Government boosts conservation incentives for Md. farmers

Government boosts conservation incentives for Md. farmers
By Timothy B. Wheeler

Baltimore Sun
April 24 2009

State and federal officials today announced they are sweetening payments offered to Maryland farmers to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay by taking croplands out of production.

Meeting on a farm near Westminster, Gov. Martin O'Malley and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack signed an agreement to funnel $198 million in federal funds to the state over the next 15 years. The money will allow the government to increase payments to farmers to plant trees rather than crops along streams, fence livestock away from the water and take other steps to curb runoff polluted with fertilizer and pesticides.

"Farmers want to do the right thing, but they also need to feed their families," O'Malley said of the payments. He praised Vilsack and the Obama administration for freeing up the federal funds, which had been approved by Congress last year as part of a new Farm Bill but held up by the Bush administration.

The funds are meant to enhance participation in a 12-year-old federal-state conservation program that already has gotten Maryland farmers to set aside 74,000 acres of croplands and pasture for environmental purposes. Officials say they hope the added financial incentives will increase the set-aside to 100,000 acres. About 8 million trees have been planted statewide along streams under the program.

Of the federal funds, $165 million is to go toward paying farmers rent for leaving croplands fallow for as much as 15 years. Another $33 million is earmarked to help farmers pay for conservation practices such as fencing and watering troughs for livestock to keep them out of streams.

Vilsack, noting that Maryland was the first state to participate in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program when it began in 1997, said that more than 1 million acres of farmland nationwide have been set aside as a result of the government incentives.

The officials kicked off the new program by planting a flowering serviceberry tree on the land of Richard Soper, who raises beef cattle and hay on his 235-acre farm outside Westminster. Last year, with government help and payments, Soper planted 4,000 trees along Little Morgan Run, a stream that feeds into the Patapsco River.

Some farmers have been reluctant to stop growing crops or grazing livestock along stream banks, particularly as prices being paid for corn and other grains have risen. Officials say they hope increasing the government payments will sway more farmers to do what Soper did.

"I believe that taking good farmland out of production to plant a few trees is absolutely a good thing," Soper said.