Pennsylvania's Chester County is known as the "mushroom capital of the world." In huge, dark buildings, massive trays stacked several layers high contain compost that is fertile ground for mushrooms. With temperatures and humidity levels perfected over the decades, mushroom "spawn" burst forth within a few days.
"Mushrooms double in size every 24 hours," said Meghan Klotzbach, a vice president at C.P. Yeatman & Sons, which has been growing mushrooms for five generations.
They grow in darkness but will soon be bathed in light as crews begin harvesting them. Half of the nation's mushrooms come from Chester County farms, just outside the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Much of the compost used to rear the mushrooms is derived from chicken litter produced in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, trucked out of the Chesapeake watershed to help relieve the nutrient pollution problem in its waterways.
It is a way of dealing with one of the most fundamental problems facing Bay cleanup efforts: what to do with the excess manure produced by the region's growing population of farm animals. Areas with large numbers of chickens, dairy cows, beef cattle, hogs or other farm animals generate lots of manure — often containing more nutrients that can be used effectively to fertilize surrounding fields. Those regions send disproportionately large amounts of nutrient-laden runoff to the Bay, where it contributes to algae blooms and oxygen-starved "dead zones."
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