CAYUGA, Ont.—Rafael Lara is a shepherd with no land.
When he immigrated from Brazil to Canada in 2018, he had dreams of owning his own farm and grazing his own flocks.
Eight years later, he has more than 1,000 sheep but has dropped his plans to buy land — because he’s found a better way.
Instead of paying to purchase or lease pasture, Lara gets paid to graze his sheep by solar farms that need to keep the grass and underbrush down.
While solar developers have traditionally contracted mechanical mowers, more and more of them are turning to sheep to eat the grass, not only because they do a better job — getting under the panels and into hard-to-reach places — but also because the sheep are helping to quell years of opposition to renewables in rural areas.
“Farming communities saw all these solar projects installed and didn’t see any benefits. All they saw was a loss of farmland,” said Patrick Gossage, president of Agrivoltaics Canada. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can have agriculture and solar at the same time. It keeps farmland in production, puts money in farmers’ pockets and provides revenue to municipalities.”
Lara sees it from another point of view: “They say we should grow food under the panels. I say we should put solar over the sheep.”
A ‘win-win’ for solar farms
The panels provide shade that’s spread out over the whole farm, which avoids the trampling to dust that happens when all the sheep congregate under a single shade structure, Lara said. They also keep the grass moist and growing throughout the hot summer, supplying a better meal than the dried out pastures right next door.
“The sheep like being under the panels,” he said. “Every other farmer runs out of grass. I never run out.”
Solar grazing has provided a rare detente in an increasingly polarized debate over renewable energy, in which proponents often portray it as a panacea to solve both climate change and inflation, and opponents, such as U.S. President Donald Trump, maintain that wind and solar are a “scam” that gobbles up otherwise useful farmland.
“It’s a win-win,” said Gossage. “The solar farms get local support and the communities see the land is being put to use.”
Grazing-as-a-service started out in an ad hoc manner, when enterprising sheep farmers approached existing solar installations and offered to keep the vegetation down, but it’s grown into a standard feature for new projects. Eight of the 12 new solar energy projects contracted by the province in April came with grazing built in, Gossage said.
This means that solar, which is already the most rapidly growing form of electricity generation, could soon bolster Canada’s lamb and wool industry.
“Agrivoltaics are no longer theoretical. The majority of the projects that won the last provincial procurement involve solar grazing. It’s cost competitive now,” Gossage said.
In his plaid shirt, denim jeans and ten-gallon hat, Lara is the picture of a Brazilian cowboy. He first ingratiated himself into his adopted community in Haldimand County through hard work and long days out on the land, he said. But it was winning roping competitions that earned him friends and even “angels,” who’ve gone out of their way to help him get his farming business off the ground.
“The neighbours, they hate the solar companies. But they like me,” he said with a smile. Last year, he had 400 sheep on one solar farm. Now he has 1,000 grazing under panels on five solar projects.
Lara crouches and gestures under the rows of solar panels to a group of sheep grazing four or five rows away.
“You can see straight through,” he said. “That’s what I like to see. A few weeks ago, it was all grass.”
How the sheep have won out
While there have long been dreams of growing food under and between rows of solar panels, grazing seems to be the path of least resistance to combining farming and power production. Pilot projects with vegetables exist in Japan and Europe — but in Ontario, it’s sheep that have won the day.
Traditional ride-on mowers can’t get under the panels in the same way sheep can, and workers have to come by on foot with weedwhackers afterward. This adds time for each mow, Lara said, and drives up the cost for the owners of the solar farm. In contrast, Lara’s sheep arrive in the spring and stay all season, rotating through the farm every few days using temporary electric fencing.
Lara and his farm hands check on the sheep everyday and keep eyes on the panels.
“If you mow, you pay per cut. I’m a service,” he said, adding he can have a fence fixed in the same time a big solar developer would take to fill out a work order. “They are specialized in the electricity part. I do everything else.”
“Sheep do a phenomenal job,” said Lyndsey Smith, a sheep farmer with Shady Creek Lamb Co. outside Ottawa, who has been grazing her flock under solar panels for the past eight years. “They’re the right size. They want to eat everything that’s there.”
Goats tend to climb and chew on wires, while cattle are too big to get under the panels, she said, but sheep graze continuously and keep the vegetation down.
When solar first arrived in her community, Smith had a similar reaction to most farmers, thinking it didn’t make sense because “that land should be producing food.”
But after seeing the value-add that comes with grazing and power production at the same time, she’s changed her mind.
“We actually have incredible biodiversity. We have incredible soil health. We’ve got great soil coverage. So I would argue that the ground being grazed under solar sites actually stacks up against other farmland. In some cases, it improves the land.”
Avoiding a sheep shortage
But there are limits to expanding the solar grazing model: There aren’t enough sheep, nor enough land.
Ontario has banned renewable energy projects from most farmland and capped the size of the projects at one hectare, according to Agrivoltaics Canada. This means most projects get built in the north, far from where the energy is needed.
And while demand for lamb is rising, Canada’s flock of sheep has stayed the same size for years, according to Statistics Canada. Even to put sheep on the eight solar farms that have already been approved will require expanding the flock.
“Today we don’t have enough sheep, but our intention is to produce more and so that we can capture that opportunity,” said Erin Morgan, executive director of Ontario Sheep Famers.
“Fortunately, you don’t snap your fingers and the solar site goes up. There are years of planning and permitting. So that gives us a lot of time to plan and figure out where they’re going to get those sheep from.”
As for Lara, he’s excited to grow his flock to graze the new solar farms and has plans to triple the number of sheep to 3,000.
“But if I went to 10,000 or 15,000, it would make a real difference in the lamb market,” he said. “With solar and sheep together, we can change the economy of the country.”
