Farm-based solar power can be a lifeline for agriculture

The debate over Maryland’s energy future has been heated, from unwanted high-voltage power lines to a dispute about how best to provide electricity to proposed data centers. But for those of us still on the learning curve, let’s add a vocabulary word: “agrivoltaics.” That’s the term now applied to efforts to merge or “co-locate” farming with solar power. The goal is not for new solar “farms” to displace traditional agriculture but for the two activities to work together.