Agriculture

Workshop focuses on finding tractor for small farm The Maryland Cooperative Extension will hold a workshop with the title "Choosing a Tractor and Equipment for Your Small Farm" from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Central Maryland Research and Education Center in Clarksville. Participants will learn what tools are right for their farm, how to choose the proper size equipment, and how to evaluate used equipment. Workshop leaders will review tractors, tillers, mowers and other implements.

THE U.S. Department of Agriculture is vested with a solemn and crucial mission, although nobody's quite sure what it is, so naturally 55,000 USDA employees are outfitted with government-issued Bank of America charge cards with very high credit limits. A little more than a year ago the USDA's legions were busy propping up sugar prices for American consumers, subsidizing large corporations at the expense of poor farmers in Burkina Faso and otherwise pursuing the cause. Of course, they deployed their plastic to full effect.

A new commission intended to safeguard the profitability of Maryland farming by improving the coordination among government agencies and agriculture groups has been established by the state. The Intergovernmental Commission on Agriculture, made up of members of farm organizations, government agencies and up to 10 citizens, will be charged with ensuring that state agencies work in cooperation with local governments and industry groups in planning and implementing governmental farming initiatives.

He has never owned a John Deere, but Robert L. Walker brings a hefty harvest of administrative experience to his new job as Maryland's third agriculture secretary.He is a past president of the Baltimore City School Board, served as an executive with Esskay, an old-line, Baltimore meat-processing company, and has been the No. 2 guy at the state Agriculture Department since 1987."I've always been on the agri-business side of agriculture," Mr. Walker said. "As a production farmer, no, I haven't had any direct experience at farming."

When Cheng-I Wei came to the University of Maryland in September as dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, his plans for the school rivaled those that Gary Williams brought for the basketball program. "I want to make Maryland one of the top five agricultural research institutions in the nation," the 57-year-old educator said during a recent interview at his second-floor office at Symons Hall on the College Park campus. Wei, who was also named director of the university's Cooperative Extension, arrives as state officials and legislative leaders are looking to the school for guidance on a host of issues, including stemming the rapid decline of farming in Maryland and reducing pollution of the Chesapeake Bay. To address such issues, Wei wants Maryland ranked among the elite agriculture research institutions in the nation, along with the University of California-Davis, the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota and Purdue University.

WESTMINSTER -- Students who never considered taking vocational agriculture have flocked to a new program in Carroll County high schools that offers classes such as wildlife management, landscaping and veterinary medicine -- resulting in a 300 percent jump in the program's enrollment.The program was revamped this year, with about 22 varied classes that are shorter and more specific, said David A. Miller, supervisor of vocational and technology education. Students responded immediately, he said, and at the beginning of school last fall, "enrollment was up about 300 percent -- from 247 last year to 900 signed up this year."

If the state Senate confirms his appointment tomorrow, Maryland's new agriculture secretary will bring to the job the experience of running a family farm that traces its roots back before the Revolutionary War. "I've been a lifelong farmer; my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were farmers," Roger L. Richardson said in one of his first interviews since Gov. Martin O'Malley named him to the post. "We still farm the 60 acres that came into our family in 1767." It is his knowledge and understanding of agriculture, stemming from such a long tradition, along with a love of farming, that the 72-year-old Richardson lists as the major attributes he brings to his new job. His aim, he said, "is to continue the successful initiatives" of his predecessor, Lewis R. Riley, who served as agriculture secretary under three governors before resigning this month.

Data collectors will be knocking on doors across Maryland in coming weeks looking for pigs, goats cows and other animals. Field workers will gather information as part of an annual nationwide survey on land use and agriculture activity. The survey is being conducted for the USDA's National Agriculture Statistics Services, which measures nearly every aspect of farming. Conducted each June, the study "is one of the largest and most comprehensive surveys conducted each year," said Barbara Rater, director of the service's Maryland office, which is based in the state Department of Agriculture building in Annapolis.

Ask a third-grader where milk comes from and you will likely get the same answer over and over again: "From the grocery store. It comes in plastic bottles." "I've heard it many, many times," said George Mayo. "Kids across the state don't relate milk to cows or farms. They don't make the connection between agriculture and the clothes they wear, their shoes and the food they eat." Mayo is out to change that. And that's the thinking behind the colorful license plates, or "ag tags," bearing a farm scene and the slogan, "Our Farms, Our Future."