816-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, September 24, 1994 % QAiomen Lancaster Lancaster Farm Women Society #24 met at the home of Louetta Hurst, Lancaster, on August 30 Twenty-three members answered to roll call “A Doll I Remember”. Sandy Yocum displayed several different dolls of her collection and told interesting stories pertaining to each one. Sandy started her collec tion of dolls about 20 years ago and featured dolls from all around the world. Mary Ann Greiner, president, conducted a short business meeting following the program. The group will hold their annual Rummage Berks Society 4 The September meeting of Berks County Society of Farm Women Group 4 was held at the Bechtelsville home of Charlotte Mauger with eight members present Five members plan to attend the county convention on October 1 at Berks Society 6 The Berks County Farm Women Group #6 met in July at the home of Mary Jane Hetrick. David Kessler, Oley Township Supervisor, was the guest speaker. The August meeting was held at the home of Janet Schlegel. A vid eo was shown on farm safety. September 10 was the Berks Heim Festival. Quilt waffle tickets Maps Route For Pest Management UNIVERSITY PARK (Centre Co.) General since the age of Julius Caesar have known that maps are crucial tools for waging war. Now a team of researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricul tural Sciences are using unique mapping techniques to battle bee tles invading potato chips. Randy Weisz, a research asso ciate in the college’s entomology department, is in the third year of a project designed to give Pen nsylvania potato farmers a clearer picture of their pesticide needs to control the Colorado potato beetle. Weisz and his team mark off a field into sections, walk through and count the beetles in each sec tion, and enter their findings into a hand-held computer. Those data are fed directly into a larger per sonal computer, which then pro duces a map tracing the areas where large numbers of insects are living or invading the field. ‘The farmer can use the map to spray only the portion of the field where a pesticide is needed,” Weisz says. “We count the field by 3 p.m., make the map by 4:30 p.m. and the grower has the infor mation on where to spray by the next morning.” According to Zane Smilowitz, professor of entomology, Pennsyl vania has some 22,000 acres of Society 24 Sale on October 1, at the Lancaster Laboratories Pavilion, New Holland Pike from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Election of officers results were Pres.- Cindy Yingling; Vice Pres.- Pat Martin; Secretary- Dot Mast; Asst. Secretary- Doris Bewley; Treasurer- Audrey Myer: Asst. Treasurer- Lydia Ann Bentzel. Members will meet Sept. 27th at the Welsh Mountain Samaritan Home, New Holland, when they entertain the guest and play Bingo. Following this the group will meet at Yoder’s Restaurant for dessert and short business meeting. the Berks County Agriculture Center. The group is responsible for door prizes, for gift basket items, and a silent auction table. The next meeting on October 11 at 6 o'clock will be at the Lead er Home in Pottstown with resi dent Evelyn Becker as the hostess. were also sold to benefit Berks Heim. On August 21, the group held their family picnic at the Oley Legion Grove. Good food and games were enjoyed by the 25 people who attended. TTie September 20 meeting will be held at the home of Joyce Mast, Oley. Might Provide Best potato crops, almost all on smaller farms that could easily use such mapping technology. When insects infest a field, Weisz says, most pests enter at one point and spread out. By map ping the insects’ migration, the farmer can just spray “hot spots” with large populations. In test cases, the Penn State researchers reduced insecticide use by SO per cent and fungicide use by 70 percent. The Colorado potato beetle is a formidable foe. The pests quickly develop genetic resistance to pes ticides, and the pesticides now used to combat the beetle must be applied to an entire field almost weekly to control them. “The problem is literally out of control,” Weisz says. “Potatoes are the most pesticide-intensive crop in the world. Farmers can pay $365 an acre per year just to keep insects at bay.” While the researchers have documented significant drops in pesticide usage, Weisz points out two other advantages to mapping pesky pests. • Partial spraying could hinder beetles from developing resis tance because those beetles left in the unsprayed portion of the field would re-introduce the gene for pesticide susceptibility. ■ Spraying the entire field also Farmers Could Turn Plastic Into Cash Flow * UNIVERSITY PARK (Centre Co.) Environmentally con scious farmers could turn trash into cash by recycling plastics used in agriculture if they’re will ing to change some long-standing habits, says an agricultural engi neer in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. According to James Garthe, an instructor in agricultural and bio logical engineering, farms in the United States use several hundred million pounds of plastic every year, much of which has to be dis posed of after the growing season. These plastics include pots, trays, pesticide containers, and film sheeting of varying thicknesses used for mulching, crop cover and silage wraps and bags. “It costs farmers money to haul plastics to a landfill.” Garthe says. “Farmers have to look at plastics as a byproduct of production something from which they can make money or at least break even.” 4 According to Garthe, more than 60 percent of Pennsylvania’s fruit and vegetable farmers currently dispose of plastics by burning, releasing harmful substances into an already polluted atmosphere. Farmers who do not bum often bury the plastics on their farms or take them to landfills. Although a market exists for agricultural plastics, recycling firms do not often buy such mater ial because few farmers currently recycle. “Right now most growers can’t provide quantity and consis tency for the recyler, so it doesn’t make economic sense for recy clers to buy agricultural plastics,” Garthe says. Fanners and recyclers must also overcome other obstacles before recycling can become economi cally feasible, Garthe says. For example, agricultural plas tics come in a variety of types, most of which must be separated before recycling. Recyclers will obliterates the potato beetles’ natural predators. By spraying only hot spots, potato beetle pre dators such as the ladybird beetle and the sdnkbug are free to seek more prey. The technology used to produce beetle maps is quite simple. Researchers use hand-held com puters similar to those used for grocery inventory to count bugs in each field section. The computer software used to generate the map is adapted from a program used by geologists. “In a real-life applica tion, the information could be fed right into a laptop computer out in the field which then prints out a map,” Wcisz says. “This technolo gy is not far away at all.” Shelby Fleischer, assistant pro fessor of entomology, says com puter mapping, which is a compo nent of geographic information systems (GIS), can be adapted to almost any crop. Indeed, another Penn State researcher, David Mid garden, is mapping insect pests and their natural enemies in a five acre commercial tomato greenhouse. “Our work right now has been to produce a workable map to track insects,” says Fleischer. “We can use the principles of GIS to make maps to track other vari ables in a particular field as well,” only accept separated plastics, so farmers must sort the material. Most agricultural plastics are heavily contaminated. Unlike soft drink containers and milk jugs, agricultural plastics cannot be rinsed out and thrown in a recy cling bin. Agricultural film often is buried as mulch or used to bag feed, which means these films are covered with soil and other conta minants. Pesticide containers have chemical residues. To clean these plastics, farmers must thoroughly wash them. “Soil can add up to 80 percent more weight to plastics, which increases cost to farmers when they ship to recyclers,” Garthe says. Finally, costs to collect and transport used plastics to a recy cling site, often located in urban areas, can be high. “Distribution becomes a logistic nightmare,” Garthe says. “This means farmers must change their old habits and work with recyclers to make it Wax-Coated Produce Attracts Customers UNIVERSITY PARK (Centre Co.) When a gleam hits your eye from across the fruit and veg etable bins at your local super market, chances are good that the product attracting such attention has been given a thin coating of wax. Savvy shoppers have noticed that many stores now provide signs or labels identifying the type of wax used. Such labeling has been in effect since May to com ply with Food and Drug Admi nistration regulations that give consumers more nutritional infor mation on which to base a purchase. Although many consumers may not have known that some fruits and vegetables are waxed during the marketing process, experts in Penn State’s College of Agricul tural Sciences point out that such practices date back to the 19305. Indeed, most agricultural experts tend to wax enthusiastically about the benefits of adding a thin layer of protectant over the skin of cer tain types of produce. Dr. Mike Orzolck, professor of vegetable crops, says produce is waxed primarily to ensure fresh ness. For example, peppers and cucumbers would lose moisture rapidly if they were not waxed. “Cucumbers would look like old prunes after just a few days because they lose water so quick ly,” he says. “Waxes also serve as a sealant to prevent disease or fun gus from entering any tears or punctures in the skin of a product” Dr. Gerald Kuhn, a food sci ence professor who recently retired from Penn State, says wax ing also provides a thin, but nearly impermeable barrier to fungi that start the process of decay in fruits and vegetables. “Waxing can extend the room-temperature shelf Easy quesadillas are a super snack. Spread a thin layer of pre pared black bean dip on a flour tortilla then top with sliced or shredded cheese and a second tor tilla. (Jalapeno pepper Monterey Jack tastes terrific.) Place on a pizza pan or baking sheet; bake at 350' for 5 minutes or until cheese melts. Cut into wedges to serve. worth the time.” As an example, Oarthe says far mers could demand that manufac turers use recycled material in products, thus creating a market. Farmers and recyclers can also work to establish common collec tion points to lessen costs of trans portation and build up quantities of plastic faster. Garthe says recycling agricul tural plastics is still a fledgling concept and that economics may prove it to be too expensive right now. He explains that another sol ution may be to market used agri cultural plastics as fuel for waste to-energy power plants. The bot tom line, he says, is making agriculture more environmentally friendly. “Most farmers by nature an concerned with stewardship of the land,” Garthe says. “They know the farm has to last more than one generation, and. taking care of the environment is one way to ensun that,” Garthe says. life of produce by a week or up to a month,” says Kuhn, nationally known for Ids expertise in food preservation. Kuhn says consumers should not be alarmed at labels listing dif ferent types of waxes. Waxes have been in use for decades as a preservative. “In nature, apples and other produce make a natural wax called cuticle derived from plant foods,” he says. According to the U.S. Depart ment of Agriculture, produce often is washed repeatedly during harvesting, removing natural wax es. To retain moisture, growers add wax before shipping. All waxes used on. produce come from natural sources. Pro duce waxes usually combine car nauba wax (made from Brazilian palm leaves), food-grade shellac (made from lac bug secretions), polyethylene or paraffin waxes, Animal-based waxes are avail able. but producers in the United States rarely use them because such waxes conflict with Kosher or vegetarian diets. Nearly two dozen produce items can be treated with wax, among them apples, avocados, bell peppers, cantaloupes, cucum bers, eggplants, grapefruits, lemons, limes, melons, oranges, peaches, pineapples, pumpkins, rutabagas, squash, tomatoes and turnips. Although most commercial waxes cannot be removed by washing, Orzolek recommends peeling the fruit or vegetable if you arc leery of eating wax. “If producers were able to pick a piece of perfectly ripe fruit and get it to market in a few days, there would be no need to apply wax," Kuhn says, “But if the pro duce has to travel long distances, adding wax is appropriate » extend the perishable shelf life- More people are brown-bag ging than ever. In fact, Tu University Diet and Nutrition Letter” (December 1993) report* that the brown-bagging of meal and snacks has increased by tno» than 30 percent during the last i years.
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