They finally found a source and, with a consortium of growers, now lease the more efficient, stackable crates for less than the cost of new bushel baskets. Far from feeling harassed and angry about the care they have to take in handling crop materials, spinach grower Brennan Starkey of Starkey Farms, Galena, MD, and Tom McDowell of Milford Fertilizer's Kennedyville plant talked easily about it when the Cooperator visited the area in late February. For one thing, they both enjoy hunting and fishing, which gives them every reason to treasure the natural resources of the rural county, well-punctuated by rivers, that sits across the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore. Brennan, who farms 1600 acres with parents Bill and Barbara Starkey, is proactive in environmental matters. He is always willing to meet on environmental issues to make sure regulators have accurate information about agriculture and its needs.
Herbicides are a different story.
A lot of herbicides are being very closely looked at because of the Food Quality Protection Act and spinach is a very minor use crop. We could be in trouble there. The Starkey Farm is ringed with grass filter strips, but nowhere are the grass and CRP wooded buffers more important than in the three-mile border with the Sassafrass River, in which both Brennan Starkey and Milford SureCrop employees like to fish. They also have grass strips higher up the gently rising land that slow any water movement and prevent erosion of chemicals or soil. Sloping land and buffer strips put a premium on careful spraying also.