♪♪ NARRATOR: The Chesapeake Bay is one of the most unique and important natural places in our country.

Its waters and the surrounding landscape have sustained the lives of plants, animals and people for thousands of years.

However, we have been putting increased pressure on the Chesapeake Bay for more than a century.

By the mid 1900s, a growing industrialized population had reshaped the watershed and overharvested its resources.

By the 1970s, the Bay was at a tipping point and we realized we were on the verge of losing a natural treasure.

This led to one of the most ambitious multi-state conservation and cleanup efforts in our nation's history.

As a result, even though the population in the region has more than doubled in the past 50 years, the water quality has actually improved and many Bay habitats have started to recover.

Yet, we still have a long way to go.

And the Chesapeake region's farmers are playing a critical role in the Bay restoration while continuing to provide the food that we eat.

NARRATOR: The Chesapeake Bay is much more than the salty body of water sitting alongside Maryland and Virginia.

The rivers and streams that make up the watershed extend all the way up into New York and drain more than 64,000 square miles of the eastern United States.

Nearly a third of that is farmland, and much of it is located to the north in Pennsylvania, a state with its own rich cultural heritage of farming and strong connections to local waterways like the mighty Susquehanna River.

Growing our food requires fertilizers and soil, but both of these can be lost from farm fields when natural forces like rain wash them downstream.

KRISTIN FISHER: Soil is alive.

So if you pick up a handful of healthy soil, there are more living things in that soil than there are people on the planet.

And then you look at the landscape around us and the soil that's covering the entire watershed of the Chesapeake Bay, and that soil is responsible for filtering our water, keeping it clean, growing our food, and supporting this incredible diversity of life above ground and below ground.

We really can't understand what's going on in the Chesapeake Bay unless we understand what's happening in the soil that surrounds the Chesapeake Bay.

NARRATOR: Once the lost soil and nutrients from fertilizers reach our rivers and the Bay, they can create sediment clouds and feed blooms of algae that prevent sunlight from reaching the bottom.

Without that sunlight, oxygen-producing plants like underwater grasses die off, which contributes to dead zones that can suffocate other creatures like fish and crabs.

♪♪ MIKE KUREK: We were down at the river one day and along the stream we started noticing peach pits were down there and it wasn't just like one or two where a raccoon brought them down.

I mean, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of peach pits.

To me, if a peach pit is the size of a quarter, can get down there to the river the little tiny fertilizer particles can definitely get down there to the river and we want to do a good job in keeping that in our plants, in our soil and not in that water.

NARRATOR: Runoff of soil and fertilizers not only hurts life under water, but it's also a major blow to the farmers' bottom line.

Healthy soils are essential to grow food and fertilizer costs money.

This ultimately hurts the farmers' ability to sustain their own livelihoods.

So keeping more soil and fertilizer on the field is in everyone's best interest.

This is one of the reasons so many farmers' in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are pioneering new ways of producing food sustainably and are playing a critical role in the restoration of the Bay and our local rivers, while continuing to provide the food that we eat.

LOGAN FIELD: Farmers are environmentalists in theirselves because they know without a clean environment they don't have what they need to grow crops.

DR. NADINE BURTON: My granddad was a farmer and a butcher and I think that's where the seed was planted.

I think working alongside him in the farm, that's what makes me who I am.

And um, I tend to do the same things with my kids.

KARL DIRKS: It's an ever changing practice, but that's a good thing because I mean, if we did it the same way, we did it a hundred years ago, we get the same results we got 100 years ago, and that's just not going to cut it.

We need to keep adapting or we're not going to have enough to eat.

JUDY GIFFORD: My dad, he was a first generation dairy farmer.

My mom was a second-generation dairy farmer.

And out of my two sisters, I was the only one who fell in love with cows.

We sell our milk to Land O'Lakes.

We direct market our grass fed and finished beef.

Our local restaurant has been really good to work with they get mostly ground beef for their famous hamburgers.

Food security is something that we take for granted, but in 100 years, things are going to look a lot different and I don't want us to say I wish we hadn't put warehouses all over that farmland all along the Eastern Shore.

And if we don't appreciate our farmland, we're not going to have it.

FIELD: Farmers are always conscious about the next generation and what they can do to make sure that that land is there and they'll be able to continue a generational farm.

NARRATOR: For such an ancient profession, farmers are some of the most tech savvy people you'll find.

Many farmers in the Bay region are using cutting edge technology and practices to keep nutrients and soil on the field and grow more crops.

[Seeds scattering in bag] DIRKS: My name's Karl Dirks, owner of Lancaster Seed Sales, as well as farm manager for Wolgemuth Fairview Farms on the cropping side.

But we are located here in Mt.

Joy in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Farming operations consist of row crops, small grains and uh, wean to finish hog operation.

For the last ten years, we've been covering 100 percent of the acres we farm every year.

No-till and cover crops have been a big payback.

FISHER: Cover crops are planted in the off-season.

Farmers plant them after they harvest in the fall and those plants grow over the winter season, protecting the soil from erosion and importantly, soaking up nutrients that are left in the soil so that those nutrients don't run off during the winter and end up in our waterways.

[Water bubbling] KRISTIN: No-till agriculture, instead of plowing the soil multiple times in the spring to get ready for planting no-till equipment allows farmers to cut narrow slits in the soil and drop seeds into those.

This leaves the rest of the soil surface covered with the residue from previous crop seasons, which protects that soil from erosion.

It also protects the biology in the soil that helps keep the soil healthy and produce food.

DIRKS: We've been a lot more efficient with time, fuel, stuff like that.

Equipment costs with no-till has been big savings.

We haven't had to do three passes of tillage like we did before, and water retention has been a lot better.

Soil structure is improved, and that's been a big part of our soil health plan.

DIRKS: This is the monitor that goes with the combine.

Uh it's pulling our yield data.

And this is an iPad that is, this is climate field we're running currently.

So it's pulling all the data out of this and putting it on our maps here.

Um you can see there's a couple of blue lines here.

These are some strip trials.

NARRATOR: Modern farming technology helps farmers make informed decisions and better control their resource use.

Sensors and mapping programs help track fertilizer use and detect crop conditions, which can be compared year over year to determine how much fertilizer to use and where to put it.

DIRKS: The unique thing about it is the analysis tool is very, very quick and very precise.

So we can pick out certain passes we see.

We get satellite imagery throughout the season and identify the good spots versus the weak spots.

NARRATOR: Advanced farming equipment then helps place fertilizer in precise locations to ensure crops get only as much as they can use.

DIRKS: Trying to be more efficient and more productive with an acre.

Um, just trying to get the most, basically the most bang for your buck on any given acre of land is kind of what our goal is.

We've been soil testing very heavily for the last two decades and balancing our fertility off of that.

[Geese Honking] DIRKS: Just understanding the details of what we do year in and year out has been pretty big.

When I was younger, this was the draw.

You know, you get to drive, the equipment.

Anymore it's more the thrill of growing a crop, you know, the equipment it's great um, but kind of seeing what you put in and what you get out is kind of the bigger reward at this point.

Um, I think that's been the greatest part about testing all this stuff is it's it's been, I almost turned it more into a competition than anything else.

You know, can we do better than we did the year before?

Er you know, can we find something else that, you know, elevates us to a new yield plateau?

It's kind of been the joy of farming at this point.

Seeing a crop from start to finish has been... been pretty neat.

FISHER: Regenerative agriculture is all about enhancing soil health and working in step with natural cycles to produce food.

DIRKS: Regenerative ag is going to be pretty big.

Here for what we can grow out of the ground and and the carbon we can suck up in a year it is pretty impressive.

And as our yields escalate, we're doing more every year.

♪♪ NARRATOR: New farmers are bringing new crops to the watershed and the number of small scale farms is growing.

Getting started isn't easy, but farm advisors like Dr. Nadine Burton are providing assistance and helping farmers to connect and learn from each other.

DR. NADINE BURTON: Welcome to Tallawah Farm.

'Tallawah' is a Jamaican term that means small but not to be underestimated.

I am Nadine Burton alternative crop specialist with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Extension.

I am also the President of the Around the Bay Farmers Alliance.

Tallawah came about to prove concept to farmers.

You cannot teach and not actually doing.

Farmers want to see it work.

DR. BURTON: Yes, they respect that we conduct the research.

But how do they know that it works?

As a student coming from Jamaica, I could not get the food that I accustomed to eat.

So I started by asking the farm manager on campus for a little plot and that's where I would plant.

And sometimes I plant more than we can eat.

I would go to Salisbury and sell it to an Asian store and that's sort of start bringing in some money and then it grows and grows until I said I can't stay no longer on on school property.

I need to find a home.

2021 I purchased 4 acres here.

Last year I heard that the other two acres adjoining to this with the house was selling and so I purchased that too.

DR. BURTON: Alternative ag.

I look at production system and new crops that can be introduced into our cropping system.

I grow alternative crops and I do alternative production practices.

This is my bag container garden, which I consider alternative.

So this is 400 okra plant growing in bags right here.

And this can give a farmer close to 100 pounds of okra per week and presently, okra market is within 3 and 4 dollars.

So you're making 300 or 400 dollars here.

It is eaten by almost all the ethnic groups within our region.

So that creates a niche market for the crop with higher... higher profit compared to bell pepper and other traditional crops.

One other thing farmers tend to tell you "I don't have any land" and so I want to use this small space to show them that you don't need ten acres, they don't need 20 acres to be a farmer.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: I'm Michael Edwards and I own and operate Wood Duck Landing Farm just down the road a little bit.

And Dr. Burton and I work on a lot of projects together.

DR. BURTON: For me, when I walk on Michael's farm, I don't walk on his farm as an extension agent.

I walk on his farm to see how can I help him to be a better farmer or what is there that I can have him improve on.

DR. BURTON: I wrote the grant.

I know what Michael's farm needs.

He knows what his farm needs, he tells me what he wants.

But I did the research part of it.

As the lead researcher I'm going to go behind him to ensure that everything is put in place, allow him to share that information with other farmers.

That's how we get small farmers interested.

They don't want to hear from me and you as researchers... going into workshop and keeping all of these seminars they don't want that.

They can get that from Google, they can go on YouTube, they can get those things.

They want someone right there with them.

NARRATOR: Hearing about another farmer's experience with different techniques is often one of the best ways for sustainable practices to gain traction in farming communities.

♪♪ DR. BURTON: If I have to do fertigation, you have you can you can overdo it, which will cause leaching into your water body.

But you also have control of the amount of fertilizer that you're putting in your land.

These farmers are sitting on a wealth of knowledge.

And I said, how can I get these farmers to come and share their knowledge with new beginning farmers?

Or farmers like myself who's coming from a third world country and half these things are new to me.

And so we decided to start the Around the Bay Farmers Alliance.

Farming is what gives me peace of mind.

It would be unfair to say I don't like the money, but when I walk into my house, I'm at peace.

When I look at my crops, I'm at peace, it's sort of healing for me.

Nothing can bother me too much that I can't walk in my farm and get rid of.

♪♪ NARRATOR: Even farms that have been in business for generations are looking for ways to continually improve and evolve.

Many of these farmers work with trusted agribusiness advisors to learn, adapt and stay profitable.

These advisors are in a unique position to introduce new farming practices to their clients.

MIKE KUREK: Hello, my name is Mike Kurek.

We're located at my farm here, at Susquehanna Orchards in Delta, Pennsylvania in southeastern York County.

I can trace my family heritage back nine generations here on this property.

I'm the fifth generation having it here an orchard.

We currently have about 75 acres of peaches, 50 acres of apples.

We have some acres of pumpkins and also farm about 250 to 300 acres of row crops every year.

In the early seventies, my grandmother and my grandfather renovated this barn that we're standing in now, and they started selling some of their second peaches here, well as the area built up, more and more people started coming.

We started specializing in selling the public our better fruit.

And now we pretty much sell everything from tomatoes, the corn, the jams, jellies.

At a young age, uh walking the orchards with my grandparents, my parents, they were very conscientious in the conservation practices they used.

They took a lot of time, make sure the orchards are planted on the contour, made sure there was uh swales in the fields that could contain the water and not a lot of erosion that happened.

High yield and conservation can both- they can go together and both work together.

When I came back to the farm, we did not grow row crops.

We rented land out, so I had to find someone locally that I trusted and I knew would give me good information.

And that's where I got my relationship with The Mill and the Hushon family.

And they really helped me learn about new technologies implementing on our farm.

And I think very quickly they knew I wasn't scared to try something new.

BEN HUSHON: Mike fools around with data at night.

I don't know how with three kids.

But he does.

And he said, "Tim, we need to dive deeper on this."

TIM HUSHON: So, this would be the field forecasting tool from Winfield United.

This would be the newer nitrogen model we've been using.

And it has kind of like a maximum here, 100 percent.

That's the most biomass you're gonna be able to produce that day.

KUREK: We're 100 percent no-till.

I do not own a disc, I do not own a plow.

I think there may be an old two row plow growing up in the weeds.

There's probably trees growing through at this point in time, but we don't use those things here.

A lot of times after we have a heavy rain, I pack my kids in the truck and we'll take a ride around.

Um, we look at the streams to see what's going on.

TIM HUSHON: We've used a lot of cover crops to try to protect the ground.

We try to get them in right after harvest so there's always a living root in that soil.

[Tapping] MIKE: During the last couple winters, Tim and I spent the time like trying to figure out what the best economical way to spread fertilizer's been.

I think the last two or three years um, I saved roughly 25 percent of my fertilizer bill.

[Stream of corn pouring] KUREK: So I see the future of farming, data is going to be a huge part of farming.

Doing the right thing to the ground is going to be a huge part.

I was lucky enough to the generations before me were very conscientious to the conservation practices they implemented.

I hope that in the future my kids will take over and continue farming and continue the practices that we are in and adapt and change to their new agriculture environment that they'll be in.

♪♪ NARRATOR: Managing livestock like dairy cows brings its own unique challenges when it comes to farming sustainably.

Livestock farmers need to promote the growth of grass to feed their animals, and the manure their animals make is also a form of fertilizer.

This, too, can be carried away by rain into local waterways.

Like crop farmers, livestock farmers must also balance resources to meet the needs of their farm.

JUDY GIFFORD: St. Brigid's Farm is located in Kennedyville, which is in Kent County, Maryland, the smallest county in the state.

And we're at the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay, just south of Delaware.

My name is Judy Gifford and my husband Robert Fry and I uh, own and operate St. Brigid's farm, which is a 60-acre grass-based dairy that uh milks Jersey cows.

My favorite part of growing up was going into the pasture.

My dad grazed his cows, so we would walk down across the secondary road, down a dirt road with no fencing, and bring the cows in and out from this pasture that we had.

And that was like my favorite part of the day.

And when my husband and I bought this farm, his family had a conventional farm, so they did not graze at the time.

And we just decided that we wanted to graze.

And this farm is the perfect size to do that.

We're only 60 acres.

Normally a typical dairy farm would be 250 acres, 300 acres.

You grow crops on the land and then you keep your cows inside all the time.

But we didn't have enough land to do cropping, so we decided we'd do grazing and give the cows the health benefits of being outside.

Let them exhibit their normal behavior of romping and lying in groups and just sort of being cows.

And so that was always our goal to do that.

It's an extra level of management is required.

Bridg, Brigitte, come here.

So they've grazed over there...

When you're farming, you have to remember that you have living cows and living grass and living soil and you try to balance all three things.

So you need to have enough grass for the cows to make you money.

You have to keep the grass happy.

So you need to use some fertilizer, but you want to keep the microbes and all of the, uh, fungi, invertebrates and bacteria in the soil happy because it's a biological system as well as a chemical system.

And so, you just constantly juggling balls to keep everybody happy.

And sometimes you win in one group and lose in another.

So it's a constant trial and error and journey, which is what makes it so interesting.

So manure management is a huge issue for dairy farms and livestock farms in general.

And every farm in Maryland has to have a nutrient management plan.

So some of it is pretty well regulated.

So we have three storage facilities on our farm to handle manure, and then the cows, of course spread some of their own manure.

So back in the 90s, my husband and I applied for a Northeast SARE grant, Sustainable Agriculture, Research and Education as a farmer grant and we got $4,000 to study the mass nutrient balance on our farm.

So what we did was we measured the nitrogen and phosphorus that came onto the farm and then the nitrogen and phosphorus that went off the farm in the form of milk or meat or manure.

And that awakened us to realize that we were feeding too much phosphorus, and that was back in the day when dairy cows were that- they thought that they needed more phosphorus to stay healthy.

But we cut it way, way back.

And so that was huge in our initial farming practices to minimize the phosphorus accumulation.

GIFFORD: We were like the first robot in the area on the shore.

[Machine noise in background] So this is uh, called the E-Link and this is connected to the robot and it tells you how the quarters are milking out, the cow's name, how much grain she's going to get, how long it took her to milk the last time she was here.

And then it gives you options to divert the milk in a different direction.

You can um, there's 120 some odd data points that are collected per cow.

It's free flow.

So, any cow can go in whenever she wants um and it'll milk her or not milk her, depending on how many hours she's been away.

They're getting much more popular now.

They're really taking off since we started.

We've had it since uh 2018.

I still am busy but you spend- it's not milking, you're spending more time monitoring... your general herd.

[Machine noises] GIFFORD: So yeah, we use a wheelbarrow a lot and we use a robot.

[Laughs] ♪♪ GIFFORD: We're paid on um the quality of our milk.

We get a bonus for low bacteria and higher butterfat and protein, which the Jersey cow is known for.

Because we have a perishable product, you can't um hold it out for a better price or store it.

So we are paid whatever the market is determined to be at that time.

FISHER: Farmers also face market uncertainties every year.

They are price takers, so they have to pay what the market dictates for their seed and fertilizer inputs.

But they're also at the mercy of the market for the sale price of their crops and so in some years that can mean very thin profit margins.

GIFFORD: We have three grandchildren who live in uh Baltimore, three grandsons ages uh, 12 to 7, and they just love to come out here.

And of course they love the golf cart most.

But one year, our oldest grandson was here on what we call 'farm camp' because we- we wanted to convince them that it was a fun thing to come to the farm and not that we were going to make them work and suffer.

So they we had two cows that were getting ready to calve in this field and gave him a bucket and he sat there and he got to see two calves being born, which like never happens within that amount of time.

And it was just so exciting for him and he still talks about that and he was only about seven at the time.

♪♪ BEN HUSHON: One of the things that I truly believe is a benefit to agriculture in general is some of the new partnerships that have come about coming under this 4R umbrella to work together.

We all have the same common goal.

We all want clean water, we all want good soil.

We all want to leave things better.

FISHER: Understanding a diversity of farmer perspectives is really important.

We want to work with small farms and large farms, animal farms and crop farms to better understand the farmers' experience.

It's also important to educate consumers about where their food comes from and how it's grown because informed consumers can support the kind of agriculture that they want to see on the landscape.

KUREK: One of the main reasons we got into the conservation end of things is the river behind me.

There's no bigger thrill than reeling in a 40-inch rockfish out of the Chesapeake Bay.

I want that to continue, want my kids to be able to go out there and experience that.

And uh we will do anything here at this farm to make sure we we are protecting that water source.

GIFFORD: The Chesapeake Bay watershed is probably the most ideal place to farm, I'd say, in the world right now.

But at least in the United States.

You look at all the climate impact that's happening with the droughts around the country, the wildfires, the flooding, the salt intrusion.

And here we have this perfectly flat land or pretty perfectly flat land.

We have great weather.

And so, we need to appreciate that.

NARRATOR: As we continue to figure out how to balance the needs of people with the needs of the Chesapeake Bay, farmers like these are showing how it can be done.

♪♪