The lush snapdragons and hothouse tomatoes that Tommy Albright grows bring in more profit than the melons, more than the beef, more than the hay. The greenhouses he has built in the last five years are keeping this third-generation Baltimore County farmer on the land.
Maryland grain farmers were still reeling from low prices three years in a row when 1999 hit them with the driest summer in 70 years, one that stunted their crops.
Prices show no sign of improving -- although the demand for corn could rise if Congress passes clean-air legislation that would lead to wider use of ethanol, a gasoline additive made from grain, said Keith Collins, chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Hope also remains in a thriving broiler industry on the Eastern Shore that provides a constant market for local grain, he said.
And for farmers willing to jump into something new, Maryland's greenhouse and nursery industry has grown the most rapidly of all agricultural categories, meeting the populous Mid-Atlantic region's demand for shrubs, bedding plants and cut flowers.
"From a major-crop point of view, markets are very weak," Collins said. "Soybeans are in the 30th consecutive month of decline -- so we're not even at the bottom yet."
In 1999, 550 million bushels of corn was used to produce ethanol. Depending on whether legislation is passed that would require the use of more ethanol in gasoline, as much as 1 billion bushels of corn could be sold for such use, Collins said. It's an issue surfacing in Congress, as well as among presidential candidates.
"But no bill has moved yet," Collins said. "That will be a debate in 2000."
U.S. crop and livestock farmers got relief through an all-time high of $23 billion in direct payments from the federal government during 1999, Collins said. In addition to existing programs, Congress passed emergency measures to provide $9 billion for disaster aid. Some of that was disbursed in 1999, but some will be paid in 2000 as more losses are documented over the next few months, Collins said.
Albright, the Baltimore County farmer, expanded his Monkton-area vegetable and beef farm to include more greenhouse plants five years ago. He supplies local florists and grows tomatoes to sell along with other vegetables at his produce market in Jacksonville, in northeast Baltimore County.
"It's just grown tremendously," Albright said. "That's the one bright spot. It will last until enough people get into it and the market is saturated."
