WAXHAW, N.C. — Every morning, when Jim Howie takes his cattle out to pasture, he’s following in family traditions that go back generations. His family’s owned this land just outside of downtown Waxhaw since the 1860s, and Howie says it’s always been used for farming.
“If you go back to the 50s and 60s, agriculture was Waxhaw’s main source of income,” he said. “Everybody had some ties to agriculture.”
Now, Waxhaw and much of Union County are rapidly changing. Howie said farms are disappearing, and in their place, the county’s seeing far more housing development and often, solar.
“I’m very much a supporter of alternative, alternative sources of energy, but is taking productive farmland the best way to do that?” he said.
Solar backlash
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, North Carolina ranks 5th in the nation for solar development, but recently that development has seen a backlash.
Several counties have instated moratoriums on solar development and House Bill 729, which is making its way through the statehouse aims to slow the industry further.
Titled, “The Farmland Protection Act,” the bill would remove property tax abatements for new solar energy systems, raising the tax liability for such projects by 500%. It would also increase regulatory constraints by requiring the North Carolina Utilities Commission to refuse to issue a certificate of public convenience and necessity for a utility-scale solar project if the project is to be sited on land currently being used for agricultural production.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Jimmy Dixon (R-Duplin), described the bill as a way to ensure solar does not take up valuable, productive farmland and that it’s paying its fair share to the counties most-often used for development, rural predominantly agricultural communities.
“You travel across the state of North Carolina, and it’s occupying the best farmland in the state,” he said. “I think by experience now we see that this is an industry that does not need incentivizing, and it needs to pay its way.”
Farming with solar
Joel Olsen sees the industry quite differently. His solar development company, O2, which has built about 25 solar facilities, primarily in North Carolina, does so with agriculture in mind.
His Montgomery Sheep Farm is a primary example. The property houses 600,000 solar modules, a few chicken coops, and seven herds of sheep.
“The sheep need the shade, they need the shelter from heat, the shelter from the rain and the solar really needs the vegetation to be kept at an acceptable height so that duality use of the land is fantastic,” Olsen said.
Much of his solar power goes to farm operations, but he’s also connected to the Duke Energy Progress grid to feed roughly 40 million kWh of power to the nearby town of Biscoe annually.
“That’s enough to power about 3,000 average homes,” he said.
Besides energy, Olsen said the farm is also paying far more in taxes than it would have without the solar installations.
Agricultural land has state tax exemptions, so it generally pays a lower overall cost to its county government. When that land is used for solar, it comes out of that tax exemption and Olsen said, in his case, the Montgomery Sheep Farm had to pay three years of back taxes on the land.
Finally, there’s the taxes on the installation itself, the personal property tax. According to current North Carolina state law, the solar energy system gets an 80% tax abatement. HB 729 would change that to 0% for all future solar projects.
“That really pulls the rug out from the investments that have been made in North Carolina, the jobs that were created during construction and the opportunity to do agriculture here,” Olsen said.
Room for compromise
For farmers like Howie, this bill represents an opportunity to push back against at least one pressure point that’s been changing the face of the communities they’ve worked in their entire lives.
“I’m very much a proponent of property rights, somebody being able to do with their land what they would like, but taking farmland out of production is a, it’s going to be a bigger and bigger problem,” he said.
Olsen said he’s sympathetic to concerns about losing farmland, but he believes this bill is the wrong answer. He said farms like his show that agriculture and solar can be done together, and there are ways to encourage practices that don’t pit the industries against each other.
“The way you develop this land matters,” he said. “If you think about it upfront, and you incentivize people to do the right thing instead of trying to institute regulatory delays, regulatory fees and other taxes, on an industry then you’re gonna have a benefit for the farmland rather than a lost opportunity.”
As of Tuesday April 15, HB 729 has made it through the House Finance Committee. It will face a vote in the Agriculture Committee Tuesday morning.
©2025 Cox Media Group
