COUNTY Executive Janet S. Owens is trying valiantly to preserve the area's agricultural heritage. She has pumped $6 million into the county's agricultural preservation in her first two budgets and has sought -- and gained -- millions more in state Rural Legacy funds.
She deserves credit for trying to save farmland from development pressures pushing southward and eastward.
But a county Ethics Commission ruling is posing a glitch she doesn't need. The commission ruled last month that farmers cannot serve on the county's volunteer agricultural preservation advisory board while participating in the farmland preservation program.
If the law prohibits program participants from serving on the board, as the commission says, the County Council should change it.
The ethics commission guards against conflicts of interest by government officials and government board members whose decisions could benefit them personally. It is an essential task in Anne Arundel County, where public officials can't seem to separate their government duties from their private lives. But a special exception is warranted here. Farmers who would participate in the program are most qualified to sell the concept to their peers.
Saving farmland is a key part of Anne Arundel County's 1997 General Development Plan, and it makes good sense to preserve agriculture in the growing county.
The county now has about 485,000 residents and will cross the 500,000 threshold in five years, according to the Maryland Office of Planning. The state office projects the county's population will reach 537,000 in 2020. Although the county's master plan directs most of the growth in targeted areas, such as northern and western Anne Arundel, development is reaching South County and chewing away at farmland.
Anne Arundel still has a lot of agricultural land worth preserving. In places such as Lothian and Bayard in the county's south, the cornstalks are high, fed by generous doses of rainfall this spring and summer. Tobacco plants are full and healthy (excuse the paradox).
On a warm, sunny summer afternoon, the stench of manure and the picturesque vistas along Routes 408 and 422 give the sense that agriculture lives and thrives.
Ms. Owens, a South County native, realizes that southern Anne Arundel is changing, but she desperately wants to preserve as much farmland as farmers and her budget will allow.
