How is climate change impacting NY? Cornell researchers and industry experts weigh in

New York State recently released its Climate Impacts Assessment, which breaks down how climate change will impact the state economy, with some help from Ithaca’s Ivy League University, Cornell.

A team of nine climate scientists and industry experts — including two Cornell researchers, Deborah Aller and Allison Chatrchyan — authored the agriculture chapter of the report, which warns how warmer winters and greater heat stress for animals and crops, among many other emerging environmental factors, will increase production costs.

The report called climate change a “threat multiplier” for the state’s farmers, many of whom were already facing tight profit margins and labor shortages and projects that average temperatures will increase in all regions of the state by about 5 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, making New York’s climate more like Virginia’s by 2030.

In a very high emissions scenario, the study projects the possibility of New York City's Climate in 2080 morphing into the humid, high-temperature environment a state like Mississippi might be used to, about 1,200 miles southwest of the Empire State.

How could this effect farmers, economy?

Warmer temperatures contribute to conditions that allow invasive species and pests to spread, increase drought risk, and stress animal species that need a colder climate, according to the report. It also generally leads to longer growing seasons and could increase yields for certain crops.

The United States Department of Agriculture also recently released data suggesting New York’s farms are dropping off the map more and more as the state’s climate worsens. Nearly 5,000 farms in the state have closed since 2012.

“Agriculture is a major economic driver in the Empire State and we cannot sit idly by as local family farms we know and love continue to shut their doors due to misguided proposals moved hastily through the state’s chaotic legislative process,” Justin Wilcox, executive director of New York economic growth group Upstate United, said in a statement Tuesday. “These numbers should be a wake-up call to state leaders that New York farms need help – and they need it now,”

On top of the potential burdens passed down by newly adopted state laws, upstate farms have seen a near 50% increase in labor and other production costs between 2017 and 2022, officials said.

“Costs related to everyday tasks on farms, like fuel and feed, have seen significant increases as well,” Wilcox said.

The cost of the industry, to the industry

Assembly member Anna Kelles, D - Freeville, spoke to Jeff Williams, director of Public Policy at the New York Farm Bureau about struggles in the industry during an assembly meeting in Albany on Feb 7.

“I hear all the time, ‘less regulation for farmland’ but I get a little frustrated because I see the industry. Like Caterpillar (CAT) and John Deere saying ‘you can't actually lift the hood on your tractor or you can lose your insurance, you have to send it to us so we can do it and it’s like 5 times more expensive,’” Kelles said.

She’s referring to the farmers right to repair, a heated issue in the New York agriculture industry over the past few decades.

Farmers in the United States got a sigh of relief this January in the form of a memorandum of understanding signed by the American Farm Bureau and Deer & Co., the company behind John Deere, a leader in the farming equipment and vehicle industry.

The document addresses many of the issues that farmers had with previous policies from the company and will equip farmers with more tools and information to repair and maintain their own John Deere equipment without paying for maintenance by the company, according to Dave Gilmore, a senior vice president at Deere & Co.

Kelles also brought to question industrial practices surrounding patented seeds and the waste that’s generated when companies do not follow through on planned purchases from smaller farms. For example, in the Dairy industry, farmers often sell their milk at a price dictated through industry contracts.

“Farmers have always gotten into farming because they want to plant crops and they want to milk cows. The frustration is that now they have to be a HR manager at the same time, they have to be an environmental scientist, they have to be a seed purchaser, and so it’s like death by a thousand cuts,” Williams said.

“They’re in the office every day with a big binder instead of out in the fields, and the industry creates those problems as well,” he continued. “The right to repair issue is a real thing for farmers when it comes to tractors, and farmers to a certain extent can choose the seed they want to grow, but legal contracts don’t always allow them to save their seeds.”

This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: Climate change in New York: Effects on farmers and the economy