Maryland was awarded $121,445 in matching federal grants to  support two agricultural market research and demonstration projects. The first USDA grant awarded to Maryland is $20,825 to MDA, in cooperation with the University of Maryland and Maryland farmers’ market managers, to assess the economic impact of Maryland farmers’ markets, identify ways to expand the customer base and increase sales at farmers’ markets, and explore the feasibility of forming a statewide farmers’ market association.

The second grant of $100,620 will enable the University of Maryland School of Nursing, in cooperation with MDA, Future Harvest/Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission, the Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association, and others, to encourage increased use of locally-produced sustainable protein foods such as beef, pork, poultry, dairy, eggs, and seafood, in Maryland health care facilities and institutions. Click here for more details.

A five-member team of high school students from Venturing Crew 202 of Carroll County is the winner of the 20th annual Maryland Envirothon-an outdoor natural resources competition that challenges students to identify and categorize living resources, perform soil surveys and solve other complex natural resource issues.  More than 100 challengers from 19 counties across Maryland and Baltimore City took part in this year’s competition.  The event was held June 24-25 at the William S. Schmidt Outdoor Education Center in Prince George’s County.

While Venturing Crew 202 of Carroll County team took top honors, they were followed by teams from Montgomery County, Harford County, St. Mary’s County, and Allegany County.

MDA is sponsoring a YouTube video contest for Maryland school children in order to help raise awareness about the Jane Lawton Maryland Farm-to-School Program and to actively engage students in thinking about where their food comes from. The contest asks the question, “In terms of food, what does local mean to you?”

As students are routinely connected to each other through websites like YouTube and Facebook, MDA hopes to introduce kids to a new topic via a familiar domain. The contest begins July 12, 2010 and will end September 8, 2010, just in time for the Maryland Homegrown School Lunch Week, which takes place September 13-17, 2010. The winning video will be broadcasted by the MDA and the winning students will receive an iPod Touch, a Maryland State Park Pass, and a school lunch visit from Maryland Secretary of Agriculture, Buddy Hance. For more information about the contest visit the MDA Farm-to-School website.

Maryland Farm-to-School is now on Facebook! Become a fan to follow news and developments regarding the program as well as to keep up with local events and activities happening around the state. Comments and suggestions are encouraged!

Working with seeds requires time, concentration, attention to detail, and loads of patience. But this is all just part of the job description for Lois Capshaw, who has worked in MDA’s Turf and Seed Section for 30 years.

Lois began her work at MDA in 1975, when the department was still located in College Park. After a brief stint in the Mosquito Control Section, Lois left to work in the private sector for a few years but she didn’t stay away from MDA for long.  She returned to the Turf and Seed Section as a seed analyst in 1980.

Lois was drawn to this field because of how it blends together different sciences, such as agronomy and botany, and is because it’s very unique. “You’ll find one lab per state, if you’re lucky,” she says about the extensive laboratory facilities that are required to properly test seeds. Lois is extremely familiar with the lab facilities in her section; in 1983, when MDA moved from College Park to its current Wayne A. Cawley, Jr. Building headquarters in Annapolis, Lois was instrumental in moving the Turf and Seed Section and helped with the design of the current lab set-up. At one time, the lab here was the biggest on the East Coast.

Through the years, Lois’s role in Turf and Seed has progressed from seed analyst to a supervising analyst to laboratory manager, and finally to program manager. Even though her main job now is to manage the section and assist customers, she will still occasionally sit at her old seed-analyzing desk to help out when things are busy. Lois describes seed as a “living, respiring organism,” and knows just how much patience and dedication is required to properly grow and store the seeds being tested.

The Turf and Seed Section has two main functions: providing a service to farmers and acting as a regulatory agency. Farmers will send in samples of their seeds for testing to make sure that they meet standards, as well as unknown seeds for identification. The regulatory function comes into play when department inspectors take random samples of seed that is on the market and the laboratory staff tests it to make sure that it is properly labeled.

All eligible analysts in the Turf and Seed Section, including Lois, are Certified Seed Analysts in purity and germination. The several hundred certified analysts in the country make up the Association of Official Seed Analysts (AOSA), which is the North American organization that votes on rules for testing seed. In the 1990s, Lois was on the executive board and edited the newsletter. “You either love it, or you hate it” is how Lois describes the tedious, yet rewarding, task of working with seeds.

Lois holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She lives in Fulton, Maryland with Mike, her husband of 32 years.