Research combines solar energy, agriculture
By Aadi Mehta, January 27, 2026
Cal Poly Pomona’s Spadra Farm has become the spot for Southern California’s first public agrivoltaics research project, where students gain hands-on experience studying how solar panels can generate electricity while growing crops such as romaine lettuce and tomatoes.
The project uses agrivoltaics, a system that combines solar panels with crop production, at Spadra Farm, a historic site named after a 19th-century community in Pomona, to study whether farming and renewable energy can coexist as water and land resources become more limited.
Pitzer College, through its Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, helped lead the research and secured a $1.8 million grant from the Foundation of Food and Agriculture Research to fund the project in partnership with the Don B. Huntley College of Agriculture, according to CPP News.
Faculty involved in the project said students conduct field trials, collect environmental data, manage crops underneath solar panels and use agricultural technology such as sensors and drones to study how agrivoltaics affects plant growth and resource use.
“Most of my work is done at Spadra Farm,” said Megan Kelly, a master’s student in agriculture with an emphasis in plant science. “I’m out in the field planting lettuce, applying fertilizer, watering crops and collecting data.”
Kelly said her research focuses on whether the growing season for lettuce can be extended and whether growing it under solar panels improves production for farmers.
According to Eshwar Ravishankar, an assistant professor of plant science and faculty mentor on the agrivoltaics project, early results have been promising.
“We’re seeing that crops are doing just as well, if not better, under the panels, while also using less water and fertilizer,” Ravishankar said.
As climate change causes longer and more frequent heatwaves, the Los Angeles Times reports that summers will get hotter. Los Angeles County is projected to triple the number of extremely hot days by 2050. Ravishankar said the project experimented with how students can anticipate climate changes in the future.
“We are able to collect the data from these experiments and feed that into a computer model,” Ravishankar said. “Through that computer model we can forecast how changes in climate, global warming for example, can start having an effect on farming conditions.”
The project also tries to address challenges facing agriculture, which The Washington Post reports is increasingly seen as an aging occupation struggling to bring in younger workers.
“In California, there’s a lot of competition for land — housing, renewable energy, conservation — and agriculture is usually at the bottom of that list,” said Aaron Fox, an agronomic research adviser and associate professor of urban and community agriculture.
Don B. Huntley College of Agriculture Dean Ethan Orr said his long-term plan is to turn Spadra Farm into an outdoor classroom, a location for undergraduate research and technology, a food source for students and local food banks and a place that connects the CPP campus to the wider community.
The agrivoltaics project also builds on Spadra Farm’s role as a long-standing site for agriculture teaching, research and student learning.
“At an undergraduate level, our students are doing some pretty cutting-edge research,” Orr said. “At many universities, this would only be done by graduate students.”
Students, faculty and staff can visit the agrivoltaics site at Spadra Farm, located about one mile from CPP’s campus near the intersection of Valley Boulevard and West Temple Avenue. The farm is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Feature image courtesy of Pitzer College