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Local farms are being increasingly affected by climate change. New York can help.

One year it’s unrelenting rain that leaves the fields so muddy that farmers can’t get their tractors out to bale the hay needed to sustain their livestock through the winter. The next, it’s drought that means just a fraction — if that — of the crops that pay the bills.

Welcome to the future that climate deniers insisted was just a fiction, a plot hatched by some global conspirators, including most of the world’s scientists, to perpetrate the greatest hoax of modern times. Except it was no hoax. The real disinformation came from the fossil fuel giants, their shills in right-wing “think tanks” and their allies in conservative media outlets, all determined to persuade the public that climate change was fake news, junk science, or just another political argument.

And here we are, exactly where scientists have warned for years we would be, scrambling to find ways to adapt to changes that might have been mitigated if governments had paid serious attention a few decades ago.

This isn’t some abstract problem on the other side of the world or far off in the future. It’s right now, right here.

As the Times Union’s Melissa Manno describes, we’re seeing one of the worst droughts in some parts of New York in recent memory. Farmers in the Capital Region and the Hudson Valley say fruit is coming in too small to be of much value commercially, crops are wilting, pastures are too parched for grazing. It’s especially hard for smaller farms that lack irrigation — though even if they had it, their ponds in some cases are too low to water the fields.

To think this is temporary might be half-true; next year could bring too much rain. The erratic behaviors of a changing climate are hard to predict with enough precision. If there’s a pattern, it’s that extremes may be the new normal. That’s bad for everyone, from the individual farmer to a country with more than 330 million mouths to feed.

The blithe answer from deniers turned sort-of-believers is, “Oh, we’ll just adapt.” And we likely will. Studies show that as agriculture yields are declining in parts of the U.S. Midwest, East and South, they’re rising in the Northwest. Food production may shift over time to northern states and southern Canada.

But that’s of no help to farmers struggling to keep their operations running here. This is where New York state can offer a hand.

Just as climate change didn’t happen overnight, this geographical shift for agriculture won’t, either. The state should look at ways to help farms stay viable for at least the near future, with such things as irrigation grants, research and guidance on potential new crops, and development of markets for them. With all the billions it spends on economic development with questionable results, this seems like money that would be far better spent.

And the state should stay committed to the goals it set forth in the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, setting an example for the rest of the country, even the world. And ignore the deniers — or skeptics, or whatever these charlatans are calling themselves these days — as they try to slow the momentum toward more sustainable green energy. They poison the well, even as it’s running dry.

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