Farm vs. solar vs. CRP
Farm It, Lease It for Solar, or Put It in CRP?
For landowners weighing a solar-lease offer who want farming, solar, and CRP compared on five-year income, capital, reversibility, and risk, before they sign.
The AgriTerra farm vs. solar vs. CRP calculator is a free tool that puts three choices for a parcel side by side (keep farming it, lease it for solar, or enroll it in CRP) scored on five-year income, capital required, reversibility, and headline risk. It is built for landowners who’ve received a solar-lease offer and want to weigh it honestly against the alternatives, using USDA farm-income data and NREL solar modeling keyed to their parcel.
How the comparison works
- Choose your parcel. Search or pin the parcel; Scout measures it and pulls its soil, cash-rent, crop, and solar data.
- Three options are modeled. Farming (revenue minus USDA ERS costs, or the county cash rent), a solar lease (a modeled income band from NREL PVWatts), and CRP (shown as its enrollment status, with no rate, while new CRP enrollment is paused).
- Read the side-by-side summary. Each option shows five-year income, the capital it requires of you, how reversible it is, and its key risk, the four things that actually decide this, not just the biggest dollar figure.
- See a tailored read. The tool shows which option pencils for the parcel and flags what would change the answer.
What the comparison is based on
Each column is built from the same audited data the rest of Scout uses, so the three options are compared on a level footing:
- Farming income: USDA ERS cost of production against USDA NASS pricing, or the USDA NASS county cash-rent benchmark if you’d rather lease to a farmer.
- Solar income: NREL PVWatts v8 modeled output for the parcel, banded against state output percentiles using AgriTerra’s Purdue/OSU-anchored solar lease-band dataset.
- CRP: Not available now: new CRP enrollment is paused until Congress extends the farm bill (USDA FSA, Sept 25, 2026). How CRP works. Scout still flags the acres the soil data marks as likely eligible.
- Reversibility & risk: derived from the nature of each option: annual for farming, a fixed contract for CRP, and a multi-decade commitment for solar.
The honest caveat is the solar number. It’s a defensible seed band that shows the rough scale of energy income on these acres, not what a specific developer will pay. Illustratively, a strong-solar parcel might model a solar band around $1,000/acre/year against a farming return near $150/acre, a gap wide enough to take seriously, and precisely why the reversibility and risk columns matter: that $1,000 comes with a 25-year lock-in. Read the solar leasing guide and the solar lease rates by state table before treating any one number as a quote.
A worked example
A 140-acre parcel in Fulton County, Ohio, with a solar letter on the kitchen table. The developer’s offer sounds huge next to what the ground earns in corn. The owner runs the comparison: solar leads on five-year income by a wide margin, farming trails, and CRP shows as paused, with no figure, while new enrollment is. But reversibility flips the story. Farming is fully reversible, CRP returns the land after the contract, and the solar lease is a 25-year commitment on prime ground.
The comparison lays out the real question: is the income worth giving up the option to farm this specific parcel for a generation? For an owner who wants to keep the land in the family and farmable, that reframing (visible in one screen) is worth more than the headline dollar figure. They take it to an attorney before responding to the developer.
Who it’s for
Landowners holding a solar or wind lease offer, families deciding what to do with inherited farm ground, and anyone who wants the “farm, lease, or conserve?” trade-off laid out in numbers. If you first want to see every use of the parcel side by side (including cash rent and wind), start with the farmland use optimizer, or screen the CRP side in detail with the USDA program eligibility checker. For the contract side of an energy offer, use the solar leasing guide or the wind turbine lease-rate guide.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the farm vs. solar vs. CRP comparison free?
- The parcel read is free with no account. Running the farming vs solar vs CRP comparison is free with a free account, 3 comparisons a month, and unlimited on Land Scout. The $89 Decision Report is there if you want the full parcel analysis as a PDF.
- Do I need to sign up?
- The parcel read needs no account. Running the comparison and seeing the results is free with a free account, 3 a month, and unlimited on Land Scout. An email only comes in if you want results sent to you.
- How does it calculate the solar-lease income?
- Solar income is a modeled band, not a developer’s offer. Scout runs NREL PVWatts for your parcel’s modeled output and compares it to your state’s output percentiles to place it in a low / mid / high income band from AgriTerra’s governed solar lease-band dataset, anchored to Purdue Ag Economy Barometer offer surveys and OSU Extension solar leasing guidance.
- What does "reversibility" mean in the comparison?
- How easily you can undo the choice. Farming is fully reversible year to year; CRP locks the land in a contract but returns it to you at the end; a solar lease is a 20 to 30 year commitment and the least reversible. The tool shows this as its own column because it often matters as much as the dollars.
- Should I lease my land for solar?
- That depends on your parcel and your goals, which is exactly what the tool is for: it shows the five-year income, capital, reversibility, and risk of the solar option next to farming and CRP so you can decide with numbers. For the trade-offs beyond the math, start with the AgriTerra solar leasing guide.
- Is this financial or legal advice?
- No. AgriTerra is independent and this is a decision-support tool, not financial or legal advice. A solar lease in particular is a long contract. Take the comparison to an attorney before signing anything.
Related tools
Land-Use Optimizer
Compare every use of your acres, row crops, cash rent, CRP, solar, wind, by modeled return.
farmland use optimizer →USDA Programs
See which USDA conservation and commodity programs your parcel likely qualifies for.
USDA program eligibility checker →Insights
One plain-language read on a parcel’s soil, value, water, flood risk, and market context.
parcel data lookup →Or see all six free farmland tools.
Farm it, lease it, or conserve it. See the trade-off.
Compare farming, solar, and CRP free on five-year income, capital, reversibility, and risk for any parcel, before you sign a lease.
Free to start. The full Decision Report is $89.