I want to thank you all for inviting me back. And I want to complement all of you for coming out tonight. I understand we have a record turnout tonight of more than 865 friends and neighbors. Give yourselves a round of applause. (Applause.)
There was another elected official who was here earlier -- he may still be here -- but I wanted to mention his name, because he is also a friend of agriculture, and that is County Executive Jim Smith from Baltimore County. Jim, thank you for all you do for agriculture. (Applause.)
And credit goes to the hardworking people of the Maryland Agriculture Council. I want to thank your president, Skip Piper, and all our members, not only for the hard work that went into tonight, but for all that you do for our farmers.
For 40 years the Council has been one of the strongest voices for one of our leading industries and, Skip, I know this would not have happened by itself. I know that all the credit needs to go to your wife and I want to thank you for that. (Laughter) Skip, round of applause. (Applause.)
I appreciate the opportunity to be with you, I really do. And I also appreciate what you do day in and day out. We cannot have a sustainable future for our State unless we have a sustainable future for farming. In other words, we create a better future for all of Maryland if we do what it takes to make farming more profitable. And you are on the front lines of that. On behalf of all the citizens of our State, let me begin by saying thank you to all of you.
You have not only a record turn-out here tonight, but you also have quite a few elected officials from both sides of the aisle. And why is that? It is because all of us understand that making farming more profitable is not a Democratic or Republican issue, it is something that all of us agree about. We have to make farming more profitable.
President Miller, it’s good to see you, and thank you for your leadership for agriculture. I want to thank Delegate McIntosh, Senator Middleton, Delegate Conway, for their resolve. I also want to thank Senator Dyson and Delegate Cane for leading our incentives for the Agriculture Task Force. And Senator Garagiola, thank you for leading the Alternative Fuels Task Force.
For all our talented and devoted leaders who are here, the strength of our virtuous industry has always been defined by the families that actually make agriculture go. And I can’t thank you all enough. I want to give special thanks and commendation to the Patrick and the Schmidt families who will be inducted into your Hall of Fame. Thank you for your example.
During the course of the last few years, the Lieutenant Governor and I have had an opportunity to travel all around the State. And we have seen the great things that so many of our families are doing in agriculture. And to all of you who are in this room who have opened up your businesses to us, your farms to us, your lives and your families to us, we really want to thank you.
We had some great experiences, so whether it was the Holland family dairy farm in Worcester County or the Marshalls, who are growing their Riverbank Nursery for the third generation, it’s truly great work and it makes our whole State strong. And especially coming from the City of Baltimore, we didn’t have a whole lot of farms left in the City of Baltimore when I was Mayor. So I appreciate the patience that you’ve shown towards me and also your willingness to share your ideas for the things we need to be doing better, the things we need to be doing more of, the things that need to be changed.
Together we have strong leaders in this administration -- people like Secretary Richardson and Deputy Secretary Buddy Hance, who have both done a tremendous job. We are going to do all that we can to make agriculture stronger in Maryland, to take it to the next level -- not only because it’s important, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because our future really depends on it. And also, when we’re faced with great challenges, as Marylanders we stand up.
Roger was in a conference with many other agriculture secretaries from all around the country and was able to stand up and proudly share with our Federal partners the good things that we’re doing here. And some of those cases are way in advance of what other States are doing.
These are not easy times for any of our families, but the best days in life and the most important days in life aren’t always easy days, are they? They’re the days when you pick yourself up off the mat and in the face of great adversity you find a way to build a better future. And that’s what we’re going to do.
Our whole nation is going through an economic downturn, but we’re going to come through it much more quickly than other States in the union because we’re not going to abandon our priorities, we’re going to protect our priorities.
You were talking about good signs of the times and bad signs of the times. A lot of us, Skip, are seeing all the bad signs of the times. For the last seven years, wages have virtually been stagnant in the United States of America while the cost of everything, electric and heat and gas and you name it, has been going up. And families are looking for answers.
Now for our farmers, you also have the added challenges as growth encroaches on our contiguous agricultural tracts and makes it harder to do business. You have building pressures from outside markets, increasingly older farm population, and taken together, farming, in particular, has gone through some rough times, especially coming off of last year’s drought.
But we’re going to move forward. Sustainable agriculture strengthens our rural economies, it keeps our land open and in production, rather than being developed, and it also protects our natural resources, not to mention it puts food on our table. Farming is very, very important to our State. And through years of best practices, through decades of working the land, you have always been our greatest environmental stewards as well.
And in order to keep our farmers doing this important work, to keep that continuous miracle, as Benjamin Franklin used to refer to farming, to keep that going our State has a responsibility to make farming viable and to make it ever more profitable.
If our State is going to have a more sustainable future for our kids and our grandkids, then we must make farming more profitable. And that very plainly is our goal. And that’s what we’re about.
It’s hard to believe, as Lieutenant Governor Brown said to me, that it’s only been a year since we were last here in this very place. But over the course of this last year we’ve done some good things together. We’re not yet where we want to be, but we’re at least moving forward together, and I want to thank all of you for that.
Together more than one third of the recommendations from our agriculture farm report, which serves as our State-wide plan for both agriculture and natural resources, have been completed.
And among those our State is now working to increase profitability through smarter incentives for agriculture, to preserve land for farming while making it more affordable, and to improve the research of best management practices.
Together we fought for and we received USDA Secretarial Disaster Designation after the drought, with an allowance for grazing and the haying of the Conservation Reserve Program Lands. And we believe the declaration will have greater financial benefits, since I’m told Congress recently passed the omnibus bill with an agricultural disaster component in it.
We worked with our Congressional delegation in order to expand our renewable fuel portfolio, to preserve productive farmland and protect our specialty crop and commodity funding programs within the farm bill.
We made record investments in the development of agriculture and resource based industries through MARBIDCO, a favorite of appropriations chair Norm Conway to develop new markets and new outlets for our agricultural products.
In our first two years together, there was an investment of about $6.5 million. In the budget that’s before all of your members of the General Assembly, this year’s investment is $3.5 million and we’re not done yet.
We’ve made large investments in cover crops. In fact, it’s one of the most cost effective ways to protect the Bay and its tributaries. In our first two years together, our investment is six times more than it was in the two years preceding the O’Malley/Brown Administration.
And some of you might have read in the newspaper the discussions going on about the Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund, that it was created in the session that concluded a couple of months ago. It is our hope that through that Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund, we’ll be able to get additional dollars. We have applications right now for approximately $13 million worth of cover crops. And it’s our hope, our fervent hope, members of the General Assembly of both parties, that we will hit $13 million in the upcoming year for cover crops. (Applause)
Now, those are important intangible steps, but we still have a lot more to do. I was talking to the gentleman that does exports for the State of Maryland. Last year our exports -- our overall exports, not just agriculture -- went up by 14 percent. So we’re going to continue to work for new markets.
On land preservation we made a promise in the O’Malley/Brown Administration that we would use open space for the purchase of open space and the other things that go into preserving our farm land. We’re well on our way now to preserving 500,000 acres of farm land that otherwise would have been developed. And this year we’re going to move your work forward by protecting our agriculture preservation programs while we work to harness the coming growth and protect our natural resources.
I want to give my compliments to Kent County, which was named this week by the Progressive Farmer as the best place to live in rural America. How about that? (Applause)
And why is that? It’s because in Kent County they understood that farming is a far better land use than out of control sprawl and development, that it’s what preserves the rural quality of life, as well as the natural beauty of Kent County. And they showed leadership in order to do that.
Another thing that we got done since the last time we were here a year ago, something very important for us to be able to maintain horse related agriculture in our State, is we finally have put to referendum to our neighbors the question of allowing a limited number of slots in our State so that we don’t lose all of the horse related agriculture that’s so very important to our mix. And I ask for your help and I ask you to talk to your neighbors about how important that is and what a help that can be as well. (Applause)
To those from Western Maryland, we had proposed $3.5 million in our budget to cover the immediate needs to treat approximately 100,000 acres for gypsy moth suppression this spring. And in addition, the budget for next year includes approximately $1.4 million of State general funds to restore our ongoing program.
Let me talk for a second, if I may, about the animal feed operations. Last May, our Department of Agriculture and our Department of Environment announced their intention to develop a proposal that will address manure storage and handling, and those requirements are available in draft now, which I hope will give us all a chance to solicit your good ideas or your better ideas now, before we even get to the point of beginning the formal process.
And I want to encourage you to please share your ideas. Don’t look at this as some fait accompli, that it was all done and that’s just the way it is. We really want to do this well and we want to do this right.
And so I encourage you to please share your ideas while we work to improve water quality without harming our farmers at the same time. MDA will consider all of your comments and we also plan to hold several public meetings around our State so that everyone can have a chance to have their questions answered and their ideas heard.
And one last item that Roger asked me to mention was this one. The Department of Agriculture and our Maryland Energy Administration have been working together to do studies in various parts of the State. Last year we initiated that on the Eastern Shore to help farmers find ways to make their operations more energy efficient and save money and the cost and implementation to be covered with Federal and State assistance. And we’re now going this year to Western Maryland.
You all have been very, very kind and I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about the good things we’re doing together. We have a tremendous opportunity in our State, folks. We really, really do. What all of you are doing to make farming profitable, to defend farming and, thereby, defend our quality of life in Maryland is no small thing.
You hear the buzz term a lot these days about sustainability of the land we use, the water we use, the energy, therefore, the air that we use. That more sustainable future is probably one of the biggest moral issues facing us not only as a country or as a State, but probably also as a planet.
And your leadership, the work you do, is very, very important if we are going to be able to pass on this State and this nation and this planet to our kids in a better condition than we inherited it ourselves.
On our seal since 1853 has been the plowman and the fisherman in harmony together. That’s who we are as Marylanders. We are by right and by necessity and by talent in front of other States when it comes to making a better future and that’s been true since Revolutionary times and that’s true now.
But it’s true because of hardworking, loving and committed families that every single day go out there and make this world a better place for their kids. You do that not only for your next generation, you do that for your neighbors and you do that for all of us.
We’re going to have some good years ahead. I cannot promise you perfection, but I can promise you this, that so long as Lieutenant Governor Brown and I are able to do this job in trust for you, we’re going to do everything we can to make farming more profitable so that we can look over our shoulders and say that during our time we did fight for a more sustainable future, we did open new markets to farmers and we did protect the most important asset that we have as a State.
Ben Franklin again called it that continuous miracle. Thank you for defending that miracle and thank you for making it happen. And thank you for giving me an opportunity to be with you all tonight. (Applause)