Modeling the Impact of Agrivoltaics on Corn Yield and Water Balance in the US

Abstract

Corn farming occupies a substantial portion of agricultural land in the United States, yet the potential impacts of agrivoltaic systems on commodity crop yields remain poorly quantified at a national scale. Building upon our previous county-level modeling framework, we extended our approach to analyze the top 1000 corn-producing counties in the U.S. For each county, the model was calibrated by comparing 20 years of USDA-reported yield data with model predictions to reflect local growing conditions, management practices, and genetic improvements. Our analysis quantified the trade-offs between crop yield loss due to shading from sparse solar arrays and potential yield gains resulting from increased soil moisture retention under partial shading. The results indicate that corn yield decreases by approximately 0.55% per 1% shading, while drought stress, as measured by the Agricultural Reference Index for Drought (ARID), decreases by approximately 0.8% per 1% shading due to reduced evapotranspiration. The model also accurately captured the historical ~0.5% per year yield increase attributed to genetic improvements and advanced management practices. Furthermore, our findings suggest that modern corn varieties exhibit substantially higher drought resistance compared to traditional cultivars, such as McCurdy 84aa, used in previous crop models.