A poster on display during an open house on a 40-megawatt solar project shows the Close Brothers Farm in Mayfield.

I'm a fifth-generation dairy farmer in the town of Mayfield, Fulton County. My family has worked the land that overlooks Great Sacandaga Reservoir since 1879. We were here 63 years before the reservoir was even created, and before anyone drew a boundary line around the Adirondack Park. Staying here has never been a business decision. It's who we are.

Recent news stories have said the largest permitted solar project in the Adirondack Park is "on hold." That's true. But the story behind it should make every New Yorker angry — but not at solar, and not at farmers like me.

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In 1978, there were 121 dairy farms in Fulton County. Today, fewer than a dozen. Between 2017 and 2022, New York lost nearly 2,800 farms and over 360,000 acres of farmland, according to the USDA. The state Farm Bureau attributed the vast majority of those losses to the economic........

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