June 23, 2026

By Sara Millhouse

Photo courtesy of Michael Edwards

On a beautiful April morning, Michael Edwards of Wood Duck Landing Farm has a to-do list that’s “a mile long.”

“I just finished watering some plants, I’m starting on the high tunnels, and I’m starting new seed right now to get ready for the season,” he said. Snap peas and kale are in the ground. He just finished mustard greens and bok choy.

For the last decade, Edwards has been farming in Somerset County, working long hours and taking on significant debt because he envisions an agriculture that works with the land, not against it.

“Wood Duck Landing Farm is actually a regenerative, sustainable farm,” he said. “We’re doing a whole lot for the environment to regenerate and promote healthy soils. And one of the things that we’re trying to do is demonstrate that you can do that viably, profitably.
If you can do that, then hopefully others will follow.”

Edwards did “lots of things” before starting Wood Duck Landing, including 30 years of work as a tech for Mercedes. He’s someone who figures out how complex systems work, and then makes them run. But the Eastern Shore of Maryland is home: he grew up fishing off the dock in the tiny town of Oxford.

When he returned to the Eastern Shore about 10 years ago, he traveled down the shore to Somerset County to rediscover a place where nature felt alive to him, close to the life-giving marsh. “Ecologically, it’s a paradise,” he said. “And you drive down here to the marsh, and everything is just beautiful.” 

The vegetables he grows today are the product of his constant ecological experimentation, as well as one puzzle piece in food security on the Eastern Shore.

To put that puzzle together, his farm has become an aggregator for the Around the Bay Farmers Alliance, a coalition of nearly 50 farmers on both sides of Bay. As an anchor farm and larger producer, Edwards gives back through constant research, experimentation, instruction and logistical support to his start-up peers.

Edwards practices numerous regenerative practices with cover crops, planting about a fifth of his tillable acreage every year to produce about 90 tons of produce per year. Depending on the season, Wood Duck Landing Farm employs between two and 10 people in this labor-intensive but land-gentle farming.

As he plants his produce with care, Edwards is nervous about finding a market for his crops when harvest time comes. “This year is very shaky,” he said. “If I don’t pay the mortgage, then all of this goes away.”

Not long ago, when Edwards was planting his fields, he knew where he could sell his produce and where the vegetables he harvested would end up. Much of the fresh produce he grew was consumed in his community.

Today, Edwards is scrambling for new markets after USDA leadership in 2025 cancelled the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, effective for Edwards in 2026. This program had bought food grown by local farmers for distribution to his Eastern Shore neighbors via pantries and organizations. 

In 2026, Edwards’ local food pantry in Princess Anne won’t be able to distribute the 10 tons of Wood Duck Landing veggies it shared last year. “People won’t have access to that quality nutrition,” Edwards said. “They’re going to be eating processed junk, which in turn creates a more of a health issue and a burden on the health system.” 

About three quarters of Edwards’ produce went to market through LFPA last year. “We basically built a viable business around that, but I knew in the back of my head the whole time that the real problem is, farming is not viable in this country,” he said. “I hate the idea that it has to be subsidized with grants, but that’s what it is.”

Now without LFPA, he’s telling other Maryland farmers to scale down their dreams of making a living farming. Try small, he says.

“What LFPA did was allow the whole aggregation to work and support all the small farmers and all their employees,” Edwards said. “We all put together an aggregation facility, and we buy reefer trucks. Everybody was happy until the money ran out.”

Edwards wishes that the people who cut LFPA could see its impacts on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. “I would love for the people that make the decisions to come down here and take an ecological tour, and a financial tour, to see how much, and how many people’s lives, this actually affects,” he said.
”The people that work for me alone, their lives and their jobs, and the people we provide quality produce for and the environment. If they physically could see it, put their hands on it, touch it, they might see the value.”

Photo courtesy of Michael Edwards