Healthy Farms, Healthy Planet Reports

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Corporate Agribusiness and America's Waterways

Pollution from agribusiness is responsible for some of America’s most intractable water quality problems – including the "dead zones" in the Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico and Lake Erie, and the pollution of countless streams and lakes with nutrients, bacteria, sediment and pesticides. Farming is not an inherently polluting activity. But today’s agribusiness practices – from the concentration of thousands of animals and their waste in small feedlots to the massive planting of chemical-intensive crops such as corn – make water pollution from agribusiness both much more likely and much more dangerous.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Hotter Fields Lower Yields

America’s reliance on fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas – is fueling global warming and causing a host of other environmental, economic, and security problems. And while the impacts vary from region to region, global warming threatens all sectors of our economy, and agriculture is no exception.

Report | Environment Maryland Research and Policy Center

Our National Heritage at Risk

The failure to fund Maryland’s successful land conservation programs over the last few years has scaled back preservation efforts and threatened the state’s unspoiled farms and forests and the health of the Chesapeake Bay.