For the first time in four generations, the Raines family didn’t plant a single cotton seed last year. Chad Raines parked his tractor and rented out most of his Texas farmland to a neighbor.
Instead of plowing fields, Raines spent the year ferrying his flock of sheep to solar farms, to munch on the grass that grows around the gleaming panels. The deals he struck for this natural lawn-mowing service with five solar companies were more lucrative than growing cotton, he said.