Maryland Department of Agriculture Receives Funding to Support Maryland Market Money Program

Oct 06, 2025

The Maryland Department of Agriculture has announced the award of $16,000 in funding from the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission (SMADC), a division of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland, in support of the Maryland Market Money (MMM) program. The funding represents contributions made over the past five years by generous community members through Maryland Market Money fundraising efforts, prior to the program’s transition to the department on July 1, 2025. This award highlights the strength of collaboration across organizations and the collective commitment to ensuring equitable food access for Maryland families while strengthening local farms.

“The Maryland Department of Agriculture is grateful to the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission for their continued partnership and this $16,000 award in support of the Maryland Market Money program,” said Secretary of Agriculture Kevin Atticks. “This funding underscores our shared commitment to addressing food insecurity, strengthening Maryland’s agricultural economy, and ensuring that farmers are supported as they feed our communities. The Department remains dedicated to investing in the success of Maryland Market Money and the farmers and families it serves.”

Source : maryland.gov

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.