Joe Kuhn, president of the Carroll County Farm Bureau, feels that the tough economics of farming will continue to take a toll on the county’s agrarian community and culture. (Photography by Walter P. Calahan)
Written By Patricia Rouzer
Carroll County suffers from a kind of economic and cultural schizophrenia. Is it an agricultural county or a bedroom community? You decide. But know that your answer is influenced greatly by where you live.
“Carroll County has a split personality,” said County Commissioner Dean L. Minnich. “If you draw a line from Lineboro and Manchester down through Westminster to Mount Airy, most people east of that line see themselves as suburban, part of the Baltimore metropolitan area.”
Sprawling housing tracts, crowded multi-lane roadways, strip malls and the obligatory big box stores–the quintessential suburban metropolitan milieu – amply illustrate eastern Carroll’s bedroom identity.
Conversely, western Carroll’s rolling hills are dotted with smaller, fewer residential developments, sleepy towns and quiet hamlets, and broad expanses of open fields, forests and pastures. Residents see themselves, if not strictly as farm folk, certainly as country people.
There are, said Minnich, some logical reasons for Carroll’s identity schism. The most obvious is location.
East Carroll residents are relatively close to employers, large and small, scattered throughout the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan region. They are also near major roadways and public transportation that take them to their workplaces.
Residents of Carroll’s western region are significantly farther removed from the Baltimore-Washington metroplex, and accessibility to major commuter routes is appreciably limited.
A less obvious reason for the county’s vocational and cultural bifurcation is inherent in the land itself. The rich, red clay soil found in the county’s westernmost reaches, while adaptable to farming, hinders waste water percolation tests required for residential development, Minnich said. And accessibility to public water and sewer systems required for dense residential development is severely limited in the county’s western areas.
Although farming continues to shape western Carroll’s economy and culture, there is little doubt that the area’s once clear identity as a farm county is waning. Today more than 55 percent of Carroll workers make their living outside the county. Even those deeply passionate about agriculture see farming shrinking and farm life changing.
Joe Kuhn, president of the Carroll County Farm Bureau, believes farming and agribusiness will be a significant part of the county’s economic base and cultural environment for the foreseeable future.
But he also believes that the tough economics of farming–particularly on a relatively small scale–will continue to take its toll on Carroll’s agrarian community and culture.
“It is hard to support a family by farming alone,” said Kuhn. “That is why in so many farm families at least one person works outside the farm to provide family medical benefits and a stable income.
Kuhn knows whereof his speaks. He ran 50 to 70 cattle with his father on the family farm near Woodbine while working as a mechanic for the Maryland State Police helicopter fleet, a job from which he is now retired.
“We’ve got some very successful large farms in the county. Farmers grow corn, soybeans and wheat. We’ve got some very profitable dairy farms, too, although we’ve lost a lot of dairy. That’s a real shame,” he said.
Kuhn and his father, now in his 90s, have sold most of their herd, keeping about 15 animals primarily for sentimental, not economic, reasons. “Keeping cattle is hard work, but it’s something you learn to enjoy,” he said.
Too much rain – or too little – weather-shortened growing seasons, fickle markets for crops and stock, sky rocketing seed or feed costs, and expensive equipment and maintenance, are among a myriad of factors that can fracture a farm’s profitability. Not to mention that farmers with livestock to care for, fields to plant and harvests to reap, do not get paid sick days.
Those factors and more conspire to make farming increasingly a part-time vocation even for many who love the farm life. In addition, Maryland’s inheritance taxes make the economics of handing down the family farm difficult, Kuhn said. For those who yearn to purchase farmland, prices even for agriculturally-zoned land are steep, he added.
Many small farm owners have identified niche markets including flowers, organically produced fruits, vegetables and meat for local sale and grapes for winemaking. Still, farming, however satisfying, is hard work and uncertain business.
“Young people can make more working in a comfortable office at a computer and have a lot more economic stability,” said Kuhn. And not everyone loves the physically demanding work of farming. Among five siblings, Kuhn is the lone farmer. “Farming didn’t suit them,” he said. “They could make a better living doing other things. You can’t blame them.”
Perhaps nothing more graphically demonstrates Carroll’s evolution away from agriculture than the transformation of the school system’s curriculum from vocational programs intended to teach production farming.
“We haven’t done a program that teaches kids how to run a farm in many years,” said Majorie R. Lohnes, Supervisor of Career and Technical Education for Carroll County Public Schools. “The face of agriculture in the county has changed. We have definitely become more of a bedroom community. We still have agriculture in the county, and it is important, but it is not as dominant as it once was.”
Lohnes said that agri-science, the education buzz-word that describes the system’s agriculture-related offerings, is “a much smaller piece of what was offered in the past.”
Agri-science is geared toward giving young people a taste of what a career is like in an agriculture-allied field.
Current curriculum includes programs in wildlife and natural resources, veterinary science, horticulture (focused on landscape designing and construction or flower design) and general horticulture. As trends change in the county and in agri-related business and technology, the system is looking at further revising its career-centered offerings, she said.
“We continue to have an agri-science program at every high school and we have a strong FFA [Future Farmers of America] program,” Lohnes said. “But our goal is not to teach students how to farm, it is to help them make good career choices.
“Agriculture is sophisticated business. The science and technology is constantly evolving. We want to help kids decide if a career in the field is what they want. That is better for them and their parents than having a kid spend two years and thousands of dollars in college majoring in something they then decide isn’t for them,” she said.
