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June 27, 2025
Agriculture is a major industry in the Chesapeake Bay; consequently, increasing agricultural sustainability is a key component of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay’s mission. Since the Alliance’s founding in 1971 , our work with farmers and rural landowners has expanded to include projects in every watershed state with teams based in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. In each region and industry, the Alliance works to introduce relevant conservation practices that reduce pollution while making farmers’ jobs easier. All of this critical work is informed by the immense geographic, cultural, and historical diversity of the Chesapeake Watershed.
Beginning before European colonization, Maryland has long been a farming state, and remains so despite the increasing growth of Baltimore and Washington after the Second World War. Though smaller than her neighbors to the north or south, Maryland’s farming economy is no less diverse nor impressive. Today, Marylanders can count on our farmers to produce a wide array of signature crops, from poultry and produce on the Eastern Shore to apple butter and ice cream in Frederick and Washington Counties. Behind the scenes, Maryland farmers are conservation minded and forward looking, drawing on our state’s connection with the Chesapeake to improve on-farm water quality and protect their fields and forests from suburban development. Through multiple partnerships with cooperators across the state, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay helps farmers and rural landowners implement best practices that have a win-win effect, improving their own farming operations while simultaneously safeguarding the health of the Chesapeake as a whole.
Dairy cows rest in a compost bedded pack barn, a common pollution reduction practice, on a Carroll County farm.
Of the states in the Chesapeake watershed, Maryland’s agricultural economy is the smallest. Over 350,000 people are employed within the agricultural sector accounting for over $8 billion in total economic activity and $3 billion in total farm product sales. Almost half of this economic activity is attributed to the poultry industry, which dominates the landscape of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Grains, nursery crops and sod, milk, and vegetables round out the remaining top-five spots.
Maryland farms truly have a little bit of everything. On the Eastern Shore, poultry production is king, but nurseries, greenhouses, and fresh produce growers have been thriving in recent years. Meanwhile, the Western Shore, Piedmont, and Western Maryland regions are incredibly diverse. Farms range from holdout tobacco growers, horse farms, Howard, and Baltimore counties, and family-owned dairies. Throw in a smattering of orchards, vineyards,, and grain and cattle operations, and one has a decent picture of Maryland’s agricultural landscape.
Historic tobacco barns, like this one in St. Mary’s County are common throughout Southern Maryland.
Because of Maryland’s unique geography, the history and culture of Maryland’s farming community is highly regional in nature. Along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, native peoples grew corn, squash, beans, and cleared land to improve hunting for centuries before European colonization. When the first settlers arrived at St. Mary’s City in 1634, they quickly set about establishing tobacco plantations and imported enslaved workers from Africa to run them.
As they expanded westward from the Chesapeake, the farm economy diversified into small grain, beef, dairy, and orchards to support the growing cities of Washington and Baltimore. Emancipation, the end of the Civil War, and growing mechanization transformed farming in the Chesapeake, breaking up the large plantations lining both shores and reducing the need for labor. Beginning in the 1920’s, chicken houses sprang up across the Eastern Shore, while dairy boomed on the other side of the Bay.
Today, Maryland’s farming community is undergoing a new transformation. Smaller farms are consolidating with larger neighbors and new direct-to-consumer markets are emerging for farm products like locally-raised beef and eggs or pick-your-own fruit and vegetables.
This shift to local markets is shaped by a broader cultural history that draws on traditional Maryland farm products. On the Eastern Shore, poultry houses dominate the landscape, with the Delmarva peninsula as a whole producing more than 600 million broilers every year.
The Eastern Shore is also known for its roadside produce stands, where beach-bound travelers stop in search of white-kerneled sweet corn known popularly as “silver queen”. St. Mary’s County, on the opposite shore of the Bay is home to the Southern Maryland stuffed ham. Stuffed with spicy red pepper, black pepper, cabbage and kale from local farms, stuffed ham blends English country ham with a preparation method developed by enslaved people laboring on the region’s tobacco plantations.
Northwards in Frederick City, local apples are used to produce the famous McCuttcheon’s apple butter. Filling neighborhoods with aromas of apples, cinnamon, and sugar. Another famous Maryland product, Old Bay, hails from Baltimore, and was first blended by German-Jewish immigrant Gustav Brunn, and pairs well with just about everything, including stuffed ham, sweet corn, and crabs. Bridging the entire state is a more recent Maryland tradition, the Maryland Ice Cream trail. Fourteen Maryland dairies constitute the trail, with each location offering home-made ice cream and other frozen treats.
Like our famous farm products, the culture of Maryland’s farming community is also deeply rooted in the history and landscape of the Chesapeake region as a whole. More than any other state in the watershed, Maryland is dominated by the Chesapeake Bay; it physically cleaves the state in two, separating the more-developed, hilly Western Shore from the lowlying, rural, Eastern Shore.
Agriculture conservation practices have long been a priority in Maryland due to the effect that modern agriculture has on the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland farmers were among the first in the region to adopt widespread no-till and cover-cropping practices, and nutrient management planning. Last year, Maryland reached its benchmark goal to protect 30% of the state’s land from development. As a whole, many farmers view these conservation practices as a way to improve their operation now, while protecting it for future generations.
Alliance team members speak with the Trossbach family in St. Mary’s County to plan a shoreline restoration project on their farm.
Leveraging Maryland’s own history of conservation agriculture, the Alliance works with farmers to implement a variety of Best Management Practices that have positive effects on both the health of the watershed and farms’ own bottom lines.. In Maryland, we work with a wide variety of partners, ranging from farmer-owned cooperatives like Maola Local Dairies to trade groups like the Delmarva Chicken Association, as well as many other partner organizations, funders, and government agencies.
Through our partnership with Maola, Alliance team members work with dairy farmers to improve their operation while protecting water quality and enhancing the local environment. The vast majority of Maola farms in Maryland are small, family-owned operations, which can make modernizing their operation difficult due to limited resources and slim margins. By combining our own funding sources and additional partners like Giant Foods, we have been able to fund practices like covered manure storage, modern calf barns, and modern composting barns that keep nutrients and sediments out of Maryland’s waterways.
On the Eastern Shore, we work with Delmarva Chicken Association to plant runoff-reducing forest buffers around poultry farms, while pursuing funding for manure storage and composting technologies that reduce nutrient runoff and fish-killing “dead zones”.
“It’s been great working with the Delmarva Chicken Association, getting to know their growers’ conservation needs and helping them address them. Our partnership with DCA is a continuation of our brand of industry-led conservation. By partnering with industry, we are able to gain the trust of growers as we can demonstrate we are working towards finding solutions that will benefit them.” – Tyler Walston, Maryland Agriculture Projects Coordinator, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
In Montgomery, Howard, Baltimore, and Prince George’s Counties pick your own produce farms are popular weekend destinations for tourists.
Drawing on a long history of conservation agriculture, Maryland’s farming community is well equipped to continue its conservation efforts. Through our strong and growing partnerships, the Alliance is proud to play a part in safeguarding both the future of Maryland agriculture, and the health of the Chesapeake as a whole. Next time you stop at an Eastern Shore produce stand, enjoy a delicious ice cream cone from a Maryland dairy, or pick out a Maryland-raised product at your local grocery store, know that your choice directly benefits Maryland’s farming community and helps support their own conservation efforts.
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