Farm Program Could Get Plowed
by Dave Wilson

A report on the program released last week by the American Farmland Trust shows that after receiving no funding from the Maryland legislature in 2003, there is a chance in the 2004 budget debate that land conservation will again be eschewed.

This is perplexing considering the strong bipartisan support programs like this and Rural Legacy have received over the past half-decade. What is particularly attractive about MALPF is that its voluntary easements require land to remain in crop production. It is created for and run by farmers in each Maryland County. And the latent benefit of protecting the state’s agricultural base is the protection of the wildlife habitat that it provides— 217,460 acres on 1,551 properties since the Maryland legislature created the program in 1977.

The Farmland Trust’s report shows too that in three of the past four years MALPF protected more agricultural land than was converted to other uses. This, in turn, has given farmers the financial incentives to stay in business and to protect the nearly $2 billion market value of the state’s agricultural products.

During the 2002 legislative session, the General Assembly passed a resolution that aimed to protect a million acres of farmland by 2022. The resolution states that “It is generally essential to Maryland’s economic and environmental stability and growth... to preserve large, contiguous areas of prime and productive agricultural land.” In other words, if agricultural economies fall below critical mass in production, then the profitability of the disjointed leftovers becomes impossible. Of course, the same could be said for the livability of wildlife on the shore’s farms and forests. Fragmented habitat yields subsequent extirpation.

The kicker here is that this is one program that unites farmers and environmentalists and makes no demand on landowners who are not interested in participating. This should be reason enough to heed the report’s recommendation to convince the 2004 General Assembly to at least allocate 17 percent of the state’s Program Open Space Funding from the real estate transfer tax to MALPF. The report also recommends funding the annual $26 million needed to meet the state’s farmland protection goal set for 2022.

But financial support is not enough. Representation in other sectors could help policymakers massage their sometimes myopic ideologies. In particular, the American Farmland Trust would like to see agricultural representation on the Maryland Economic Development Commission to help establish economic development policy which encourages the retention of agricultural operations in Maryland.

Counties need to step up to the plate also by retaining strong agricultural zoning or correcting zoning to keep farming profitable. Worcester County has been at the forefront by matching funds for both MALPF and Rural Legacy. It’ s neighbors have not been so generous.

For some counties or the state to sit back and watch their cultural and natural heritage be paved away would be a travesty. Now is the time to tell state legislators and county officials that farmland conservation should be a priority— if not for themselves, at least for the people and other living things that will follow.