For the first time for four generations, last year the Raines family did not even plant cotton seed. Chad Raines parked his tractor and rented most of his arable land in Texas to a neighbor.

Instead of plowing his fields, Raines spent the year driving the herd of sheep into photovoltaic land, where his animals eat the greens that grow around the glittering panels. The agreements closed on this natural grass haircut service with five photovoltaic companies were more lucrative than cotton cultivation, he said.

“Cotton prices were very low for a long time, I had to do something different,” the 52 -year -old said.

As farmers in the US are struggling with growing debt and decline in income, some crop producers exchange their tractors with herds of sheep who go to grazing in photovoltaics, trying to get them out.

It is a way that US farmers have found to increase their income, as the multiannual downturn in the US agricultural economy has hit the cultivators harshly, economists said.

If Raines had cultivated cotton last year, his farm would have lost $ 200,000, he said. Making money by breeding sheep only for meat would also be difficult. Instead, Raines had a net profit of about $ 300,000, thanks to grazing payments, while also selling lamb to a restaurant supplier, he said.

As he said, all the costs of up to $ 2,000 he spends on the food of dogs guarding her flocks is covered by the money she earns from the sheep.

In fact, Reins’ son returned to the farm to help him.

However, there may not be such opportunities, as Trump signed an executive decree that terminates the funds associated with pure energy.

The funding has frozen, in the context of the Trump government’s decision, to review all government grants and loans.

“Farmers and breeders should not be based on far -left climate programs for pasture or” economic salvation boards “,” a spokesman for the US Department of Agriculture in Reuters told a spokesman for Reuters, adding that the Agency is not focusing on agricultural prosperity.

Cotton prices in the US have fallen nearly 40% in the last two years, as large world stocks have flooded global demand, and exports have also been reduced abruptly, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture.

“For the last three years it has been difficult for Texas cotton producers,” said Louis Barbera, chief executive of VLM Commodities.

While agricultural income is expected to improve this year as a whole, the recovery is due to high livestock prices and the expected government aid by the US 2025 relief law, according to a provision by the Ministry of Agriculture in early February.

Many large debt farmers who have been delayed to repay their loans in 2024 sell assets to survive, according to data from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and Minneapolis.

“The differentiation of income in recession may mean rescue the farm,” he said in an interview with the banker.

For some farmers with many financial difficulties, these sheep grazing contracts in photovoltaic fields can be a lifeline, according to Reuters interviews with more than twelve farmers.

Sheep is currently grazing in more than 129,000 acres of photovoltaics, compared to 15,000 acres in 2021, according to the non -profit American Solar Grazing Association.

The number of sheep increased from 80,000 to more than 113,000 between January and October last year, the team said.

The American photovoltaic industry was developed during Donald Trump’s first term. The trend was boosted after a 2022 law passed by Joe Biden and provided subsidies for new clean energy projects, said Abigail Ross Hopper, chairman and chief executive of the Union of Solar Energy Industries.

The sector is expecting a development course during Trump’s second term, he said.

In Indiana and Illinois, the photovoltaic explosion has attracted many 20s and 30s willing to jump to Georgia, without taking on millions of dollars to rent land and machinery, industry analysts said.