respectful relationship with the EPA [which] continues to give members direct access to officials at every pertinent level of the agency,” according to the Intercept.
In 2023, Jones returned to the public sector to serve as Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at the FDA, where he remains to this day.
Jones is not an anomaly. Since 1974, the OPP has had nine directors; two went into retirement immediately after departing the EPA, but the other seven all went on to work for the pesticide industry after leaving their positions as regulators. Other EPA officials have gone on to work for Monsanto, Scotts Miracle-Gro and DuPont.
As of 2019, 72 pesticides that had been banned in the European Union were still legal in America.
The Revolving Door Leads to Consolidation and Deregulation
The revolving door does more than just influence individual policies here and there, Secchi says. It’s also created a culture in government in which regulators are encouraged not to crack down too hard on the industries they’re regulating.
“It’s not necessarily a direct, simple connection between one individual, one industry and one job,” Secchi tells Sentient. “It’s more like a whole culture of, you know, patting ourselves on the back, and not enacting policies that may question the primacy and the overall approach of conventional agriculture.”
The revolving door also intersects with a trend in the agriculture industry known as consolidation. This is when larger producers and conglomerates buy smaller companies or put them out of business en masse, resulting in less competition, fewer farms, and more power and money in the hands of the richest agricultural producers.
“In the 1950s, there was still a sizable population that was engaged in agriculture,” Secchi explains. “The number of farms was much larger, the number of farmers was much larger. But now there are very, very few farmers.”
Consolidation both reduces the total number of people working in agriculture and ensures that the largest agribusinesses increasingly dominate the sector. As a result, when people like Vilsack implement policies that benefit “the agriculture sector,” they’re really implementing policies that benefit a tiny minority of wealthy Americans.
“[Agriculture policy] has become more and more separated from the realities of the majority of American people, and the issues that are relevant to American people,” Secchi says. “And so I would say it’s become a much bigger problem, because the rent-seeking industry has become much more potent, and much less representative of social values and interests.”
The Bottom Line
There’s no clear solution to the revolving door problem. Sure, lawmakers could pass laws to crack down on it — but lawmakers are among those who benefit from revolving door politics, so why would they? It’s not a surprise that legislative efforts to close the revolving door have all gone absolutely nowhere.
“I think it’s a real problem for this country that there is this bipartisan support for an obviously rent-seeking minority, very wealthy and very well connected, and through things like the revolving door door process, very capable of influencing the public decision making process,” Secchi says. “Big Ag now represents the interests of a very, very, very small minority of people, and causes a lot of problems for the rest of us.”
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
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