A coalition formed to promote the sale of locally grown meat products in southern Maryland launched its Prince George’s County campaign Saturday at Miller Farms in Clinton.

Southern Maryland Meats highlighted its new freezer space at the market, focusing on locally grown produce, with sample meatballs.

Barbara Ouzts, 43, of Clinton, said the meatball sample tasted like “real beef,” as opposed to the beef grown in factory farms.

“As the word gets out about these products and more people do tastings, there will definitely be a market for [locally raised meats],” Ouzts said. “I think it’ll end up being a big success.”

Janna Howley, an agricultural marketing specialist for the University of Maryland Extension, Prince George’s County, said the effort is the culmination of a year of preparation by extension officials and local farmers. The group received a $90,000 grant from the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission for six freezers to be placed in markets in Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s counties, along with a refrigerated trailer that farmers can rent to transport their meat to marketplaces.

“Until now, farmers didn’t have a way to get meat to market without being the ‘big guy’ corporation,” Howley said.

Yates Clagett, president of the Prince George’s County Farm Bureau, said he had been searching for a way to make farming profitable again after Maryland’s tobacco buyout funds ran out. The growing interest in locally grown and “natural” meat, meaning grown without the use of hormones, steroids or antibiotics, has created a profitable niche market, he said.

“I know where all of my cows come from; they’re raised on my farm; I’ve studied and refined the genetics to get the best outcomes, and I only kill my own beef,” Clagett said. “I know where they’re born, where they’ve been, and that they’re ‘all natural,’ with no hormones. So I can get an added value product selling it locally and as ‘all natural.’”

Clagett said although livestock hasn’t completely taken the place of tobacco as southern Maryland’s cash crop, he thinks it will move more in that direction as time goes on.

“We need to convince more of the farmers of the value of raising beef [and other meat and poultry] and keeping it natural,” he said. “But as more of us come online, I think we’re going to be selling large, large quantities.”

ewagner@gazette.net