Boesch, who has studied coastal restoration efforts worldwide, says he's unaware of any that achieved significant improvements without stricter farm controls than Maryland has. Denmark, for instance, has cut in half the nutrient pollution from its sizable farming industry by requiring farmers to take specified steps as a condition of getting any crop subsidies, he said.
But the head of the Maryland Farm Bureau says farmers are already taking steps to control pollution and the state should look elsewhere to help the bay. "We've done our share," says Michael Phipps, a Calvert County farmer and the Farm Bureau president.
Phipps points out that raising food is a chancy and difficult business. If farmers are faced with onerous government regulation, he predicts, many would just quit and sell their land to developers. "Farmers have enough worries," he says.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the largest environmental group in the region, has split with other activists in supporting a cooperative approach with farmers. It has for several years lobbied hard for financial programs to encourage farmers to curtail polluted runoff voluntarily. Partly as a result, the emphasis in government discussion of farm pollution has shifted to increasing money for such programs.
The best way to get farmers to adopt pollution controls "is to have the farmer want to do them and be able to do them," says William C. Baker, the bay foundation president.
The O'Malley administration has more than doubled, to $18 million, the total the state will pay farmers to plant "cover crops" - grains, such as oats and barley, planted to soak up fertilizer left in a field after the primary crop has been harvested. The administration also plans to use some of a new $25 million "bay trust fund" to help farmers to reduce pollution.
Even more money to promote conservation could be on the way from Congress, which authorized $400 million over the next 10 years to be paid to farmers in the six-state bay region. It's not clear whether that money will survive efforts by the Bush administration and some in Congress to cut it.
With more state money being offered to farmers, some are suggesting that it's time to demand more of them.
"You need both a carrot and a stick," says Gerald Winegrad, former state senator from Annapolis, who says that the millions already paid out to farmers over the years to get them to control pollution voluntarily have had no measurable effect. "If you only have carrots, the bay is going to continue to decline."
