Solar panels help to meet California's climate goals. (Department of Water Resources photo)
The California Legislature is considering a second attempt at relaxing requirements for Williamson Act contracts on conservation easements. The goal is to free up San Joaquin Valley farmland fallowed under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to convert into large-scale solar development.
The proposal has pitted the Western Growers Association and the Almond Alliance against the California Farm Bureau and other opponents, reviving a standoff that stalled a 2024 bill.
The abundant sunshine that built California agriculture into a nation-leading juggernaut is now driving a solar race, as the state rapidly develops clean energy projects to meet its 2045 carbon neutrality goal. The two industries are also bumping elbows to position themselves in proximity to the state’s 40 million consumers.
The reliable water supply from snowmelt and aquifers that for decades nurtured a growing agricultural industry has been diminished under aggressive conservation policies and extreme droughts, opening more land for solar projects. Yet pulling potentially prime agricultural land out of production is raising concerns over abandoning the rich fertile soils that contributed to the state’s abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables.
“This will provide an economic benefit to the community and to farmers who otherwise have very limited options,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, introducing her measure last week to the Assembly Agriculture Committee. “This past fall, I learned through hearings of the Select Committee on Permitting Reform just how long and hard it is to permit a solar energy project in our state and was left with the inescapable conclusion that we need to do better.”
Based on feedback shared at the informational hearings, Wicks’ select committee issued a report last month summarizing its findings. The document points to the southern San Joaquin Valley, at less than 100 miles from populous Los Angeles, as an opportunity to make more land available for clean energy. Solar interests view the region as particularly promising “because of the amount of sun received and its proximity to viable transmission corridors.”
The report leans on testimony from Marisa Mitchell, who leads permitting efforts at solar developer Intersect Power. She explained that the valley contains “the least conflicted lands” identified by the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission.
“They've already identified that if the state's losing irrigated agriculture, it's not because of solar,” said Mitchell. “Solar can actually help make the most of a challenging situation.”
Mitchell chastised the California Environmental Quality Act as overly protective of the “water-constrained former croplands” and argued CEQA “should be helping match retiring ag lands with solar development, rather than penalizing such projects for land conversion.”
The committee report, however, narrows in on the Williamson Act as a complicating factor.
The 1965 farmland preservation law requires a minimum of 10 years for restricting land use in exchange for lowering property tax assessments. Exiting a contract entails a 10-year walkdown and a cancellation fee equal to 12.5% of the fair market value of the land or a 25% cancellation fee for Farmland Security Zone contracts for prime land. Today more than 15 million acres of land in 52 counties are classified as protected, most under Williamson Act contracts.
Last year Asm. Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, proposed to loosen the penalties. His bill gained the backing of Western Growers, which reasoned it would provide farmers with alternative economic opportunities while maintaining the value of the land. Other proponents worried the land would otherwise sit idle for a decade until the contracts expire. The California Farm Bureau, on the other hand, contended that relaxing the rules for cancellations would be a slippery slope toward weakening the Williamson Act, which has been California’s most powerful tool for protecting farms from urban encroachment.
Amid the industry infighting the bill stalled in the Appropriations Committee. This year Wicks, through Assembly Bill 1156, revived the effort to reform the act, this time by homing in on a 2011 law allowing owners of compromised lands to convert contracts to solar-use easements and pay recission fees half those of the cancellation fees.
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“To be blunt, the program isn't working,” said Wicks, noting that just three projects have deployed the policy tool because of the onerous requirements on local governments and the lack of consideration for water constraints. “It was envisioned before California's groundwater laws and before the establishment of our aggressive clean energy goals.”
The Large-scale Solar Association has been the driving force behind both bills. Lobbyist Shannon Eddy told the policy committee the solar easement program “needs to work,” since the state is facing the “prospect of losing nearly a million acres of irrigated farmland in the next 15 years.”
The legislation would make lands with water constraints eligible for a solar easement and would “modernize” the criteria and easement terms.
“AB 1156 provides a practical and much-needed path forward for our agricultural landowners facing severe water restrictions by allowing the landowners to suspend, rather than rescind, their Williamson Act contracts,” said John Norwood, lobbying on behalf of the Almond Alliance. “Most importantly, the bill empowers landowners, not just local governments, to make decisions about how to best manage land that can no longer be farmed under current water conditions, without requiring them to permanently forfeit ties to agriculture.”
The initial version of the bill would have empowered the Energy Commission to make the determinations. Removing that provision brought to the table Western Growers and Rural County Representatives of California. Hoping to further ease the opposition, Wicks plans to add amendments to require a community benefit component, provide parameters defining commercially viable land and water constraints, and address concerns about impacting prime farmland.
AB 1156, she stressed, would “merely” suspend contracts but not cancel them, in case the water conditions change and the farmer wants to return the land to production.
Her efforts to win over opponents drew praise from across the aisle.
“As a farmer, it's very hard to farm in California,” said Asm. Heather Hadwick, R-Alturas. “We need to be able to have options to keep some of these farms in families.”
Asm. Juan Alanis, R-Modesto, echoed Hadwick’s defense of landowner rights, asserting “my land, my choice.” He asked why Wicks pivoted from Arambula’s focus on eight counties to a statewide proposal. Eddy responded that constraining the legislation to those counties with critically overdrafted basins would exclude growers who “also want the ability to be able to take advantage of this.”
Agriculture Chair Esmeralda Soria, D-Merced, voted in the favor of the bill but raised skepticism over the proposed community benefits.
“Just last week, I had a dozen farmworkers come, and many of them are terrified about what's happening in our community with the loss of ag jobs,” said Soria. “Let's be real, guys. Yes, there's going to be good-paying jobs short-term. But at the end of the day, these families are likely not going to get the solar jobs.”
Asm. Rhodesia Ransom, D-Stockton, warned of repeating past wrongs in land use planning.
“We've seen in the past through real estate development the opportunity to build houses and make money clearly compromise agricultural land,” said Ransom. “If you put solar on your property, you don't intend to go back. It's not really a suspension, it's effectively a cancelation of the Williamson Act.”
Asm. Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, shared stronger pushback on the measure, though she abstained from voting rather than go on the record against it.
“My farmers are still very concerned about making sure they keep track of their land,” said Aguiar-Curry. “I don't want anybody walking over us, and that's my biggest fear.”
Leading the opposition, Peter Ansel, a senior policy advocate at the California Farm Bureau, responded to the many comments and took issue with the bill’s proposal to sidestep the fees for exiting a contract.
“Over the past decade, California has already lost more than a million acres of irrigated farmland, much of it the most productive land in the state,” said Ansel. “Despite those broader farmland loss trends, the Williamson Act program has remained relatively stable … largely because cancelation fees discourage early withdrawals and speculative cancelations.”
He clarified that the fees are not penalties but payments that “recognize and help recoup the significant public investment made to preserve farmland.” He warned of incentivizing landowners to leave contracts early without consequence, a loophole that would enable developers to build on prime farmland and erode “one of the few tools left to encourage conservation of working lands” — the central reason for American Farmland Trust to oppose the bill as well.
Ansel added that farm bureau members outside of overdrafted basins have not expressed interest in leasing their land to solar projects. That point became clear to an internal working group at the organization, which found the interest was acutely focused in the areas most impacted by SGMA and was not a statewide issue.
The farm bureau called it a misconception to frame the bill about landowner rights, since participation in easements and the cancellations have always been voluntary.
The opponents also argued AB 1156 would undermine Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 30x30 biodiversity goal along with those of the Strategic Agricultural Lands Conservation Program, the Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program and the California Farmland Conservancy Program. Converting the land to industrial uses would increase greenhouse gas emissions sevenfold, they claimed.
Those arguments, however, have done little to slow the momentum of the bill. Through three committee hearings AB 1156 has gained just one dissenting vote. Yet it faces a key milestone later this month, when the committee that stalled Arambula’s bill will take up the measure for a vote and potentially sideline it for the year.
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