The Gazette | Joe Heinrich, April 10
In a world of new technologies and innovation, our nation is requiring more energy than ever before. This surge in demand is projected to grow by 30-50% between now and 2040, making every watt of electricity on the grid valuable and necessary. An all-hands-on-deck approach to solving this issue cannot be done without implementing clean energy resources alongside traditional ones.
For decades, Iowa’s farmers and landowners have been presented with the unique opportunity to lead this charge. The 23,000 generational farmers across the state are intimately familiar with the challenges that come with keeping them operational through unpredictable weather and market volatility. As a farmer myself, I know personally that to carry your operations through each year, you must embrace and utilize whatever new technology is available to you.
Renewable energy development offers farm families the opportunity to diversify their income through drought-proof land lease payments, keeping operations in the black. In 2025 alone, Iowa farmers and landowners received $91.4 million in land lease payments, making wind and solar a shining example of new technology that allows a generational farmer to keep their property economically sustained.
Thanks to advancements in the industry, wind and solar farms can coexist on farmland, allowing a farmer to harvest the wind or sun simultaneously with traditional crops like corn or soybeans. In this way, these energy sources should be seen as an added commodity for farmers to cash in on, advancing their bottom line.
Farmers maximize the use of many natural resources in the most efficient ways possible to preserve the productivity of the land. As we navigate a world that requires more energy, and we seek to achieve energy independence, we must think like farmers and do the same by adding renewable energy to the mix and helping protect our farming community.
Joe Heinrich is executive director of Farm to Power, the former executive director of Smart Carbon Network and the former vice president of the Iowa Farm Bureau.
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