Regarding “Towns, groups apply for solar fight funds,” revealed Jan. 6 by the Union-Sun & Journal:
Towns and native teams are effectively inside their rights to battle photo voltaic improvement, however their fears of lack of farmland to photo voltaic tasks are wildly exaggerated and misguided. For farmers and their communities, photo voltaic tasks are an excellent, not an evil.
Governor Kathy Hochul, in her State of the State deal with, made her assist for solar energy clear. She known as for one-third of the state to be powered by wind, photo voltaic and hydropower, and for fossil gas crops to be shuttered.
Solar tasks provide farmers regular revenue, preserving their farms alive amidst market volatility and financial disruption. They’re actually solely developed on the land of prepared landowners. Solar tasks may be designed to enhance soil well being, shield pollinators, and cut back runoff and erosion. They additionally provide the twin alternative of agrovoltaics: grazing animals below photo voltaic panels.
Farmland is disappearing not due to photo voltaic tasks, however due to industrial and residential improvement. In all, if all of the solar energy we wanted had been developed on farmland, as a substitute of the commercial websites it is typically destined for, on the broadest doable measure, it could account for just one.8% of New York state’s farmland.
The local weather disaster itself is an existential risk to farming, due to disastrous storms, warming and species loss. We want renewable power. We want photo voltaic.
JAMES CARTER, Warsaw