Melissa Bess, Nutrition and Health Education Specialist, Camden County, University of Missouri Extension
September 16 is known as National Guacamole Day. Guacamole can be healthy, depending on how you make it. Avocados are the main ingredient in this tasty side dish or appetizer.
California avocados are in season from spring to fall. This is the time of year that you will find the best quality and best prices on avocados. Avocados are one of the produce items with the least amount of pesticides, so there is no reason or benefit to buying organic avocados.
Avocados are considered a fruit. They are one of the few fruits or vegetables that contain fat. The fat in avocados is unsaturated and is heart healthy.
Did you know that avocados have more potassium than bananas? Avocados contain 60 percent more potassium per ounce than bananas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), avocados are loaded with nutrients such as dietary fiber, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, potassium, magnesium and folate. They’re also cholesterol and sodium free. Two tablespoons of mashed avocado or 1/5 (about 1 ounce) of a medium avocado provides about 55 calories.
Mashed avocado can be used instead of mayonnaise on a sandwich or wrap. You can mix avocado with your choice of whole grains and other vegetables for a tasty whole grain salad. Avocados can also be mixed with tomatoes, diced onions, lime or lemon juice and your choice of seasonings for a refreshing dip.
HAPPINESS IS NOT A STATE TO ARRIVE AT, BUT A MANNER OF TRAVELING ~ Margret Lee Runbeck
They always say that you cannot go back home. In many ways this is true for we never live in the times past but only remember them. I find that when I go back to places in my past there are a lot of good memories alive even if nothing else is. It is always fun to set in and feel the old times yet you are still there on a visit and have to come home, where ever that is now.
After visiting my clinic in Wichita if I time it right I avoid the traffic and travel around on paved county roads. I find many more today than when they were a part of my fire response district. I end up at my old stomping ground on the west end of Cheney Lake at Mt. Vernon at Creations Restaurant.
Now Mt. Vernon has grown since a couple farm and storage sheds went up but I think the population is still around six or seven. At the old country store next to the spot that the old dance hall sat is Creations Restaurant.
When I moved from poetry into music there were several of us that could see that a corner that was not in real use would be a great place to put a small stage. Steve, the owner, was great with the idea and in a couple weeks time a stage was built and the music started.
Every Thursday night there would be musicians wander in and out. There might be 3 or 30 you never knew. We had a regular crowd and it was a fun place. I was a member of the Western Music Association and was working with the best guitar player I have ever known named Gerald Walters. He was one of the Kingman County crowd who grew up with music in their homes on Saturday nights. This before TV, CD, downloads, and when you charged the battery’s on the radio to listen to the Grand Ole Opry in the parlor with the neighbors.
I still get to visit with old friends and there is the memory of Prairie Dog Lafferty who I swear still haunts the place. Sometimes a few of the local musicians pop in for a jam session. I swear that jam session music is the best even if it is off key or the mikes are not right. It is that live feel that makes the music special.
Since I have been fighting health issues I have no air and when I was asked if I would sing a couple songs, I had to go by faith because I was not sure the voice was still there. Well there was enough that I had a great time. There is going to be something special happen at Creations around my birthday so stay tuned.
I guess you can go home for a little bit. But I still had to get on the road and get across that Barber County line. Good memories.
Janet Hackert, Nutrition and Health Education Specialist, Harrison County, University of Missouri Extension
Sept. 14-20, 2014 is National Child Passenger Safety Week
Child safety seats and booster seats may seem like a hassle, but it’s important to know how to use them properly to protect children. Car crashes kill more children 1 to 14 years old than any other cause, so adults need to use child safety tools correctly.
Missouri’s Child Restraint Law states the following:
Child Safety Seat: Children under 4 years old or weighing less than 40 pounds must be in an appropriate child safety seat.
Booster seat with lap and shoulder belt: Children 4 to 7 years old who weigh at least 40 pounds must be in an appropriate child safety seat or booster seat unless they are 80 pounds or 4’9″ tall.
Lap and shoulder safety belts: Children 8 years and older or weighing at least 80 pounds or at least 4’9″ tall are required to be secured by a safety belt or booster seat appropriate for that child.
There are many reasons children need the protection of proper restraint in a vehicle. The bones of young children are soft and their ligaments are looser than adults’. They need the assistance of the appropriate car seat, booster seat or lap and shoulder belts to be held securely. These tools also protect the child from hitting or being hit by something or someone during a crash. Even during a sudden stop, these devices secure children in place, absorbing the force of such an abrupt movement and spreading that impact out safely.
American Agri-Women member Lisa Campion recently traveled to Uganda for 21 days as part of the Farmer-to-Farmer Program. American Agri-Women has partnered with Catholic Relief Services, who administers the USAID Farmer to Farmer Program in East Africa, as its first international grant program. The Farmer-to-Farmer (FTF) program promotes economic growth, food security, and agricultural development in East Africa.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the five-year program matches the technical assistance of U.S. farmers, agribusinesses, cooperatives, and universities to help farmers in developing countries improve agricultural productivity, access new markets, and increase their incomes.
Campion is past president of Sigma Alpha Sorority and is an attorney with Martin & Associates in Barre, Vt. She shares this about her time in Uganda, “ Every day for 11 days, I worked with the Barr Orphans, Widowers and Widows (BOWW) Cooperative Society to build their capacity in leadership and management training. Over the 11 days, I trained almost 500 people, of which 350 were women. I learned that, in order to make a difference in someone’s life, you need to try to experience it for yourself, determine potential solutions, and then work with them to give them the tools they need to succeed.”
If you are interested in volunteering, please apply at http://farmertofarmer.crs.org/ as soon as possible. Once you apply, your application will be reviewed and then you will be placed in a database of volunteers. If a scope of work is developed and you meet the qualifications, Catholic Relief Services will contact you to determine if you are interested. Also you can check online at http://farmertofarmer.crs.org/ for new scope of work descriptions that are posted as they are developed. Current assignments include:
When it comes to managing limited irrigation for crops, research suggests pumping more intensively on fewer acres might show more value than spreading out the irrigation over more acres. ~ K-State Research and Extension
A K-State expert explains crop watering approaches and which has more favorable economic returns when water availability is limited.
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Getting the most value out of irrigation water is likely on the minds of many Kansas farmers. As groundwater supplies diminish, pumping rates decline and talk of local water conservation policies surface in the state, these farmers face even more difficulty in determining how to best manage limited water.
Nathan Hendricks, assistant professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, recently examined how the value of agricultural production declines as water availability decreases. He specifically looked at two general management methods to determine which is more effective: deficit irrigation on a larger number of acres versus more intense irrigation on a smaller number of acres.
Intensive focus on fewer acres seems to have the upper hand
To answer the question of which is better, pumping more intensively on fewer acres versus less intensively on more acres, Hendricks said he first looked at the basic economics. The question only relates to those facing limited irrigation, not those farmers who currently have limited authorized irrigated acreage and can fully irrigate that acreage.
“The simple intuition is you first want to decrease intensity and maintain acreage if a 1 percent reduction in intensity decreases returns by less than 1 percent,” Hendricks said. “But, eventually as irrigation becomes more limited, you want to end up at an intensity level such that if you decreased (irrigation) intensity by 1 percent, you would decrease your returns by 1 percent.”
“The economically optimal place is where either reducing intensity or reducing acreage gives you the same loss in return,” he continued. “This is constant returns to intensity. Once you have reached this intensity, then it is optimal to further reduce irrigation water use by reducing acreage.”
A county-level data analysis of crop production in the Great Plains and Corn Belt showed losing about 1 to 1.5 inches of precipitation short of meeting the evapotranspiration demand for crops, including corn, is about the place where water hits this constant returns to intensity, Hendricks said.
Crop water need, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization, is the depth of water required to meet the water loss through evapotranspiration—loss of water through evaporation from the soil and transpiration from the plant. Evapotranspiration helps determine how much water is needed by rain or irrigation for crops such as corn.
“One of the key things that surprised me when I did the analysis is that’s quite a bit of water per acre only being 1 to 1.5 inches short of meeting evapotranspiration demand for corn,” Hendricks said. “It suggests that a pretty intense level of irrigation is optimal even when water is severely limited. As we’re seeing dwindling water supplies, it will likely be optimal to start reducing irrigated acreage relatively soon.”
To further illustrate, Hendricks gave an example where a farmer may choose to cut his or her irrigated acreage almost in half—say 120 acres of limited irrigated corn (irrigated at half of corn evapotranspiration demand) down to 66 acres of more intensely irrigated corn (irrigated at optimal constant returns to intensity). That farmer originally had 40 acres of dryland corn, but now tacks on the remaining 54 acres of those 120 acres formerly under limited irrigation, to now equal 94 total dryland acres.
“Before, you were only doing half of corn evapotranspiration demand,” he said. “It could be that you’re planting wheat to do that, or whatever other crops, but the idea is that you’re doing a limited intensity over a large acreage. What’s optimal, according to my numbers, is that you would more intensively irrigate, but you would reduce your irrigated acreage. If you do this, you could pay another $4,260 in rent over the entire 160 acres. You’re getting a lot more value by irrigating a limited area at a more intense level.”
Irrigators should crunch their own numbers to figure out when they are getting below this constant returns to intensity level, Hendricks said, and then they would likely be better off reducing irrigated acreage and increasing intensity.
The role of LEMAs and irrigation timing
Policy-wise in Kansas, the role of local enhanced management areas (LEMAs) comes into play, if groundwater management districts (GMDs) decide to establish their own groundwater conservation policies. LEMAs are water conservation plans voluntarily implemented by agricultural producers, and made possible by a bill passed in the Kansas Legislature in 2012. The first LEMA in Kansas, the Sheridan-Thomas County LEMA, or Sheridan 6 LEMA, is in the northwest part of the state.
“As people are talking about LEMAs, they’re thinking about reducing their water use,” Hendricks said. “How are they going to adapt to less water? How can they get the most value if they’re going to limit the amount of water? How will the value of agricultural production decline if they restrict their water use?”
In addition to examining how LEMAs could further affect limited irrigation, Hendricks said he would like to research further how farmers could time irrigation to get more value out of it. Perhaps they could reduce intensity more just by optimally timing irrigation.
Hendricks said he wants to know how much water farmers could reduce before they see a 10 percent decrease in water use decreasing returns by 10 percent.
“At some point we’re going to hit that, my analysis suggests,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure where, but that’s certainly a conversation for producers. It’s this idea that we can decrease water use without a huge loss in returns. Then at some point it starts to decline at a linear rate.”
