Harvesting food and energy for a more resilient nation.

Midwest Agrivoltaics for Resilient Communities (MARC) is a regional incubator seeking to enhance the economic and energy resilience of rural communities across the Midwest. The region's agricultural economies and energy infrastructure are increasingly vulnerable to weather extremes such as hailstorms, heat, and wind events, which also cause disproportionately high numbers of power outages in rural areas. MARC is a new Regional Resilience incubator funded by the National Science Foundation and based at Purdue University with support from the Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future.

Agrivoltaics integrates of solar energy production with agriculture. This rapidly emerging approach to land use has vast potential to transform the prosperity and resilience of rural communities by diversifying income streams and reducing power outages. But agrivoltaics are new and stakeholders face many challenges and uncertainties. Overcoming these obstances requires trust and objective information. MARC brings together community, agriculture, and energy partners, the initiative will quantify extreme weather risks, identify viable agrivoltaics pathways, and develop community-supported tools and economic models to evaluate the benefits of these systems.

The project will culminate in a dynamic agrivoltaics roadmap and a framework for policy and planning, fostering partnerships to support widespread adoption and help rural communities thrive.