February 19, 2025
Energy

GRAPHIC: Large farms lead in energy development payments


One way farmland owners can make money is by leasing their property for energy production, either from oil, natural gas, wind, or solar. Oil and natural gas produced more payments than wind and solar, according to research by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

While only a relative handful of U.S. benefit from energy production, the payments can bolster farm income. About 3.5% of all farms have leased land for energy development, and the average annual payment in 2020 was $30,000, according to the USDA. (2020 was the latest year data was available.)

The USDA said the energy payments contribute “substantially to farm household income” and often exceed government subsidies to these farms.

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Sky Chadde has covered the agriculture industry for Investigate Midwest since 2019 and spent much of 2020 focused on the crisis of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants, which included collecting and analyzing…
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