Every serious proposal for Punjab's agriculture involves taking area out of paddy. The candidates are maize, cotton, pulses, oilseeds, horticulture, agroforestry and fodder for a larger dairy sector.
Each has been piloted. Each fails at the same point: there is no assured buyer at an assured price, and a farmer with a debt cannot carry the risk of finding out.
The alternatives that do not require a market at all are being discussed: paying farmers directly to grow less water-intensive crops, paying for the water saved, and using land for solar generation, which pays a rent rather than a crop price.
Solar on farmland is contentious because it takes land out of food production, and Punjab's land is among the most productive in the world.
There is no proposal on the table that solves this without the central government changing what it buys. Everything else is a pilot.
Panels raised high enough to farm under change the water balance of the field by shading it, and the crops that work under them are the shade tolerant ones rather than wheat and paddy.
The obstacle in Punjab is not the technology. It is that land is small, fragmented and inherited, and the capital for a solar structure is beyond a household holding.
Punjab's solar capacity is small compared with Rajasthan and Gujarat and most of it is rooftop or canal-top rather than field. The canal-top scheme has been running since 2014 with limited expansion.