On a vast property in Lee County, in the heart of southwest Georgia, Tyler Huber raises sheep.

As the flock grazes, the sheep need somewhere to take a break from the Georgia sun.

“It is incredibly hot, the sun is just unavoidable, and the fact that they’ve got shade every fifteen feet out here — it’s just the ideal environment, to have shade so close,” he said on a recent hot day.

The shade comes from solar panels, using that same relentless sunshine to generate energy. The sheep, in turn, cut down on mowing costs for the solar farm. The flock loves chowing down on the vegetation under and around the panels, Huber said.

Before solar developer Silicon Ranch bought this land, it used to have row crops — mostly corn and cotton — and beehives. Farmers can’t grow corn and cotton under solar panels, but this is still farmland for sheep and bees.

Scenes like this are increasingly common as power companies add more and more solar energy to keep up with rising demand for renewable electricity. Many of those solar panels are being built on farmland. The American Farmland Trust, which tracks the conversion of farmland to other uses, projects that 80 percent of the acreage needed to scale up solar energy could be agricultural land. The trend has given rise to a wave of opposition from local activists to state legislatures and the White House.