I sat down with Jeff Risley, who grew up on a wheat farm in western Kansas and spent his career in public affairs with energy developers as clients. One of them asked him why nobody was looking out for the farmers across the table. They had the idea, he built it. Farmers have a group for wheat and one for corn. Now they have one for electrons, and his own family has oil and gas wells on the same ground.
When a developer comes knockin about leasing ground, the farmer is negotiating something he has never done before, against people who do it every day. So Jeff’s group runs the same analysis the developer runs, on the same tools, and hands the landowner a number before the offer comes. What raises that number is not too complicated, like how close you sit to a place the grid can take the power and whether anything on it is protected. “Landowners have way more power than they think,” he told me.
He is just as blunt about how developers give that power back, deciding on a project, announcing it, then defending it when the county pushes back. I have done community engagement in these areas and that is how it goes. He is fair about it too. Some do this well, and some are two guys in a truck.
That and much more in today’s podcast episode.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
01:43 – What REFA does for farmers and ranchers
03:17 – The name, and how energy got politicized
06:41 – What the ground is worth, and what landowners can ask for
12:57 – How Jeff built REFA
18:38 – Membership, pricing, and advocacy
21:32 – Veterans getting into farming
24:20 – What's squeezing farmers, and renewables as a lifeline
28:08 – Regret, and why farmers trust other farmers
29:55 – Getting in without owning land
34:30 – Why developers lose rural communities
38:53 – Social license after the project is built
41:04 – Close, and why the messenger matters
Resources
People & Organizations
Kevin Doffing (LinkedIn)
Project Vanguard (Website - Newsletter - Podcast)
Jeff Risley (LinkedIn)
Other Individuals & Orgs Mentioned
Dahvi Wilson (Siting Clean)
American Solar Grazing Association (Website)
Farm4Profit Podcast (Website)
Policy & Programs
USDA and DOE Solar Energy and Farming Initiatives, including the Farmer Benefit Plan (Department of Energy)
Company & Industry News
Renewable Energy Group Champions Solar on Farms as USDA Presses to Cut Projects (DTN Progressive Farmer)
Why Farmers Built Their Own Renewable Energy Association (Farms.com)
Organization Formed to Help Landowners with Renewable Energy Projects (AgriNews)
As Federal Support for On-Farm Solar Declines, Is Community Agrivoltaics the Future? (Civil Eats)
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