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American Farmland Trust's projects in Maryland enlist farmers, environmentalists, urbanites and rural dwellers—all the people who must work together if agriculture is to have a chance.
 We received a $650,000 grant to support the Mid-Atlantic Clean Water Initiative which will implement the BMP Challenge for Reduced Nitrogen in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
American Farmland Trust launched the Mid-Atlantic Clean Water Initiative to help farmers enhance their nutrient management and reduce high nutrient levels that impair local and regional water quality. The new project has started with a $650,000 Conservation Innovation Grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grant was part of a $5 million fund specifically for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. By working with producers in the field and at the policy level, AFT hopes to reduce between 200,000 and 270,000 pounds of nitrogen and set the stage to expand the program in each state over three years.
Maryland and the bay states of Pennsylvania and Virginia have undertaken significant efforts to improve their waterways.
Though all life needs nutrients to grow, too much of a good thing harms aquatic life in local streams and grand estuaries, the nurseries for most ocean fish.
To clean up our water, we need to reduce nutrients at their sources:
- farmland, fertilizers and manure
- municipal sewage systems that must expand due to growing populations
- and
the great American lawn where fertilizers (often applied at rates much higher than needed) run off into storm drains
Here is what Maryland is doing to help:
- In 2008 legislators passed the Chesapeake Bay Trust fund, providing $25 million in the first year and $50 million annually thereafter to address the needs of agriculture and municipalities to implement sound environmental practices.
- The so-called “Flush Tax” was passed in 2004, imposing a $2.50 a month fee on sewer bills and a $30 annual fee on septic system owners. Funds are distributed to utilities to upgrade wastewater treatment plants, to upgrade or replace failing septic systems and to provide financial assistance to farmers to help plant cover crops to prevent nutrient runoff from agricultural land.
- Maryland Department of Agriculture has a new education program encouraging homeowners to take tips from farmers about how to manage their land. For example, homeowners are encouraged to apply fertilizers at the rates based on soil tests just as farmers do in this new fact sheet. Check out the full “Backyard Actions for a Cleaner Chesapeake Bay.”
Land fragmentation and foreign competition for local products are a few of the many pressures threatening agriculture in Maryland and the land base that supports it. The Statewide Plan for Agricultural Policy and Resource Management addresses these challenges and establishes a strategic plan for the future of agriculture across the state. AFT helped create the plan that culminates a 15-month process of surveys, listening sessions across the state, and the Governor's Agricultural Forum. In December 2007, the implementation committee report reveals 100 of the plan’s 109 recommendations have either been completed or are being worked on by some 34 different offices, departments and non-profits. According to the The Delmarva Farmer, the plan could be a vehicle of change, "In the broad sense, in the broadest sense, agriculture needs to keep it cool, it needs to keep focused. These are historic times. We have never been here before.
Maryland farmers will need direction, guideposts, if you will. 'The Plan' could point the way."
Forging new links between the Mid-Atlantic's urban and rural constituencies is one of many components of a strategy to sustain a thriving resource-based economy on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Developed by AFT for the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy with funding from the Maryland Center for Agro-Ecology, Inc., the strategy offers a model for other communities where commodity-based agriculture and other resource-based enterprises must adapt to globalization and development pressure.
Read Innovation and Tradition on Maryland’s Eastern Shore [PDF]
The goal of this project is to work with a few Maryland farmers to test methods to reduce nutrient applications without negatively affecting the economics of farming. Corn farmers who have implemented a certified Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) and would like to try more aggressive nutrient management techniques or farmers that recently were required to revise their NMP due to new phosphorus regulations or changes in their farming operation can receive a yield guarantee through a special pilot project being initiated by American Farmland Trust. more
Download the Fact Sheet [PDF]
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and AFT undertook a joint effort to assess the condition of the region’s open space assets, past and present attempts to conserve them, and the effects that a coordinated green network might have on future growth.
Read Conserving the Washington-Baltimore Region’s Green Network:
The Time to Act is Now [PDF]
AFT initiated the Delmarva Farmland Strategy Project to bring new tools to communities that are struggling to accommodate change and growth while retaining a profitable agricultural sector. Included in the project are a suite of low-cost studies using each community's financial, land use and economic records and statistics to bring a local perspective to decisions about land use, fiscal and economic issues. These tools can change the dialogue in a community from speculation to projection and from emotion to analysis. more
American Farmland Trust (AFT) conducted an evaluation of MALPF because—at 26 years—it is one of the oldest and most respected farmland protection programs in the country. AFT wanted to find out if MALPF has met the goals outlined by the General Assembly and to provide recommendations to help it become more effective in meeting these goals in the future. more
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Chesapeake Bay States Tackle Water Quality Issues 