Our friendly neighborhood newspaper, The (Baltimore) Sun, with which we often disagree, consistently displays a stubborn ignorance of the agricultural industry.
Readers of The Sun, both of the news reports and the editorial commentary, could easily be led to believe that farmers, more often than not, are environmental criminals and that poultry litter is toxic waste and not — as is the case — a very valuable organic fertilizer.
This was not so when Ted Shelsby was the ag business editor of The Sun. Ted tried to hold an even keel with his consistently on-the-mark coverage of farmers and farming.
Ted retired some years ago but his reportage reappears occasionally in The Sun with a column he entitles “On the Farm.”
It must give the guys on the copy desk fits when Ted’s column drops in the basket and they have to write a headline which says, “Farmers deserve conservation prize.”
That happened on March 23.
Shelby’s lead read: “When it comes to handing out conservation awards, the Maryland farmer should be at the front of the line.”
(For a newspaper whose editorial pages often scorn the farmer as one of the prime polluters of the Chesapeake Bay, Shelby’s story runs straight against the tide.)
The second paragraph of the Shelby piece read, “Farmers dug deep into their own pockets and paid out more than $1.4 million to adopt a record number of on-farm conservation practices last year to protect soil and water from erosion and excess nutrients.”
Shelsby was summarizing for Sun readers a report from the Maryland Department of Agriculture that said that the 2,100 conservation projects that Maryland farmers had installed in 2007 would prevent an estimated 2.7 million pounds of nitrogen and 149,000 pounds of phosphorus from entering Maryland waterways.
Shelsby wrapped up the report this way: “Since 1985, farmers have spent more than $11 million of their own money to match about $90 million in state cost-share funds to install more than 31,000 best-management practices to protect water quality. These practices have resulted in a significant achievement of Maryland’s 2005 tributary strategy goals for agriculture, according to the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program.”
How refreshing it is to have someone of Ted Shelsby’s experience and reputation able to break into the news columns of the congenitally urban/suburban, no-dirt-under-the-fingernails Sun with a piece that proclaims that the 60 animal-waste storage structures that were built by Maryland farmers in 2007, “will prevent harmful runoff from fields by conserving the nutrient benefits of manure until it can be transported or applied to crops for use as a fertilizer.”
Hey, Ted — keep those cards and letters coming. It is always good to hear from you.