How the oil capital of the US welcomed a solar power boom

Steve Cargil's family has farmed the flat, dry land around Uvalde, a small city in southwest Texas, since 1953.

Cargil, 67, had always assumed that one of his three children would eventually take it over, the way he had from his father.

But that assumption took a hit one night in 2018 after a violent hailstorm.

Cargil and his son, Ryan, had spent months nursing crops of cabbage and onions to harvest. Then a storm rolled through and destroyed them overnight.

"I remember my son saying, 'Dad, I just don't know if I can do this. You do everything right, and we work so hard, and you come out one morning and it's all gone'," Cargil says.

Cargil's farm was at risk of ending with him, he says, with none of his three children wanting to farm full time. For years, that left him wondering what would happen to the land, and to his own retirement, since farmers rarely have a pension to fall back on.

Then in 2001 Cargil signed a deal to lease 600 acres of his land, about a quarter of the total, to a company called OCI Energy which built a vast solar farm.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that a solar project would be on my farm," Cargil says. Looking back now, he calls it a blessing.