Rumors have spread anyway.
In August 2025, a public comment from a farmer opposing a project in Kentucky called Wood Duck Solar quoted the Potato Growers of Michigan statement. Potential contamination from the 100-megawatt solar field threatened food safety, the farmer wrote. That project was ultimately approved.
In March 2026, Dennis Iott, the chair of the Potato Growers of Michigan, along with Kelly Turner, executive director of the Michigan Potato Growers Commission, another trade group, repeated the claims at a Michigan House Agriculture Committee hearing.
Solar threatens potato growers because the vegetables require a lot of land that farmers often lease in rotational years, but solar groups are buying up that land, Turner said.
“You cannot blame them for signing the solar contracts,” Turner said of the farmers. “The problem is, though, that it takes that land out of production, and now it starts to hurt economies of scale because there’s no more land near the grower to be able to create enough land to have those rotations.”
