How a Rajasthan farmer is growing crops under solar panels

In Kundanpura, a village in Rajasthan's Bassi block, the landscape is dotted with solar panels. But one farm stands out. Under the panels, maize is growing. This is the result of an agrophotovoltaics (APV) project, also known as agrivoltaics, which allows the same land to be used for both agriculture and solar power generation.

Kojadmal Jat, a 60-year-old farmer, has been working with researchers from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) on this pilot. Spread across nearly three acres, the project is Rajasthan's first farmer-owned APV installation, generating 600 kilowatts of power. The electricity feeds into the local grid and provides daytime irrigation power for around 250 farms.

Jat's decision to adopt solar power came in 2023, inspired by the solar fields of his neighbours. He had faced the uncertainties of harvests and wanted a predictable monthly income. But the move came with a personal conflict. "My farm was generating solar power, but at the end of the day, I am a farmer. I could not come to terms with the fact that I was no longer able to cultivate my land because of the solar panels," he said.

His dilemma reflects a larger question: should productive farmland be used for food or electricity? India ranks 102nd out of 123 countries on the 2025 Global Hunger Index, and converting farmland to solar plants could worsen food insecurity.

APV offers a possible answer. The principle is that partial shading from solar panels reduces heat stress and evaporation, creating a more stable microclimate. This can be especially valuable in dry and arid regions. Laxmi Sharma, a research associate with ICRIER, worked with Jat to explore this model. "When we showed him that he could combine farming with solar energy generation, he was delighted by the prospect of being able to do both," she recalled.

The model also helps farmers diversify their income, reducing dependence on a single source and building resilience to climate and market risks. However, the economics are challenging. APV can increase a farmer's annual returns to about ₹3 lakh to ₹4 lakh per acre, but the elevated mounting structures cost nearly ₹35 lakh more than conventional installations. For most smallholder farmers, that is out of reach.

For Jat, the financial benefit has been significant. He previously earned around ₹40,000 a year from farming. With solar panels, his annual income has increased nearly eightfold to about ₹3 lakh.

In mid-2024, the ICRIER team began studying farmer-owned agrivoltaics. At the time, there were only about two dozen APV pilots in India, and most were led by academic institutions or private developers. Very few were owned by farmers themselves. In April 2025, ICRIER released a report on the viability of such models.

In Madhya Pradesh, Anand Jain, an MTech graduate from IIT Roorkee and a farmer since the 1990s, reached a similar idea from a different direction. He studied agrivoltaic projects in Europe, collecting data on panel height, spacing, and the microclimate beneath them. "Because I am a farmer, I wanted to save every inch of my land," he said. His design ensured the panels adapted to the farm, not the other way around. His experiment became an early example of the farmer-led model that ICRIER later studied.

These efforts point to a path where renewable energy and agriculture need not compete for the same land. But making such systems affordable for ordinary farmers will require policy support and innovative financing.