Pittman encourages backup plans over elevator

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Although Anne Arundel County is racing to reopen a vital grain elevator in time for the fall harvest, Southern Maryland farmers shouldn’t count on the facility, County Executive Steuart Pittman said last week.

“Every farmer should be planning for the worst,” he said in a brief interview with The Delmarva Farmer. “Every farmer should be planning for ways to get their crops transported.”

Pittman’s comments come a week after the county confirmed that negotiations between it and Mountaire, which had sought to take over the Lothian elevator, had collapsed, and the county was quickly searching for a replacement.

That news arrived almost a month after a county official told a large group of regional farmers that the elevator would not reopen in time for the fall harvest, sending growers scurrying to find new grain outlets and secure transportation for their crops. Pittman, a farmer himself, said discussions with other potential operators, including Warfield Brothers Farm, a Howard County grain dealer, were ongoing, but he declined to speak about them in detail.

“Mountaire’s not completely out of the question either,” Pittman said. “We’re putting every iron in the fire that we possibly can and treating this like an emergency.”

With the fall harvest imminent, regional officials are exploring other ways to help farmers should the elevator remain closed. The Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission is examining the feasibility of a grant program for farmers who incur extra costs to transport their crops, said Shelby Watson-Hampton, commission director.

“We are waiting to see what happens with (Anne Arundel County) and (the Lothian elevator) in the next two weeks, and will go from there, but SMADC is committed to assisting our local grain farmers in the best way possible during this uncertain time,” she said in an e-mail.

Late last month, many growers across the region, which includes Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s counties, had yet to finalize plans to sell their grain. Some larger farmers with grain storage or access to road-worthy trucks have expressed confidence that they’ll adapt, but concern abounds for Southern Maryland’s smaller farms — particularly those run by older farmers — that were totally dependent on the Lothian elevator before Perdue announced its intention to close the facility more than two years ago, citing its declining condition and an ongoing erosion of regional grain acreage.

The county purchased the shuttered elevator for $1.25 million in March.

A county official told many Southern Maryland farmers in early August that the elevator would not open for the fall, disappointing many who had attended the Aug. 8 meeting hosted by Mountaire expecting a helpful announcement. At the time, the county had yet to receive a full proposal from the Eastern Shore poultry integrator to manage the elevator, Pittman said. It eventually did, but negotiations quickly ended.

Mountaire “didn’t believe they could open this fall, and we didn’t want to wait,” he said.

Pittman compared the county’s response to the elevator closure with its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We think this is enough of a crisis that we have to move fast,” he said. “We purchased this (elevator) knowing that it was going to shut down. I hope we’ll have good news soon.”