Solar Farms Are Bulldozing Arizona’s Ranchlands
We’ve all heard the pitch: solar power is the clean, sustainable future. But if you ask the ranching families of Joseph City, Arizona, the truth on the ground looks a lot more like devastation than “green energy.”
The Daily Caller reports,
“The solar industry is bulldozing over legacy farmland in Arizona, leaving the land barren as the sector pursues a so-called green solution to America’s energy crisis, several local ranchers told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Near Joseph City, Arizona, several ranchers have lost land to the solar industry, as companies secure leased farmland through offers far beyond what local ranchers could afford. Several local cow-calf ranchers told the DCNF that Obama– and Biden-era green energy initiatives have coincided with farmland being leveled and laid waste as solar companies lease the land and rake in generous tax credits.”
Solar companies use the tax credits from the Biden administration’s climate agenda to outbid ranchers. The results? Topsoil stripped bare. Native grasses destroyed. Dust storms are turning once-productive ranchland into barren “dust bowls.” Wildlife like antelopes are disappearing.
“Solar companies outbidding ranchers for their leased land include Invenergy, Ørsted and GoSolar, among others, according to the ranchers. GoSolar reportedly initially looked to develop projects around the retiring coal plant in 2016 and later strategically placed its solar projects in areas eligible for tax credits under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to North American Clean Energy.”
“Those ranchers who are within a few miles of that power plant are all kind of at risk,” Murph said. “At the end of the day, one of these facilities is going to be a parking lot covered with glass. It’s not going to have any type of vegetative life within the enclosure of it, within the lifetime of anybody who’s on the planet now.”
This is the hypocrisy of the green industry. The eco-left claims that clean energy sources, such as solar, are essential in fighting “climate change.” But in reality, they are destroying the very land and ecosystems rural families have protected for generations. It’s an industrial land grab dressed up as environmental stewardship.
Across the West, farmland and ranchland are under siege from taxpayer-subsidized wind and solar projects. USDA recently stepped in to block green subsidies from being used on prime farmland. But, for ranchers on leased state land, that protection doesn’t exist.
The takeaway is clear: America’s leaders need to reckon with the hypocrisy of subsidizing so-called “green” energy at the expense of family ranchers. Destroying the land in the name of saving the planet isn’t progress; it’s hypocrisy.
September 12, 2025