Senior Project Fresh

Saginaw County Saginaw County Extension P: 989-758-2500 E-mail: [email protected] One Tuscola Street, Suite 100 F: 989-758-2509 http://msue.msu.edu/Saginaw Saginaw, Michigan 48607 January 2006 Senior Project Fresh

The latest edition of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans advises adults to eat at least nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Unfortunately, more than half of adults over age 60 do not get the minimum required servings each day. Saginaw County’s low-income seniors were encouraged to participate in the Senior Project FRESH pilot program, offered them education in choosing, storing and preparing produce, and coupons to purchase locally grown items at farmers’ markets. This program is based on the WIC Project Fresh model, with the target audience being low income persons Saginaw County seniors at a local farmers’ market. over age 60. Local funding was provided by grants from the Saginaw Community Foundation and Citizens Bank, Cooperators included MSU Extension Saginaw with matching funds from the State Office of Services to County’s acting director Ruth Miller, MSU Extension the Aging (OSA). educator Holly Tiret, Food and Nutrition Program Nutrition Education was provided by MSUE Nutrition regional coordinator Margaret LaShore, Saginaw Program Associates at Senior Congregate Meal Sites, low Downtown Farmers’ Market master Dan Keane, Judy income senior housing complexes, and at the Saginaw Porter of the Saginaw Commission on Aging and Lori Downtown Farmer’s Market. Lessons included the health Laurie of Synergy Medical Educational Alliance AGES benefits of eating fresh produce as well as food safety Division. regarding storing and preparing produce. Plans for next year are already underway and include Education materials were provided from OSA and vigorous fund raising to sponsor Senior Project FRESH MSUE. Participants were given a copy of MSUE’s Market coupon books. Goals for next year include increased Basket Cookbook featuring recipes that highlighted marketing and additional community partners. Michigan produce. Data from a follow up survey suggests that 74% For more information contact: reported eating more fruits and vegetables than usual this Holly Tiret summer and they plan to continue in the future. Extension Educator .

Michigan State University Extension helps people improve their lives through an educational process that applies knowledge to critical issues, needs and opportunities. Offices in counties across the state link the research of the land-grant university, MSU, to challenges facing communities. Citizens serving on county Extension councils regularly help select focus areas for programming. MSU Extension is funded jointly by county boards of commissioners, the state through Michigan State University and federally through the US Department of Agriculture. Helping corn 4-H youths share their warmth growers enhance profitability

Saginaw County corn growers are challenged to grow a long-season crop that needs every day of the growing season to get a high yielding and reasonably dry grain crop. Growers try to stretch every day they can from the season, by trying to plant as early as possible and harvest as late as they can. To get that seed in the ground earlier, Oh yes! Toasty-warm and so pretty! growers once tilled their ground, which helps quickly dry The mittens and hats are great, too. and warm spring soils. Twenty youth and adults from the Frankenmuth Pace- Intensive tillage increases the production costs per setters 4-H Club got together one weekend and made acre of corn. If tillage helps extend the growing season and hats, mittens and scarves. Fifteen sets were created and increase yield, then it should increase the net income per given to second graders at Saginaw’s Webber acre. To test this concept with current corn production, Elementary School. multiple site and multiple year on-farm demonstration trials were conducted in Saginaw County. For more information contact: Kim Towne The trials were conducted with the cooperation of local Extension Educator, 4-H Youth Development corn growers, the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan and MSU Extension. Results showed that while intensive fall tillage may Saginaw and Midland counties host increase corn yield slightly, the cost of the tillage matched Citizen Planner or exceeded production benefits. Saginaw County corn growers plant about 86,000 acres Fourteen planning officials from Saginaw and in corn each year. If growers reduced tillage and Midland counties recently completed the MSU production costs from $5 to $25 per acre, they could save Extension Citizen Planner training. more than $1.7 million annually. This goal can be realized Citizen Planner is a land use training and certificate over time since an investment in specialized equipment is program for volunteer land use decision makers. necessary to deal with the crop residue left on the soil “This more than met my expectations,” one surface. participant said. Contact: Mark Seamon, Extension Educator, Field Crops Another added, “This course should be a requirement for all current or future members of planning Sugar beet production facts commissions or zoning boards of appeal. Excellent!” Topics covered included an introduction to planning The Michigan Sugar Cooperative produced a and zoning, legal issues, the roles and responsibilities of near record yield of 3.4 million tons of beets in land use planners, best practices for innovative planning 2005. The value of this crop approached $300 and zoning, community planning and farmland million, which is put back into the communities. preservation. The Michigan sugar industry is the fastest For more information contact: improving recoverable white sugar business in http://web1.msue.msu.edu/cplanner/ the nation. MSU Extension and research make major contributions to improving this industry.

MSU is an affirmative-action, equal opportunity institution, Michigan State University Extension programs and materials are open to all without regard to race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, marital status, or family status. Issued in furtherance of MSU Extension work, acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Thomas G. Coon, Extension Director, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, MI 48824