Take Action today and contact your county officials to request federal recovery funds be used to support new and expanded regional agricultural food hubs and processing capacity.

On March 11 President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to aid public health and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. ARPA’s State and Local Relief Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) recognizes the critical role that management of polluted runoff plays in protecting public health from future pandemics, and so it includes funds for Maryland counties and cities to invest in polluted runoff management.

Healthy soil is key to polluted runoff management. Instead of flooding, healthy soils soak up and hold onto water. Amazingly, even a small improvement in soil health can lead to an additional 20,000 gallons of water held per acre.

Regenerative agriculture is key to healthy soil. Regenerative agriculture - including practices such as cover cropping, applying compost, reduced tillage, and rotational grazing - increases soil organic matter, biodiversity, and carbon. It improves water quality, ecosystem health, and reduces farm risk from extreme weather events.

Robust regional agricultural infrastructure is key to regenerative agriculture. It is a missing link that can limit broad scale farmer adoption of the type of regenerative agriculture that leads to soil health and runoff control. This type of infrastructure, outlined below, requires significant upfront capital, meaning that banks are sometimes reluctant to invest.

Regional agricultural infrastructure is also key to food supply chain resiliency. The pandemic highlighted supply chain challenges that resulted in food shortages. Food system resilience is needed to combat disruptions of all kinds, including future pandemics and the imminent challenge of climate change.

As the pandemic taught us, the keys to resilience are flexibility, redundancy, and the capacity to adapt. Maryland was precipitously vulnerable to food shortages during the pandemic, thanks in part to supply chains that originate far beyond its borders. Rebuilding regional infrastructure would enable resiliency. More processing facilities are essential to ensure the supply chain is resilient so when one shuts down, others are still available. More are needed so that a diversity of crops can be grown and processed, allowing for flexibility in crop choice as the climate changes. Lastly, more regional agricultural infrastructure is needed to increase the proportion of food consumed locally that is produced locally: because Maryland only grows 10% of what it consumes, it is vulnerable to supply chain breaks. Regional infrastructure allows for more consumption of regional products.