Are wind projects hurting farmers and rural communities?

What The Science Says:
Wind power offers farmers the opportunity to earn additional income from leasing out their land, while also growing crops or grazing livestock.

Climate Myth: Wind turbines are bad for farmers and rural communities
"The construction of industrial wind turbines affects aquifers, water flow, tile lines, soil erosion, soil compaction, air pressure and current. In essence, it is destruction of the best soil in the world, the farmland that the generations before us were proud of and left for us to feed the world with." (Save Piatt County)

Wind power offers farmers the opportunity to earn additional income from leasing out their land, while also growing crops or grazing livestock.¹ As a result, many farmers view wind turbines as beneficial for their farmland and the local community (Holstead et al. 2016, Mills 2018). And wind farms leave ample space for continued agricultural use: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that about 98% of the area in a typical wind farm is available for agriculture or other uses.² The New York Farm Bureau has stated that "[w]ind turbines are geared towards continued farming activities, because wind turbines are typically spaced one acre apart."³ Moreover, "[l]ivestock are unaffected by the presence of wind turbines and will graze right up to the base of wind turbines."⁴

The additional income from lease payments can help farmers keep their land in production¹ (also Holstead et al. 2016, Mills 2018). One 2017 University of Michigan study found that farmers with turbines tend to invest twice as much in their farms as farmers without wind turbines (Mills 2018). In addition, property tax payments from utility-scale wind projects provide revenue to rural communities for investing in schools, roads, and bridges.¹

Farmers with turbines also appear more confident that they will continue to own their farms at the time of death. In the University of Michigan study, survey results showed 80% of those with turbines had a plan of succession for their farm, while only 62% of those without a turbine had a succession plan (Mills 2018). The researchers concluded that this difference was likely due to added income the wind turbine provided.

Wind farms can likewise contribute to agricultural productivity. A 2019 study of Gobi Desert wind farms, from China’s Zhejiang University, found that turbine proximity made local vegetation "more metabolically efficient, with higher community coverage, density, and AGB [aboveground biomass]."(Xu et al. 2019) Recent research from Iowa State’s Agronomy department posits that related benefits to agricultural yields might stem from increased photosynthesis capacity as turbines draw additional carbon dioxide out of the soil.⁵ Further studies suggest that wind turbines may even increase crop yields on neighboring farms, by minimizing harmful temperature extremes in the surrounding area (Kaffine 2019). Moreover, while recognizing that wind farm installation can contribute to short-term soil degradation, a 2020 analysis from Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Ceará concluded that these installations produce impacts less intense than those "caused by agricultural use and rainfall in the same period" and that local farmers found it possible "to reconcile agriculture and wind power generation without major repercussions on rural lots."(Sobrinho Junior et al. 2020)

[4] see [3] (“Wind turbines are sturdy enough to withstand cattle using them as rubbing posts or for shade.”)

This rebuttal is based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Skeptical Science sincerely appreciates Sabin Center's generosity in collaborating with us to make this information available as widely as possible.