05/09/2026
Awaiting the sun this Saturday to facilitate further cleanup and initiate a new growing season following a tumultuous start to the year.
Here are some thoughts about The uproar over solar farms in northern Michigan
 Remember when cell towers started going up everywhere? People were furious. Eyesores. Property values. Health concerns. The end of civilization apparently.
Same thing happened with wind turbines. Same thing happened generations ago with grain elevators, power lines, even paved roads. Northern Michigan survived all of it, and eventually the outrage faded into the background hum of everyday life.
Now it’s solar farms.
A farmer looks at his land, runs the numbers, and decides leasing to a solar company is the best business decision for his family. That’s about as Northern Michigan as it gets. Local communities absolutely have the right to debate zoning and land use, but it’s worth remembering that for many family farms, these projects can mean the difference between hanging on and selling out.
For decades, small family farms have been squeezed while giant corporate operations collected the advantages. Farm policy too often seems designed for whoever already owns the biggest piece of the Monopoly board. And every time politicians decide to play trade-war roulette with foreign countries, family farmers are usually the first ones left holding the bill when commodity prices swing or export markets disappear.
Because what happens when a family farm can no longer turn a profit? The land gets sold off. Usually not to another local family trying to make a living, but to larger corporations or outside investors slowly consolidating more and more of rural America.
And meanwhile, we’ve watched giant corporations promise thousands of jobs, collect tax breaks, drain profits out of communities, then leave behind abandoned factories, contaminated property, and empty buildings for the public to clean up. Michigan has spent decades living with the rusted skeletons of those “economic development” promises. Funny how some people who panic over a field of solar panels barely blink at thousands of acres of industrial ruin.
Another piece that often gets missed in this conversation is energy itself. Local solar generation can make electricity more feasible in rural areas by producing power closer to where it’s used, reducing strain on long transmission lines and helping stabilize local grids. In plain terms, it keeps more energy and more value circulating closer to home instead of being piped in from somewhere far away.
So when a farmer finds a stable source of income that might help keep land in the family another generation, maybe we should understand why that matters before condemning it outright.
And before people assume all this opposition is just “concerned neighbors,” maybe ask who actually has the most to lose if renewable energy expands in Michigan. Oil, gas, and coal companies have spent decades and millions funding think tanks, front groups, and carefully packaged “grassroots” campaigns against renewables. Some of this outrage is very real. Some of it arrives factory-made, like political spam wrapped in flannel.
Thirty years from now people will drive past solar panels the same way they drive past cell towers today: barely noticing them at all.
