Comment by quickthrowman

High plains Nebraska land can support cattle grazing or maybe a wheat crop, given they receive less than 10” of rain per year.

Nobody is converting irrigated Ogallala aquifer farmland to solar fields, they’re taking marginal land used for grazing and using that for solar fields. Productive farmland can have wind turbines within it, due to the smaller footprint of the turbine tower.

Productive farmland is $10k+ an acre, more if it’s irrigated. The cost of rural land is based on the economic rents/value that can be extracted from the land.