The High Cost of Manure: Why Maryland Should Ends Its Animal Waste Technology Fund

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Maryland has committed more than $15 million in taxpayer dollars to technologies intended to address pollution from factory farm manure. More than a decade later, at least a quarter of the projects funded have failed or stalled, and the state has little publicly available evidence that these investments have reduced nutrient pollution, improved water quality or benefited public health. Meanwhile, industrial animal agriculture continues to generate enormous quantities of manure, threatening Maryland’s waterways and surrounding communities.

The High Cost of Manure examines how Maryland’s Animal Waste Technology Fund (AWTF) has directed millions in public funding toward costly and often unproven waste-conversion technologies, including anaerobic digesters, gasification, and pyrolysis. At least half of the awards have gone to corporations or entrepreneurs rather than directly to Maryland farmers. The report also raises serious environmental justice concerns: 10 of 13 funded projects were sited in communities Maryland identifies as overburdened, including three considered both overburdened and underserved.

Maryland is funding the wrong solutions to factory farm pollution.

Animal waste technologies do not eliminate manure pollution. Instead, they convert manure into other products and residuals that still contain nutrients requiring careful management. These technologies can also introduce additional environmental and public health risks into communities already burdened by industrial agriculture. And despite substantial public investment, Maryland has failed to demonstrate that the AWTF is delivering the environmental benefits it was created to achieve.

The High Cost of Manure calls on Maryland to end the AWTF and redirect public resources toward proven conservation practices that directly benefit farmers and stronger enforcement of factory farm pollution requirements. Rather than continuing to subsidize expensive technologies to manage excessive manure, Maryland should invest in preventing pollution at its source and protecting its communities and waterways.