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California lawmakers have shelved a bill that sought to answer one of the Central Valley’s most pressing land-use questions: As groundwater limits force farmland out of production, how much of that land should shift to large-scale solar, and who should benefit?
Senate Bill 1183 by Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, would have required the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation to study the impacts of large-scale solar on land-use planning, the environment and the economy of the Central Valley. The study would have yielded recommendations for mitigating impacts, identifying areas where solar may be the most beneficial land use, and evaluating community benefit programs, including the potential for a standardized regional framework.
Sen. Anna Caballero (Fred Greaves/Agri-Pulse)The measure was not a permitting bill and would not have blocked projects, changed the Williamson Act or given state agencies new authority over counties. But for agriculture, it landed in the middle of a fast-moving transition driven by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, shrinking water supplies and California’s push for 100% clean electricity by 2045.
The Central Valley has 7 million acres of irrigated farmland, produces more than $40 billion in farm revenue annually and accounts for a quarter of the nation’s food supply. Yet SGMA and long-term water stress could leave large amounts of farmland without a reliable water supply. Meanwhile, half of California’s nearly 100,000 acres of industrial solar has already been developed in the San Joaquin Valley, often on water-deprived farmland.
The Public Policy Institute of California and other researchers warn SGMA will likely require more than a million acres of farmland to come out of intensive irrigated production over the next two decades, with potential stress on local economies, farm employment and public revenues if land is not put to new uses.
Caballero told lawmakers the state should not wait for the conversion to unfold parcel by parcel. She said communities like Mendota, Firebaugh, Huron and San Joaquin — where farms, farmworkers and support businesses anchor the local economy — need a broader look at what industrial solar means for jobs, dust, public health and the tax base.
“As the presence of industrial solar in the Central Valley continues to increase, there is a need for careful planning by state and local governments,” said Caballero. The goal, she argued, is to ensure projects benefit valley residents, businesses and local governments “without causing generational damage to viable agricultural lands, small communities and the personal assets of families that call the Central Valley home.”
Farm bureau backs study as solar groups push back
The California Farm Bureau supported SB 1183, framing it as a way to study cumulative impacts before solar becomes the default option for land losing water under SGMA.
Senior policy advocate Peter Ansel told lawmakers the bill was “not antisolar” but “pro-community,” arguing that individual project reviews do not show what happens when industrial solar spreads across an agricultural region. Caballero made a similar point, warning that solar leases may provide landowners with revenue while doing less for farmworkers, equipment dealers, welders, box makers and other businesses built around irrigated agriculture.
That argument goes to the heart of the farm-sector concern. A solar project can help a grower carry land through a period of water scarcity, and it can produce tax revenue for local government. But it does not necessarily replace the year-round or seasonal farm employment, processing activity, trucking, input purchases and local spending tied to producing crops.
Caballero also raised concerns about dust and valley fever if land is fallowed or converted without careful planning. She said solar may make sense on some acreage but questioned why the state is not doing more with rooftops, parking lots and other built environments before relying heavily on farmland.
The bill’s supporters saw the study as a way to sort those tradeoffs, not to stop renewable development. Both solar supporters and opponents agree more solar is likely coming to the San Joaquin Valley. The question, according to a policy committee analysis of the bill, is whether state and local governments can develop a framework to determine which sites are good candidates and how to minimize harm to viable farmland and rural communities.
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The Large-scale Solar Association and other solar and clean energy groups opposed the measure over concerns that it could duplicate existing state work and cast utility-scale solar as a threat rather than a necessary response to the valley’s water and energy realities. Solar advocates have argued that the San Joaquin Valley contains lower conflict lands close to transmission and load centers, making it a key region for meeting California’s clean energy goals. They also contend solar can provide a revenue-generating use for land that may no longer have enough water to support irrigated crops.
“We believe the Central Valley stands at a remarkable moment of opportunity, and we want to make sure state policy reflects that,” said Lillian Mirviss, policy director at the Large-scale Solar Association.
California has aggressive clean energy targets, with a statutory goal of 100% renewable and zero-carbon electricity by 2045 and interim goals of 90% by 2035 and 95% by 2040. The state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard requires load-serving entities to procure 60% of retail sales from eligible renewable resources by 2030.
Lillian Mirviss, Large-scale Solar Association (LinkedIn)But Caballero’s point was that energy planning alone does not answer agricultural planning questions. A project may help meet the state’s climate targets while still hollowing out a farm town if it replaces thousands of acres of production without a plan for jobs, dust control, local revenue, habitat, water quality and community benefits.
A narrower echo of the Williamson Act fights
SB 1183 followed two years of more direct fights over converting farmland to solar, though Caballero’s bill took a different approach.
In 2024 Asm. Joaquin Arambula, D-Fresno, carried Assembly Bill 2528, a measure to streamline the cancellation process for Williamson Act contracts on water-constrained parcels, allowing land to move more quickly into energy infrastructure. Western Growers and several commodity groups supported the bill as a way to give growers another economic option for land constrained by SGMA. But the California Farm Bureau opposed it as a threat to one of the state’s core farmland preservation tools.
Last year Asm. Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, revived the issue through AB 1156, which focused on the state’s solar use easement program rather than outright Williamson Act cancellations. That bill drew many of the same battle lines, with solar interests, Western Growers and the Almond Alliance arguing the program needs to work for landowners facing water restrictions, while the California Farm Bureau and farmland preservation advocates worried about weakening protections for working lands.
The bills demonstrated how divided agriculture remains over the same underlying question SB 1183 tried to study. Growers facing water cutbacks want options to keep land economically viable. Groups focused on farmland preservation worry that once prime farmland is converted to industrial use, it may not return to production. Rural lawmakers are caught between both arguments, with farmworker communities asking whether solar can meaningfully replace agriculture’s economic footprint.
Caballero’s bill did not attempt to settle that fight. It would have asked the state to define the problem more clearly for where solar belongs, which lands should remain in production, what mitigation should be required, and how community benefits should be structured so valley residents are not left with only the losses. After its first and only debate, the bill gathered unanimous bipartisan support.
Yet the study would have come with a cost. The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation estimated more than $400,000 in expenses over two years to lead the work and $750,000 over three years for the State Water Resources Control Board to consult on the study and potential water quality impacts. That fiscal burden likely left SB 1183 vulnerable in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which blocked it from advancing last week.
