Keeping farming viable in a changing world

Our Opinion

Friday, Feb. 20, 2009

With the tobacco buyout beginning in 1999, just about every tobacco farmer in the region was left looking for different ways to make use of their knowledge and their land. We have seen an influx of corn mazes and pumpkin patches — all part of a segment of farming known as "agritourism."

And many farmers are investing a good amount of money and time in grapes. It takes years of growing the vines before the first crop is useful. The state has supplied help, through initiatives to educate current and potential grape farmers on how to sustain the crop. More help has come in the form of grants — close to $400,000 between 2005 and 2008. Those grants have gone to research, promotion and expansion of vineyards and wineries.

About $65,000 has gone to help 27 grape growers buy vines. Free advice is being given by a viticulture expert and plant pathologist at the University of Maryland, also paid for by state grant money.

Our neighbors to the south are pitching in as well, to help the Southern Maryland Wine Grower's Cooperative set up the Port of Leonardtown Winery in an old State Highway Administration garage in town. The town has donated the building, and the county government has budgeted money to support the project, with most of that going to help renovate the building. The co-op is raising additional money.

Why is the government investing so much to help a private cooperative of growers start a business? Because the government systematically and deliberately killed the tobacco market that had sustained Southern Maryland farms for hundreds of years. They killed tobacco by paying farmers for 10 years not to grow it, using money from a settlement with tobacco companies.

Now that the 10 years of tobacco payments are almost over, the trick is to keep farm land as farm land. And if that land does not remain productive, it could be swallowed up by development.

The government's stake is an investment in a cooperative that, if successful, will expand to include many more growers. The co-op now has 17 members, growing more than 13,000 vines on 20 acres. The hope is to have the new winery ready to start turning grapes into wine late this summer with this year's crop, and have 6,000 gallons of wine ready to market by 2010. Calvert County has seen much growth along this front. There are five wineries up and running that have become popular tourist destinations.

This latest cooperative had been years in the planning, and in the next 18 months or so may begin to pay off.