PBS report spotlights Upper Marlboro farm fight amid development pressure

A farm in Upper Marlboro that is nearing its 100th year has become a test of what Prince George’s County will choose to protect: open land, or more development on one of the county’s last high-quality agricultural tracts. In a PBS segment that aired March 4, 2026, Cameron Oglesby said the family farm is “turning 100 in March,” even as nearby development pressure has threatened the land’s future and the quality of life around it.

Oglesby tied the fight to a longer history of Black land loss. She said her great-great-grandfather had to sell off portions of the property to keep the farm intact, a reminder that land retention has often required painful concessions across generations. She also said her family has dealt with attempts to build a prison next door and other nearby facilities that could have made the farm less livable, turning the property into a frontline in a larger land-use battle.

That local fight lands in a county where planners have warned the stakes are high. Prince George’s County planning materials say farmland is disappearing fast and warn that if the trend continues at the current rate, “no farmland will be left by 2050.” The county also says a significant share of its land is high-quality farmland under intense development pressure, while noting that farmland helps with flood control, wetland and watershed protection, wildlife habitat and air quality.

The county has already created preservation tools to slow the loss. Through the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation, Rural Legacy and the Historic Agricultural Resource Preservation Program, landowners can be paid through perpetual easements that keep preserved land in agriculture. County planners said Prince George’s preserved 9,958 acres through conservation programs and regulations from 2010 to 2015, while the county’s Priority Preservation Area goal calls for 24,769 acres to be placed within easements.

The numbers underscore why the Upper Marlboro farm matters beyond one family. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 636 farms and 19,137 acres of land in farms in Prince George’s County, with crops making up 82% of sales. Yet Black farmers remain underrepresented in a county that is majority-Black; one 2023 report said only 1 in 6 farmers in Prince George’s is Black. With the county’s Agricultural Resources Advisory Committee and Agricultural Preservation Advisory Board weighing land-use policy, the fight over this farm is also a fight over whether Prince George’s growth will erase the land base that still anchors its food system, environment and Black agricultural history.