Farmland

Harford needs wise voting Having served on the county's Planning Advisory Board for four years, it is my hope that voters will realize the importance of their vote this election cycle. The county government is revamping our zoning code. [Military base realignment] is here. Comprehensive rezoning also will be on the county's agenda once again. We have three seats on the seven-member County Council up for grabs. It only takes four votes to make things happen. There will be a least three members who will be new at the job. Council President Robert Wagner must remain.

Restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay will require a healthy agricultural economy in the region, according to a new report by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that encourages all Marylanders - including city dwellers - to take a role in the effort to maintain farmland. "The loss of farms and forest land endangers the fabric of rural life, local economies and the health of the region's rivers, streams and the Chesapeake Bay," says the report, which was written by Lee Epstein, director of the foundation's lands program.

The world is as still as the pickets that line a winding path to Mary Kinder's mammoth farm. The two-story Cape Cod is boarded up, the white dairy barn is closed and few cattle remain for the caretaker to watch over. Just off Sudley Road in West River, Henry and Mary Kinder spent a generation raising cattle and growing old together on about 400 acres of rolling fields. All along, they resolved to protect this place at the headwaters of Rockhold Creek, to keep the encroaching hustle and bustle from knocking on their front door.

High farmland prices - already considered the biggest threat to the future of Maryland agriculture - are continuing to rise as land becomes scarcer. Driven by one of the hottest real estate development markets in the nation, Maryland farmland value rose 12.7 percent last year to $8,900 an acre, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey. That figure is for land that is sold and continues to be used for farming, an increasingly uncommon scenario in Maryland, say state agriculture officials.

Wicomico County is quickly losing its farmland to development and is doing a poor job managing growth, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation says in a report to be released today. The report, "Vanishing Lands: The Erosion of Rural Character in Wicomico County," looks at the pressure for growth in the county and offers solutions for preserving more rural land. The Lower Eastern Shore county, which includes Salisbury, is growing at a faster rate than the state of Maryland overall and is allowing much of the development to occur in areas that are outside designated growth corridors.

The Robey administration's plans to double the top price per acre the county will pay farmers to preserve their land appears headed for County Council approval, though several council members worry it could spark a price war with developers. Meanwhile, another thorny farm issue has surfaced - whether adult children of farmers who help work the land can build and occupy tenant houses on the family's property. That is due for more discussion at the council's work session next week. The shift from the current top price of $20,000 an acre to $40,000 for prime farmland is intended to "entice property owners to come into the program," Joy Levy, the county's agricultural preservation administrator, testified at a council public hearing this week.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a group of Dorchester County farmers filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging the county's decision to allow a $1 billion resort, conference center and 3,200 homes on environmentally sensitive land near the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The petition, filed in Dorchester County Circuit Court, asks for a review of the County Council's decision of Feb. 21 to allow a change in a designation for 313 acres of farmland from a "resource conservation area" to an "intensely developed area."

SNOW HILL -- Residents of this Eastern Shore town of 2,500 voted overwhelmingly yesterday to annex 1,000 acres of farmland, clearing the way for a development of more than 2,000 homes that could double or triple Snow Hill's population over the next decade. The 584-82 vote, tallied within a half-hour after the polls closed, gave Mayor Stephen R. Mathews and the three-member Town Council the kind of decisive victory he said shows widespread support in the Worcester County seat for the unprecedented development at the southern end of town.

THE ISSUE: Do you favor the proposal by Howard County officials to nearly triple -- to $36.5 million -- the amount the county is willing to spend on agricultural preservation and to double the maximum price per acre -- to $40,000 -- it will pay to keep its remaining farmland from sprouting new homes? YOUR VIEW: Send e-mail responses by Thursday to howard.speakout@baltsun.com. A selection of responses will be published Sunday. Please keep your responses short and include your name, address and telephone number.

Over the years, the relationship between Maryland's agricultural community and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has been chilly, to put it charitably. The two sides have been on opposite sides of the fence on an array of issues. And it is no exaggeration to say that the foundation and farm groups excoriated each other as recently as the late 1990s during the debate over whom to blame for the outbreaks of toxic Pfiesteria piscicida in waterways flowing into the bay. But more recently the relationship has been undergoing a thaw, and many in the farm community are attributing it to the efforts of Kim Coble, the foundation's Maryland executive director.