Tomorrow, on Friday March 13, the Maryland House of Delegates Environment and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on HB 886, the Chicken Tax bill that will require the chicken companies to pay a five cent per bird tax to the state of Maryland for every chicken they place in Maryland chicken houses.
In addition to being a $15 million per year tax on five companies, the bill as written will destroy the state’s farmland cover crop program.
The Chicken Tax money will fund the Maryland Department of Agriculture cover crop program only on farms where chicken manure has been applied. Farms that have not used chicken manure no longer will be eligible for the cover crop cost-share money through the Maryland Bay Restoration Fund. This change will destroy what the environmental industry calls the most effective on-the-farm Best Management Practice for Chesapeake Bay water quality improvement.
Please take a few minutes today to e-mail or call and leave messages for key committee members to show your opposition to HB 886. Identify yourself as a chicken grower and that you are opposed to HB 886.
Thanks
tony.Knotts@house.state.md.us 410-841-3212
4 comments:
So, in order to qualify for cover crop money, ALL us farmers should start using chicken manure? Hey, I'm all for it! If there's not enough for all the fields, we can import it! Chicken$h!t on every farmed field!
If you don't have chickens you must be getting paid to not farm your land. Maybe getting paid to plant trees.
What about the elected school board?
About time these multi billion dollar poultry companies pay for the disposal of their dead chickens and manure-not the taxpayers.
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