NEWS
By Ted Shelsby | September 17, 2006
The hot, dry weather during August took a toll on Maryland's soybean harvest, according to a government survey. In its crop production report released this past week, the government reduced its estimated yield for soybeans to 33 bushels per acre, down nearly 20 percent from its prediction of 41 bushels per acre the previous month. The survey was based on field conditions as of Sept. 1 and included information from several hundred farms across the state, said Jeanne McCarthy-Kersey, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's statistics service for Maryland.
NEWS
By Anne Haddad and Anne Haddad,SUN STAFF | December 5, 1999
Drought has been the bane of many a farmer, but the state's driest summer in 70 years was not as damaging as the global grain market is shaping up to be.Maryland grain farmers managed to come up with a respectable yield from soybeans -- the state's biggest cash crop -- in spite of the drought. The yields are lower than average, but farmers had feared it would be much worse, said Phillip "Chip" Councell, president of the Maryland Grain Producers Association and a Talbot County farmer.The market is exacerbating the impact of lower yields, however.
BUSINESS
By Ted Shelsby and Ted Shelsby,SUN STAFF | April 10, 2001
It's planting time again, but Lawrence Meeks - like many farmers around the state - already is worried. "The grain market is very depressed," Meeks said one day last week as he watched a soft drizzle through his kitchen window. Meeks farms about 3,000 acres in northwest Carroll County. "Nitrogen fertilizer prices have gone through the roof," he said. Said Dan Knopf, deputy statistician for the Maryland Department of Agriculture: "At the beginning of the growing season, everybody wants to be optimistic.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare and Mary Gail Hare,SUN STAFF | November 18, 2003
Keith Warner remembers the last time he took a load of soybeans from his farm in western Carroll County to the port of Baltimore. He spent eight hours in a line of more than 80 trucks, waiting to unload at a barge terminal. "Farmers don't want to get backed up like that," he says. "They have to get back to work on the farm, not wasting a day." But Warner no longer frets about lost productivity, long waits or trekking miles to Baltimore. He's found a better way to get his soybeans to market -- and farmers from as far away as Virginia now bring their crops to him. With a rail line running through his 1,500-acre farm in Keymar and the fertilizer and seed company that he operates there, Warner only had to install a $55,000 conveyor system to get another business off the ground.
NEWS
By Dennis O'Brien and Dennis O'Brien,SUN STAFF | August 20, 1997
Steven J. Britz's soybeans are stuck in the ozone -- literally.Britz, a plant physiologist at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, spent the summer raising soybeans in circular vinyl tents and blasting them with ozone in hopes of reducing the estimated $3 billion in crops lost nationwide each year to ozone pollution.By measuring the pollutant's effects on the hardy green vegetable, experts say, Britz also might help sort out the issues in the debate about curtailing automobile and smokestack pollution that causes ozone.
NEWS
By Mary Gail Hare and Mary Gail Hare,SUN STAFF | November 18, 2003
Keith Warner remembers the last time he took a load of soybeans from his farm in western Carroll County to the port of Baltimore. He spent eight hours in a line of more than 80 trucks, waiting to unload at a barge terminal. "Farmers don't want to get backed up like that," he says. "They have to get back to work on the farm, not wasting a day." But Warner no longer frets about lost productivity, long waits or trekking miles to Baltimore. He has found a better way to get his soybeans to market - and farmers from as far away as Virginia now bring their crops to him. With a rail line running through his 1,500-acre farm in Keymar and the fertilizer and seed company that he operates there, Warner had only to install a $55,000 conveyor system to get another business off the ground.