NEW PALTZ – New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey (D, Saugerties) and SUNY Chancellor John King held an agricultural summit Thursday at SUNY New Paltz that focused on the future and the technology needed to help farming in the state.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity for us to scale some of the programs that are very successful,” said King.
“We have great programs in agriculture at SUNY Cobleskill, SUNY Morrisville and our community colleges. We have to grow those programs, and we have to adapt programs to match merging technologies.”
King and Hinchey moderated a discussion with SUNY and agricultural leaders of how to use drones and support sustainable agriculture, which makes less use of fossil fuels, which are some of that advances that farmers can subscribe to help them in the coming decades.
“This is an exciting time, and this summit is an opportunity to talk about all of those things,” said King.
Hinchey said the state has the tools available to help future farming and that people, technologies and learning institutions need to come together and make it happen.
“It’s to connect the dots and bring people together, to figure out the gaps we need to fill, the funding mechanisms from the state that we need to increase, grow or create,” said Hinchey, “and how we can get our pre-eminent learning system, SUNY, the best in the world, how can we work together to build the jobs of the future.”
