HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — The Maryland State Fair will no longer host the state farm queen contest because tiaras and gowns belong in the past, fair board Chairman F. Grove Miller Jr. said yesterday.
He said members voted to end their nearly 60-year association with the event Thursday night, two days after directors of the Maryland Farm Bureau restored royal trappings to the farm youth competition.
“There are some people on my board that have some very strong feelings about the word ’queen.’ They feel that that’s in the past, and we ought to move forward,” Mr. Miller said.
Maryland Farm Bureau President Earl “Buddy” Hance of Port Republic said the group probably will hold the contest at its annual meeting in Ocean City in December.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
Last year, the event was changed to an “agricultural ambassador” competition, with the winner wearing a businesslike black blazer instead of a glittering crown. The Farm Bureau’s women’s committee, which oversees the contest, made the change with the fair board’s support in an attempt to modernize it and attract more contestants.
But the change rankled traditionalists on the Maryland Farm Bureau’s mostly male governing board, which voted Tuesday to restore the farm queen format.
Mr. Miller said a majority of the 27 fair board members who met Thursday believed the Farm Bureau was “just dictating to us what we should do.”
“It affects the young ladies, and that’s the sad part,” he said.
Farm queen proponents say a tiara commands more attention than a blazer, which creates more awareness of agriculture.
Those who prefer an agricultural ambassador had hoped the contest eventually would be open to boys, offsetting a decline in farm queen entries in recent years. The return to the old format limits participation to girls ages 16 to 19.
The Farm Bureau had compromised on the attire. Director Jeffrey Griffith of Anne Arundel County said Thursday that had the event been held at the fair, the queen and her court would have worn “appropriate dress” — not necessarily gowns but no blazers.
“It’s a special event and it’s a long tradition. And, like a bunch of farmers, we don’t like to break tradition a whole lot,” he said.
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