LOTHIAN, Md. — They work long days harvesting crops at the mercy of price fluctuations, disease and Mother Nature, but fourth-generation farmer Rob Whittington thought his might be the last if the Lothian Grain Elevator had shut down for good.
“Pretty much going out of business,” said Whittington, “For a small farmer who only does a few acres compared to some of these big guys, it was probably going to be the end for us. We’d quit.”
Right now, Whittington hauls his grain four miles to the Lothian facility, and he could not afford to travel more than 10 times that far to the Eastern Shore to sell it.
On this day, after a six-month shut down, the elevator was back in business after Anne Arundel County purchased it from Perdue, repaired it and brought in a company to run it.
“The impact on our farmers and agriculture in our county was huge, because a majority of the agricultural production is grains and the majority of the acreage is grains and we have to keep farming commercially viable in order to keep the open space there,” said Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman.
While the grain elevator is located in Anne Arundel County, the more than 100 farmers who use it are coming from all over Southern Maryland.
That ultimately prompted the state to invest in saving it as well.
“Because that regional bipartisan support and the support of all of you and making this truly a Maryland issue and not an Anne Arundel County issue that we were able to convince the secretary and the governor to make the $1.5 million of state money to save the elevator, but we couldn’t have done that without the county stepping up,” said Maryland Sen. Sarah Elfreth.
A daring move by the public sector to try to insure family farms don’t disappear from Maryland’s landscape.
