© 2025 Andrew Hartnett/Evergreen Action. Photos courtesy of Scott Laeser/Plowshare & Prairie.
Listen to the highlights of this interview above or keep reading.
In growing pockets of rural America, where the landscape is a patchwork of generations-old farms and tight-knit communities, a new kind of crop is emerging.
It's a crop of wind turbines and solar panels, one that’s increasingly becoming a savvy supplement to landowners’ yields. It’s an opportunity to harvest a new kind of energy—the power of financial stability and community investment.
Here, leasing underperforming land for renewable energy projects is providing farmers with a stable income and generating tax revenue that’s reinvested directly in the community, supporting better schools and public services.
But this opportunity remains little-known and sometimes even misunderstood.
“We need to do a better job telling the story of the benefits that rural communities are accruing as a consequence of wind and solar projects and the types of investments that they're able to make,” according to Wisconsinite and farmer Scott Laeser.
I had the opportunity to speak with Scott and hear some of these stories—what he calls a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for rural America and for farmers.”
Scott is in the midst of wrapping up the 13th season of his and his wife’s farm, Plowshares & Prairie, located in the small town of Argyle, about an hour outside of Madison. They grow over 35 types of organic vegetables, everything from spinach and lettuce in the spring to carrots, beets, and broccoli in the early fall.
Scott Laeser (top) and organic vegetables grown on Plowshares & Prairie Farm (bottom). Photos courtesy of Scott Laeser/Plowshares & Prairie
He knows many farmers who are leasing their land for renewables and has family members who are part of a wind project in Wisconsin. He hopes that someday soon he'll also get the opportunity to lease his land for renewables.
That’s because “being part of a renewable energy project is life-changing,” whether for a farm family that participates in a wind or solar project on their private land, or a community that is a partner in a project and enjoys the additional tax revenue over a 20-year, 30-year, or more period. "It's allowing them to keep farming other parts of their farm," he affirms, "and it's allowing communities to invest in roads and snowplows and trash collection and schools and teachers and all of these sorts of community resources that rural communities are in dire need of."
You don’t have to look further than the neighboring township, Seymour, to see what Scott means. Just a 15-minute drive from Plowshares & Prairie, the roads literally change along what might feel like an invisible line. A decade ago, the town took up a wind project lease, which invests revenue in local infrastructure. Scott’s neighbor was one of the farmers who participated in the project, and now, that township boasts some of the best roads in the county.
The Wisconsin Quilt Block Wind Farm located in Lafayette County’s Seymour Township (Google Maps)
In another community, a similar project funded a weekly trash collection service, freeing residents from the weekly chore of hauling their garbage to the town dump, located miles away and open only a few hours a week. Seemingly overnight, residents were able to do what many of us in big cities take for granted: have trash picked up from the bottom of their driveways.
Trash collection. Better roads. Well-funded schools. All services that rural communities desperately need and are too often unfairly denied.
Scott describes these upgrades as just the tip of the iceberg (lettuce). In Wisconsin, utility aid payments, amounting to $5,000 per megawatt, are being added to the general county’s coffers and directed where they’re needed most.
In practice, this means a 150 MW solar project would generate $750,000 in annual payments, shared between the hosting town and country. Over 30 years, that’s an additional $22.5 million in revenue that can support library systems, new school infrastructure, pave roads, buy critical equipment, support emergency service investments, and more.
“That’s game-changing,” Scott says, but because many of these benefits are buried in county budget line items, many people don’t know about them.
So, what's holding people back from embracing this opportunity? Scott acknowledges the valid concerns rural communities have, but he also points to a powerful wave of misinformation that fills the void when accurate information is lacking.
A central piece of misinformation that Scott challenges as a vegetable farmer is around the impact on food supply. He asserts solar energy has no impact on limiting the amount of food farmers can deliver to families, and in fact, it’s an efficient way to maximize high-yield land and convert less productive plots into revenue.
For others, the shift to renewables raises fears that farmlands will lose their traditional appearance and feel. Scott thinks many of these concerns can be addressed by bringing communities in as true partners from the very beginning and being thoughtful about design.
He acknowledges that people live in rural areas for the unique character and aesthetic of the land. "We need to be more mindful of that,” and he believes that accommodating these concerns can ultimately strengthen the community's character in the long term by providing economic security.
He’s especially excited about the potential of agrivoltaics, a practice that pairs solar energy with agriculture. There are already over 600 projects across the country, where farmers are grazing sheep under solar panels and expanding native and pollinator habitat. It offers a new source of income for farmers while maintaining an agricultural feel for the land. "Sheep are where it's at, and cattle are coming," he says with a smile.
Scenes from Plowshares & Prairie farm through the seasons. Photos courtesy of Scott Laeser/Plowshare & Prairie.
As Scott and I spoke, he often broke out into a large grin, commenting on how his office window looked out onto his field of winter squash. He quickly listed off vegetables he’d need to pick after our conversation, before the imminent first frost. He gushed about his favorite crop (“easy, garlic!”), his go-to dinner recipe at this time of year (drool-worthy pizza featuring his farm’s own delicata squash, caramelized onions, homemade tomato sauce, and cheese—this is dairy country, after all!), and what keeps him in this work (“building a sense of community and delivering real food directly to people”).
“What I love about farming is the very practical, hands-on nature of the work, the day-to-day rhythms, and that it's always something different,” he says with pride. “The gratification of growing an amazing-tasting tomato or a huge winter squash. Folks who have been CSA members for more than 10 years. Kids who have grown up on our vegetables. It's a very rewarding enterprise, and it allows us to build a sense of community to deliver real food directly to people.”
For Scott, renewable energy leasing doesn’t carry the specter of replacing treasured lands with endless miles of solar or wind farms. It’s about protecting what he loves most about farming—a sense of community.
The real task ahead is to change the conversation, to move past misinformation and toward a model of true partnership. Developers and local organizations must work alongside farmers, not just with them, to ensure that every project is a genuine investment in the community's character, its schools, and its roads.
If successful, renewable leasing won't be an either/or choice between tradition and progress; it's about a future where both can thrive.
Many rural landowners are turning to leasing their land for clean energy infrastructure, which helps keep their operations profitable and their land family-owned. But, local bans, restrictive zoning ordinances, and permitting delays have prevented many clean energy projects from moving forward.
We need clear, transparent siting and permitting reforms that honor community input while still supporting landowners' rights. Sign our petition if you agree.
Medhini is the writing/editing digital lead for Evergreen. Through powerful storytelling, she hopes to help move the needle on climate policy and contribute to our collective fight for a livable planet.
