Staff from congressional offices in Maryland and Virginia spent time this week on the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Clagett Farm in Upper Marlboro, walking through a working demonstration of farming methods the group says can keep fertilizer and soil out of Bay tributaries, according to a CBF news release.
The 283-acre Clagett Farm is a regenerative operation in Prince George’s County that CBF has owned and run for nearly 45 years, using it to show government leaders, farmers and students what healthier soil looks like in practice. Aides from the offices of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. Don Beyer attended, along with staff of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, the tri-state legislative body that advises on Bay policy.
Visitors saw two techniques up close: cattle rotated through pastures so their manure fertilizes the ground naturally, and cover crops planted to build soil and slow erosion. They also toured CBF’s tree nursery, which the group says raises thousands of saplings a year for planting across the Bay watershed, and a rainfall simulator that shows how much water, dirt and nutrient pollution runs off different surfaces, from cover crops to hard pavement.
“There’s a clear connection between what happens on the land and what ends up in our waterways,” said Thomas Arminio, CBF’s Clagett Farm program manager. He said regenerative farming is among the most effective ways to make land more resilient and to cut the need for costly fertilizer that washes into the Bay when it rains.
The tour was also a lobbying pitch. Two federal programs, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Chesapeake Bay Small Watershed Grants and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, send money directly to farmers and landowners to put such practices on their own land. “Federal programs are critical to supporting farmers and reducing agricultural pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed,” said Keisha Sedlacek, CBF’s senior policy director, who said they also make farmland more sustainable and profitable and urged Congress to keep supporting them.
Clagett is a teaching farm, but also a producing one. CBF says it supplies produce, meat and honey to neighbors through a community-supported agriculture program and partners with local food banks; the Chronicle reported in 2022 that the farm had donated more than 23,000 pounds of organic produce to Maryland food banks that year. CBF’s farm profile also lists cattle and sheep, certified organic vegetables, and a 10-acre silvopasture planting of 900 trees to shade livestock and reduce runoff, per its 2026 farm update.
Maryland has been building its own regenerative farming policy. The state Department of Natural Resources recently opened its first regenerative farm lease, a 111-acre property in Poolesville, under authority created by the Chesapeake Bay Legacy Act signed in May 2025, and the Chronicle has covered how regenerative farms focus on soil health to reduce emissions and runoff.
For Southern Maryland, the farm sits in neighboring Prince George’s County, but the issues carry across the Patuxent and Potomac watersheds. Calvert and Charles counties have drawn new state soil conservation funding, the state has pushed agroforestry for farm income and resilience, and Calvert has seen farm development rights purchases climb 18% in three years. Bay-wide, states have cut pollution sharply since 2009 but remain short of the nitrogen goal, and federal restoration money, such as the $90 million in grants announced this month, depends on decisions made by the Congress whose staff just walked the farm.
