LETTER TO THE EDITOR<\/p>\n
New York can grow clean energy without sacrificing farms<\/p>\n
Ethan Winter, Saratoga Springs<\/p>\n
Farmers face challenges every day \u2014 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\u2019s efforts to accelerate clean energy and support agriculture can complement one another \u2014 but that will require changes in how utility-scale solar is built out.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cagrivoltaics,\u201d which integrates livestock, forage or crop production with energy generation.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I commend the state for investing in applied research and agrivoltaics demonstration projects \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
The writer is the National Smart Solar Director for the American Farmland Trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER TO THE EDITOR New York can grow clean energy without sacrificing farms Ethan Winter, Saratoga Springs Farmers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,28334,6896],"class_list":{"0":"post-49001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-cardicle","12":"tag-letters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}