Sheep for Rent: Will Journey

This Perspective piece doesn’t essentially symbolize the views of Offrange or Ambrook, its mum or dad firm.

If it ain’t broke, don’t repair it.

Farmers are identified for his or her steadfast adherence to custom: for his or her grit, ingenuity, and an virtually cussed capacity to make issues work with no matter’s readily available. Duct tape. Baling twine. A common willingness to “figure it out.”

But agriculture itself is underneath huge stress, to the purpose the place even duct tape might not assist (sure, I mentioned it).

Agriculture has at all times been a difficult trade, however in 2026, it’s turn out to be one thing else fully. Farmers are up towards an endless onslaught of low commodity costs, excessive manufacturing prices (nitrogen fertilizer costs jumped 30% in April alone), and crippling debt.

More than 80% of American farmers now depend on off-farm revenue simply to remain afloat. We’re in disaster mode, and we’d like a repair. For us, that “fix” appears to be like like a number of hundred hair sheep, grazing not at dwelling on our small, 22-acre plot of land, however at photo voltaic farms in 4 neighboring counties.

We personal J&R Pierce Family Farm, LLC, a photo voltaic grazing operation simply north of the Adirondacks in New York. Like many first-generation farmers, we began small, with a aim of elevating livestock regeneratively and promoting domestically. And like many others, we hit a wall: land.

Pasture entry is without doubt one of the greatest boundaries in agriculture. Roughly 28% of U.S. farms function on rented land, and for graziers, increasing acreage with out taking over suffocating prices is almost unattainable. That constraint is what led us to our first photo voltaic grazing contract in 2022. What began as a stopgap resolution shortly grew to become the spine of our whole operation. We now graze eight websites on farmland leased to photo voltaic firms, utilizing sheep to handle vegetation beneath the arrays.

There’s a largely unfaithful narrative that photo voltaic improvement takes agricultural land out of manufacturing, ceaselessly. It doesn’t. Unlike housing developments or retail builds, photo voltaic tasks in 35 states (as of 2025) require some type of decommissioning plan. For a number of states, together with New York, builders should fund surety bonds to make sure the farmland is restored on the finish of the venture’s life.