Snack time

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CHURCH HILL, Md.

Amid the locally grown strawberries, sweet peas and asparagus at Shore Good Produce in Queen Anne's County is a little rack of snack foods that may be as important to local farmers as the fresh fruits and vegetables.

They don't look like much -- just little blue bags of soybean snacks and some flavored popcorn. But the Chesapeake Fields snacks are a crucial experiment aimed at keeping the pastoral countryside free from subdivisions and strip malls.

Here is how the operation works: Farmers on the Eastern Shore grow wheat, corn, soybeans and other commodity crops to sell to the Chestertown-based snack-food company. Then Chesapeake Fields turns the crops into artisanal breads and nutritional snacks such as flavored soybean chips. About half the profits go back to the 33 participating farmers. The growers get a bigger share than they would receive from the commodities market, so they are making more money and becoming less inclined to sell their land to developers.

Sounds like a complicated business model, but the Chesapeake Fields brand is holding its own.

"It definitely tastes good -- better than it looks," said Cathy Miller, an employee at the produce shop who said sales of the snacks are brisk, though many don't recognize the brand. "People love it when it's local. The first thing they ask is, 'Where's it from?' When they learn this stuff is coming from here, they love it."

The breads were introduced less than two years ago, with eight varieties. Now the company markets 45 kinds, including olive rosemary and double chocolate cherry sourdough. Customers include the Tidewater Inn in Easton and the Hyatt Regency resort in Cambridge, plus restaurants as far away as Philadelphia and the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

The soybean snacks and flavored popcorn are on sale at 100 retail locations. Chesapeake Fields recently received a contract to sell the soybean snacks to a company in Taiwan, and the company is eyeing land in Kent County for a factory and agritourism site. Less than five years after it was conceived by a county extension agent, the homegrown snack-food company may play a meaningful role in the viability of Eastern Shore farming.

"I liked the idea of having your destiny in your hands instead of taking what they give you," said Jim Miller, who grows corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and barley in Kent County. Mr. Miller devotes up to 15 percent of his 1,000 acres to Chesapeake Fields crops, and he is chairman of the Chesapeake Fields Farmers' Cooperative.

"I was trying to see how I could make a little more money on the same amount of acres. It's kind of hard to make a living when you're a farmer," said Mr. Miller, a fourth-generation Kent County farmer.