4-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, February 17,2001 11 Check It Out: You Already Paid For This Year’s Food GAY BROWNLEE Somerset Co. Correspondent SOMERSET (Somerset Co.) On Feb 7, just 38 days into the year, the average American household had already paid for its annual supply of foo< , accord ing to statistics from the U.S. De partment of Agriculture. That figure even includes eating out. In comparison, to pay local, state and federal taxes, the same wage and salary earners must work until May 3, or 123 days. Which reveals that food is a bargain for American consumers and Food Check Out Day held by the Women’s Committee of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, puts that agricultural headline squarely in the public eye. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. are the most productive in the world, plus the food they pro duce is the most affordable in the world. To most families Food Check Out Day is oblivious, but not to Ronald McDonald Houses (RMH) who partake of the boun ty of Food Check Out Day. The RMHs provide lodging for family members whose children with se rious illnesses are being treated at nearby medical centers. To rural Pennsylvanians even Farm Bureau families the presence of an RMH means a home away from home in times of stress and uncertainty. The rural population in Pennsylvania is greater than in any of the SO states. The comfort of having an RMH nearby cannot be mea sured by those from out of town who stay in them. In relation to the five RMHs located inside the Keystone States borders, the participating county Farm Bureaus sought co operation from their respective communities. Rising to occasion with drives for food commodi ties, household Supplies, and monetary offerings whereby RMH pantries could be stock piled, were various clubs, church es and schools that were eager to Want to Get Rid of Trash Quicker? Just Add Water COLUMBUS, Ohio Trash in a municipal landfill could de compose about 10 to 20 times faster than it normally does through a system that keeps the trash continuously wet, new re search suggests. Landfills are normally dry en vironments, and the lack of ade quate moisture doesn’t allow bio degradable trash to decompose as quickly as it should, say re searchers at Ohio State Universi ty- In fact, keeping a landfill satu rated means it could stabilize in five to 10 years, instead of taking the average 100 years or longer to do so, said Ann Christy, an as sistant professor of food, agricul tural and biological engineering at Ohio State. In a stabilized landfill, the majority of trash has decomposed. “Quicker decomposition rates mean more room for more trash in the same landfill, which would cut down on the need for addi tional landfill space,” she said. “This also feeds into recycling once the biodegradable material decomposes, we can extract re cyclables from the landfills, then the landfills aren’t filling up as quickly.” Christy is currently experi menting with moisture levels in two laboratory-scale wet-tomb bioreactors. A wet-tomb bioreac tor is a self-contained unit with Members of the Somerset County Farm Bureau pack the van with 30 and a half crates of food and supplies collected through community support for Food Check Out Day on Wednesday, Feb. 7. From left, Kurt Walker, SCFB vice-president; Phil Lehman, SCFB director; Harold Shaulis, SCFB president; Fred Boucher, SCFB director; Denise Rohrbaugh, SCFB secretary, and Food Check Out Day spokesperson for the Somerset to Erie region and Oscar Market, SCFB director. Donations from the PFBs 18-county re gion, to Pittsburgh Ronald McDonald House were estimated at $lO,OOO. adopt a community service proj ect. Marlin Miller, manager of member relations at the PFB of fice in Camp Hill reported the following initial (donations are still arriving) statistics from Food Check Out Day: Danville RMH $15,870; Philadelphia RMH— 515,250; Pittsburgh RMH $10,000; Hershey RMH 059,502; $9,502; Scranton RMH $4,429. These are estimates of the combined food, supplies, cash and gift certificates in each re gion. “We are getting a lot of cover age in the media,” Miller said. “The point is being made more water purposely pumped in the water creates an environment suitable for bacteria to actively decompose waste. The water is recirculated throughout the sys tem. Christy’s research appears in a recent issue of the journal Ap plied Engineering in Agriculture. She co-authored the study with Olli Tuovinen, a professor of mi crobiology at Ohio State, and Mi chael Myers, an engineer with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Re sources. Christy and her colleagues monitored the experimental bio reactors for 15 months. Each bio reactor or bin was filled with approximately 3,300 pounds (1.5 metric tons) of non shredded municipal solid waste collected from a local sanitary landfill. (While many small-scale landfills require waste to be shredded in order for it to fit, shredding is not economically feasible for a full-scale landfill, Christy said.) The bins were 3 feet long, 6 feet wide and 3 feet tall. The researchers could watch the decomposition through a 2-by-2.5 feet Plexiglas observa tion window installed in each bin. The waste in one bin was cov ered with a single layer of sludge sewage already decomposed by bacteria. Sludge has been used dearly that food is inexpensive in comparison to taxes.” When representatives in the district from Somerset to Erie ar rived at the Pittsburgh RMH, spokesperson Denise Rohrbaugh, who is secretary of the Somerset County Farm Bureau, said that in Somerset County alone, more than 30 and a half crates were transported in the produce van of Farm Bureau director, Phil Lehman. Lehman runs a vege table operation with his son on the Garrett Shortcut near Berlin. The groups that responded to Rohrbaugh’s letter of invitation to participate were the Rock wood Chapter of the National in landfills to help increase the rate at which trash decomposes. At the beginning of the study, re searchers poured distilled water into each bin, until they saw the water draining into the liner under the bins. The used water or leachate was continuously pumped through the bins again via leachate recirculation pipes. While the researchers did not get the decomposition results they had hoped for the mass in the bin with the sludge layer de creased by one percent (to 3,009 pounds) in 15 months, and the mass of the other bin decreased by 1.3 percent (to 2,989 pounds) they are confident that keep ing a relatively high level of moisture in a landfill would in crease the rate of decomposition, Christy said. She attributed the lower-than expected decomposition rates in this study to the lack of adequate amounts of bacteria and also the lack of heat production. Paper and plastic comprised 70 percent of the solid waste in these bins, while the two most readily biode gradable products, yard waste and food waste, comprised less than 5 percent of the total mass. ‘The disproportionate amount of recyclables (paper and plastic) in the bins were undoubtedly a hindrance to the bacteria’s suc cess in breaking down the trash,” Honor Society, St. Peters School, Somerset Boy Scout Troop 131, the Country Clovers 4-H Club and the county commissioners office in the courthouse. Crawford County’s 2,700 items were collected by one school and one church, Rohr baugh reported. “We did excellent this year,” Rohrbaugh said in “We unloved,