Land-use comparison tool
The Farmland Use Optimizer
For landowners and farmers who want to see (side by side, on their specific acres) how row crops, cash rent, CRP, solar, and wind compare, in dollars per acre.
The AgriTerra Land-Use Optimizer is a free tool that compares the ways you could use a parcel (keep it in row crops, cash-rent it, enroll acres in CRP, lease it for solar, or host wind) by projected per-acre return. It is built for landowners and farmers weighing a change of use, and it draws its numbers from USDA NASS cash-rent benchmarks, USDA ERS crop cost-of-production figures, USDA FSA conservation rates, and NREL solar and wind models keyed to your exact parcel.
How the optimizer works
- Drop a pin or search an address. Scout finds the parcel on the satellite map and measures its acreage. Where the parcel layer isn’t live yet, you outline it with the draw tool. A partial slice of a bigger field works too.
- Scout pulls the parcel’s data in parallel. Soil capability class from NRCS SSURGO, current land use from USDA CropScape, county cash-rent benchmarks from USDA NASS, and modeled solar and wind output from NREL, all read for that specific parcel.
- Five uses are scored to a per-acre return. Row crops (revenue minus ERS cost of production), cash rent (the county benchmark), CRP (its enrollment status, with no rate, while new enrollment is paused), solar (an income band from PVWatts output), and wind (a band from the parcel’s AgriTerra resource bucket).
- Adjust your priorities. Move the sliders for income, flexibility, and conservation, and each use’s priority-fit score updates. The cards stay where they are: the score shows fit to the weights you set, not a verdict.
- Read the comparison. Each use shows its modeled return and the source line behind it, so you can see how far apart the uses are and on what basis.
What the numbers are based on
The optimizer never invents a figure. Each use is scored from a named public dataset, and the source and the date it was read travel with the number:
- Cash rent: the USDA NASS county cash-rent average (the published figure), refreshed on the annual USDA cycle, with a soil-adjusted range AgriTerra models from the parcel’s soils.
- Row-crop return: USDA ERS Commodity Costs & Returns for the cost side, against the parcel’s current crop from USDA CropScape (CDL).
- CRP: the acres the soil data flags as likely eligible, with the program's status: new CRP enrollment is paused, so no CRP rate is applied.
- Solar: NREL PVWatts v8 modeled annual output for the parcel, compared to the state’s output percentiles to place it in a low / mid / high income band from AgriTerra’s Purdue/OSU-anchored solar lease-band dataset.
- Wind: an AgriTerra wind resource bucket over NREL/WINDExchange 100 m wind maps, converted into a blended per-gross-acre comparison band.
Two things to hold in mind. The energy bands are deliberately coarse in this version, so treat them as “is this worth a call,” not a quote. If solar is the live question, read the solar leasing guide and the solar lease rates by state table. If wind is the offer, start with the wind turbine lease-rate guide. And where a dataset has no entry for your location, the tool says so rather than filling the gap with a guess.
Two quick illustrations of the kind of numbers you’ll see (examples, not your parcel): a productive central-Ohio parcel might benchmark near $180/acre cash rent against a modeled corn return in a similar range, while a modeled solar band on flat ground near a substation can land in the $800 to $1,400/acre range, an order-of-magnitude gap that is exactly the point the optimizer exists to surface.
A worked example
A 160-acre parcel in Huron County, Ohio. The owner farms corn and soybeans but keeps getting solar-lease letters. Run through the optimizer, the parcel’s SSURGO soils come back as good-but-not-prime, its NASS county cash rent benchmarks in the mid-$100s per acre, and its ERS-based corn return in the same neighborhood, a normal Corn Belt result.
The solar band, driven by strong PVWatts output and flat terrain, comes in well above both farming and cash rent per acre. But the tool also flags that ~15 low-lying acres read as CRP-eligible, a fact worth knowing for when FSA can enroll new acres again (new CRP enrollment is paused). Moving the flexibility slider up raises the priority-fit scores of cash rent and lowers solar’s, because a solar lease is a 20 to 30 year commitment. The owner leaves with a sourced comparison to take to an attorney, not a hunch.
Who it’s for
Landowners deciding what to do with ground they’ve inherited or stopped farming, active farmers weighing whether a marginal field earns more in a program than in production, and investors sizing up a parcel’s upside before an offer. If your next question after “how do the uses compare” is “so should I farm, lease for solar, or enroll in CRP,” the farm vs. solar vs. CRP calculator takes those options and lays them out on income, capital, reversibility, and risk.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the Land-Use Optimizer cost?
- The parcel read (soil, value, water, flood, energy, and market context) is free with no account. Running the five-way Optimizer comparison is free with a free account, 3 comparisons a month, and unlimited on Land Scout. The comparison, the per-acre numbers, and the assumptions behind them are all in that view. The optional $89 Decision Report packages the same analysis, plus flood, wetlands, and program detail, into a downloadable PDF.
- Do I need an account to use it?
- Not for the free parcel read: pick a parcel and see three uses side by side (farming it, cash rent, and a solar or wind lease, with CRP shown as paused while new enrollment is) without signing up. The five-way Optimizer comparison needs a free account. An email only comes into play if you want the full PDF report emailed to you.
- Where do the return figures come from?
- Cash rent is USDA NASS county benchmarks; crop returns use USDA ERS cost-of-production figures against current CropScape land use; CRP shows its enrollment status with no rate while new CRP enrollment is paused; solar income is bucketed from NREL PVWatts; and wind uses AgriTerra resource buckets over NREL/WINDExchange 100 m wind maps. Every figure carries the source it came from.
- How accurate are the solar and wind numbers?
- They are defensible seed bands, not lease offers. The solar figure compares your parcel’s modeled PVWatts output to your state’s output percentiles; the wind figure assigns a coarse AgriTerra resource bucket. They show the rough scale of energy income, not what a single developer will pay you.
- Does it work in my state?
- The federal data layers behind the returns (USDA, NREL, USDA FSA) are nationwide, so any of the 50 states can be analyzed. Pre-loaded parcel boundaries are live in Ohio and Indiana first and expanding; elsewhere you can outline the parcel on the map.
- Can I use it on my phone?
- Yes. The optimizer runs in the browser on mobile and desktop, no app to install.
Related tools
Decide
Compare farming, a solar lease, and CRP on 5-year income, capital, reversibility, and risk.
farm vs. solar vs. CRP calculator →Crop Budget
Model per-acre seed, fertilizer, and operating costs against revenue and breakeven.
crop budget calculator →USDA Programs
See which USDA conservation and commodity programs your parcel likely qualifies for.
USDA program eligibility checker →Or see all six free farmland tools.
See how each use compares on your acres, in dollars per acre.
Run the free optimizer on any U.S. parcel: five uses side by side by modeled return, each with its source, in under a minute.
Free to start. The full Decision Report is $89.