Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.

Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.

A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit

https://youtu.be/MaJvrGHJoAQ

I'll bite: the US dedicates about 5 billion bushels of corn a year to ethanol production [0], which is basically solar with extra steps. At a generous yield of 190 bushels/acre [1], this is 26 million acres dedicated to ethanol production (WRI puts it at 30m [2]).

Depending on who you ask, it would take somewhere between 2.5 [3] and 13.5 million acres [4] of solar to supply total US electricity demand, including storage and maintenance etc. We could double it to be safe and account for the reduction in ethanol production, and it would still all fit within the land currently used for corn ethanol. (btw this works out to a >10x increase in efficiency over ethanol.)

Of course I do agree that there's lots of less productive land (desert in the west, grazing land in the plains, and parking lots/rooftops everywhere) that should be used when available. But even in the midwest and east the land use is not a problem.

[0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1057...

[1] - https://www.ncga.com/stay-informed/media/the-corn-economy/ar...

[2] - https://www.wri.org/insights/increased-biofuel-production-im...

[3] - https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon...

[4] (PDF) - https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42463.pdf

But there are also millions of acres of corn being grown solely for the purpose of ethanol. A lot of that acreage could be better off utilized as solar farms

There are a lot of places where solar panels can increase yield for specific plants by providing a shade. They also can generate electricity to run electrical pumps for targeted irrigation saving a lot of water.

Agrivoltaics are a thing.