LETTER TO THE EDITOR
New York can grow clean energy without sacrificing farms
Ethan Winter, Saratoga Springs
Farmers face challenges every day — from severe weather and turbulent markets to mortgage payments, labor shortages and ensuring their own families have food on the table. They deserve every tool available to protect their farms and livelihoods. If done right, New York’s efforts to accelerate clean energy and support agriculture can complement one another — but that will require changes in how utility-scale solar is built out.
Four years ago, I co-led a survey of New York farmers to better understand their concerns about solar development. We found that while many were motivated by the potential for additional income, they also wanted to help transition their farms to the next generation and explore dual-use solar, or “agrivoltaics,” which integrates livestock, forage or crop production with energy generation.
We have since developed Smart Solar principles to help developers, state agencies and local governments guide solar deployment that maximizes benefits to farming communities. These include strategies to safeguard soils best suited for agriculture and policies that strengthen farm viability.
I commend the state for investing in applied research and agrivoltaics demonstration projects — an important step forward. But if we continue with a business-as-usual approach, tens of thousands of acres of New York farmland could be lost, adding to the 2,000 acres of farmland disappearing from U.S. agriculture each day.
The writer is the National Smart Solar Director for the American Farmland Trust.