Thank you for highlighting Gov. Hochul’s agriculture proposals in her State of the State speech. (“Hochul announces initiatives aimed at boosting food supply chain,” Jan. 10).

It is helpful to realize that supply chains don’t exist only for manufactured products like automobiles and computer chips. The agricultural supply chain touches everything from the land and the people who work it, until fresh food reaches dinner tables and lunch boxes in New York and beyond. Adding markets – such as state agencies -- for our locally grown food makes a lot of sense. Food that doesn’t travel thousands of miles on trucks will also be fresher, tastier, and better for the environment.

Protecting our environment is necessary to the long-term health of New York’s agricultural economy. Our farmers are on the front lines of climate change, with their crops vulnerable to longer droughts, hotter summers, too much rain, more severe storms and new pests arriving as Earth’s climate warms.

New York’s climate policies are already helping farmers. Thanks to the expedited process of the Office of Renewable Energy Siting, farmers can more quickly lease their less-productive land for wind and solar power development. These wind and solar installations provide welcome income to the landowners and are beacons of hope to all of us. They provide the clean energy that New York needs to heat our homes, power our industries and fuel our vehicles, so we can phase out burning the fossil fuels that are the primary drivers of the climate crisis.

Farmers have always been at the mercy of weather – but climate change adds a long-term, existential threat to New York’s land and the people who work it. I applaud Gov. Hochul for her bold initiatives to help both agriculture and climate. Keep it up!