A lack of a skilled agriculture workforce is a top inhibitor of growth and expansion for many Kansas agriculture entities. To help support growth in agriculture, the Kansas Department of Agriculture seeks to help the industry better understand workforce needs among agricultural employers in the state. To link the supply of human capital to the needs of Kansas agribusiness enterprises, KDA conducted the second Kansas Agriculture Workforce Needs Assessment Survey in 2022. The survey was analyzed by the Agricultural Land Use Survey Center at Kansas State University.
The survey was emailed to over 25,000 businesses with 1,192 choosing to participate. Participating businesses employ 27,466 individuals in Kansas and 9,244 outside of Kansas. Respondents were asked to self-select the major category that applied to their business.
“We are committed to growing agriculture in Kansas, and that centers around a reliable and capable workforce,” said Secretary of Agriculture Mike Beam. “We know recruiting and retaining skilled, talented workers to fill critical roles is a priority of the agriculture industry in our state.”
The survey findings will be used along with action items developed at the Kansas Summit on Agricultural Growth, which was held in August, to help direct KDA’s vision in serving the farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses of Kansas. Employers and state agencies need to work together to find or develop programs so that businesses may implement successful on-the-job training. By working with secondary schools and postsecondary educational institutions, the agriculture industry can develop beneficial partnerships that will help teach the skills and content needed by employers and will help the industry gain access to trained future employees.
To view the final report from the survey, go to agriculture.ks.gov/workforce. For more information, please contact Russell Plaschka, Director of KDA Ag Marketing Division, at 785-564-7466 or [email protected].
Guest Speaker: Bill Martin Wednesday, November 30, 2022, from 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Gordon Parks Museum FREE Attendance Please feel free to bring your lunch and drinks. Birthday Cake will be available. Come and celebrate Gordon Parks 110th birthday as Bill Martin, Diversity Archivists for the Langston Hughes Cultural Society in Joplin, Missouri, will share the story board collections of Langston Hughes & Gordon Parks along with his research with the help from the Library of Congress and Ancestry.com and historic African American Newspapers.
For more information contact the Gordon Parks Museum at 620 -223-2700 ext 5850 or email: [email protected]
The Gordon Parks MuseumPresents “Langston Hughes & Gordon Parks Story Board Collection” Presentation Explores The Story Board Collection of Langston Hughes and Gordon Parks Celebrating Gordon Parks110th Birthday Lunch & Learn Event
On Wednesday, Nov 30, 2022, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Gordon Parks Museum, Professional photographer, Veretta Cobler will give a free photography instruction on working with digital photography.
This in-depth workshop is designed to help the beginner and the novice learn how to get the most out of their digital camera. More experienced photographers can learn some techniques to improve and enhance their shots.
Veretta lived and worked in New York City as a professional photographer for over four decades. She has recently relocated back home in Fort Scott, Kansas. Her work is in fine arts, fashion, portraiture, still life and journalistic cultural study. Her fashion images are seen in various U.S. magazines including Bride, Modern Bride, Bridal Guide, Elegant Bride, Martha Stewart Living, The Knot, Seventeen, Prom and New York Magazine.
Veretta’s fine arts photography has resulted in exhibitions and publications of her work throughout her career. Published works include New York Underground (2004), a coffee table photography book depicting the nightlife in New York City in late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
Her most recent book about the life and teachings of a Lakota spiritual man, “Teachings From A Chief ”, is in the publishing process.
She received her BS degree of Photojournalism from the University of Kansas in 1974.
For more information contact the Gordon Parks Museum at 620 -223-2700 ext 5850 or email: [email protected]
The museum is located on the campus of Fort Scott Community College.
Celebrating Gordon Parks,110th Birthday Digital PhotographyDigital Photography Workshop
The Gordon ParksMuseumat Fort Scott Community College will celebrate the anniversary of Gordon Parks’birthday onWednesday, November 30thwithpresentations, workshop and the showing offilmsthroughout the day.Theeventsarefree of charge and thepublic is invited toattend.
The schedulethroughout the day will include: 8:00 a.m.–6:30p.m.—Gordon Parks Museumwillbeopenforextended hours. 10:00a.m.–11:30 a.m.—Showing of the filmCriterion CollectionThe Learning Tree. 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.—“Langston Hughes & Gordon Parks Story Board”(Lunch and Learn Event)Bill Martin,Diversity Archivists for theLangston Hughes Cultural Society in Joplin, Missouri, will share the story board collections of Langston Hughes & Gordon Parks alongwithhisresearchwith thehelp from the Library of Congress and Ancestry.com and historic African American Newspapers.Feel free tobring your lunchand join us. Birthday cake.
1:30p.m.–3:15p.m.–Showing of the filmLeadbelly. 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.—“Digital PhotographyWorkshop”Veretta Cobler,Professional Photographer will provide freeinstruction on working with digital photography. This in–depth workshop is designed to help the beginner and the novicelearn how to get the most out of their digital camera. Moreexperienced photographers can learn some techniques to improve and enhance their shots. Parks,born in Fort Scott on November30, 1912,would have been110this year. He died in March 7,2006 at the age of 93.
Theevents andfilmswill beshownin theDanny and Willa Ellis Family Fine Arts Center. For more informationcontactthe GordonParks Museumat620–223–2700, ext. 5850or by email at gordonparkscenter@fortscott.edu ###
Since its inception in 2007, the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes has hosted visitors from around the world, including 104 countries and all 50 US states. On November 4, 2022, the center reached a new milestone with its 12,634th visitor for 2022. That number marks the highest number of visitors the Center has had in one calendar year.
81-year-old John Hammes from Bangor, Wisconsin was the honored visitor for 2022. He is a Vietnam veteran, who visited the Center on his way to a veteran’s celebration in Branson, Missouri with his wife and children. They enjoyed learning the stories of all of the LMC’s Unsung Heroes and could relate to those about Harry Hue and Douglas Hegdahl, both Vietnam veterans themselves. While John was awarded with special gifts from the Center to mark this milestone day, he also gifted the LMC staff with his own special stories about his four tours of duty in Vietnam. The Center thanks John for his service to our country and congratulates him as the 12,634th Visitor for 2022!
Visitors like John and his family continue to help the mission of the Center grow, as they learn about and share the featured Unsung Heroes’ stories and their important impact on the history of our country and the world.
As interest in the Center grows, the number of projects entered in the Discovery Award and ArtEffect competitions grows as well. Consequently, new Unsung Hero exhibits are continually being added to the Lowell Milken Center’s Hall of Heroes, the Lowell Milken Park, and the Center’s website. These unsung heroes become role models that inspire all who learn about them to seek to make a difference in the lives of others.
About the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes:
The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes works with students and educators across diverse academic disciplines to develop history projects that highlight role models who demonstrate courage, compassion and respect. Through our unique project-based learning approach, students discover, develop and communicate the stories of Unsung Heroes who have made a profound and positive impact on the course of history. By championing these Unsung Heroes, students, educators and communities discover their own power and responsibility to effect positive change in the world. Visit www.lowellmilkencenter.org to learn more.
Schedule a Reading with Miss Val for
Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Month
In honor of Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Month, Miss Val, Youth Librarian at Fort Scott Public Library, would like to read “Not a Box” by Antoinette Portis to local preschool children. If you run a daycare or teach at a preschool and would like to schedule a reading, email Miss Val at [email protected] or call (620)223-2882.
The story “Not a Box” is a simple tale about a rabbit who uses its imagination to turn a box into many different things, including a rocket ship, racecar, burning building, and a mountain peak.
According to the State Library of Kansas website, “Kansas Reads to Preschoolers is an annual event that promotes reading to all Kansas children from birth through age five.
Through the statewide program, parents, librarians and caregivers are encouraged to read the chosen title during a selected week and month.”
A telescope will be an added attraction at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes at the corner of First and Wall Street in downtown Fort Scott.
“The telescope will be used to educate the community on… amazing unsung heroes of the stars,” Ronda Hassig, funding developer for the center, said.
Ronda Hassig. Taken from the Lowell Milken Center Facebook page.
Hassig wrote the $2,500 grant proposal for the telescope and carrying case and the Fort Scott Area Community Foundation awarded the grant last month.
“The telescope is remote and GPS controlled,” Hassig said. ” We had an astronomer from Nebraska stop by the center and we found out he is the director of the Stargazing Project in Nebraska! He is so excited for us, that he has agreed to come back down as soon as the telescope arrives and help us get used to using it. There’s a definite learning curve but he thinks we can handle it!”
“The telescope will be used in the Lowell Milken Park (adjacent to the center) for viewing of the moon and planets,” she said. “For deeper space, we are hoping to be able to use it at the Fort (Fort Scott National Historic Site) along with their telescope!”
“We hope to get both young and old excited about seeing the stars and the heavens so we will be having star parties here at the center in the Lowell Milken Park,” she said. “The parties will contain stargazing along with guest speakers and expert astronomers from all over the country. Everyone will be invited!”
“I think no matter how old you are, if you have ever looked through a telescope and seen the moon up close, or the actual rings of Saturn, you are hooked forever,” she said.
The telescope has been ordered and the center staff hope to have it sometime this week.
“Then I’ll get to start planning our first star party,” she said. ” I’ll be paying special attention to moonless nights and hopefully cloudless nights and we may get lucky and get to have a party in the next several months. It will be cold but if you’re bundled up you won’t care! There will be warm drinks and treats for everyone!”
“Stay tuned for dates and please plan to come enjoy our newest device at the Lowell Milken Center provided with the gracious funds of the Fort Scott Community Foundation,” she said.
“We are really trying to educate the community on all of the different unsung heroes here at the Lowell Milken Center, by having fun and having educational activities around those heroes,” she said.
Two of the astronomy heroes that are featured at the center are:
“Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born right after the Civil War and was educated at Oberlin and Radcliffe,” Hassig said. “She got excited about astronomy after taking a course on it. When she graduated she began volunteering at the Harvard College Observatory and after 14 years she was paid for her work at $.30 an hour. She was essentially 1 of 20 women computers. Through her work, Leavitt earned graduate credit towards her degree but never completed it. She did however make an amazing discovery – she figured out how to measure objects in space. This discovery led to the launching of the Hubble Telescope and more recently the Webb Telescope! As she aged, her health got worse and a bout with cancer caused her to lose her hearing. She died at age 53, but her dedication to astronomy has given us some of our most advanced knowledge about space!”
“Gene Shoemaker was the founder of astrogeology,” Hassig said. “The first person to determine the origin of the famous Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, the first director and creator of the Astrogeology Research Program of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, and along with David Levy discovered the Shoemaker-Levy Comet.
“Shoemaker worked for NASA preparing himself and the other astronauts to walk on the moon. Gene was to be the first geologist on the moon. But after all his hard work he was unable to go to the moon because he had Addison’s Disease. He commentated the moonwalk with CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite during the live flights. Although he was horribly disappointed not to go, he kept looking for impact craters and space rocks. He searched for craters and rocks all over the world. He was looking for craters in Australia when he was tragically killed in a car accident. NASA wanted to honor this amazing scientist so they called his family and asked for some of his ashes. They put the ashes in a space probe and crashed it on the moon. Gene Shoemaker is the only human buried on the moon and just one of two buried in space.”
Multi-Year Flex Accounts Can Help Manage Water Use in Drought Years
For Immediate Release:
November 14, 2022
Media please contact:
Heather Lansdowne
785-564-6706 [email protected]
MANHATTAN, Kansas — As the drought continues to intensify across Kansas, many farmers have struggled to keep their crops alive amid the scarce water supply. The Kansas Department of Agriculture’s Division of Water Resources encourages water right owners to be alert to their water use for 2022 and consider applying for a multi-year flex account (MYFA) if they believe they may exceed their annual water use allocation for this year.
Rather than operating on an annual basis with the quantity of water defined by the water right, a MYFA temporarily replaces the water right with a 5-year quantity to be used as needed in response to growing season conditions. This option has been available to water users since 2012, providing flexibility by allowing the water right holder to exceed their annual authorized quantity in any year but restricts total pumping over the 5-year period.
To sign up for a MYFA that will include the 2022 pumping season, water right owners should contact or go to their regional KDA-DWR field office before the end of the year. An application must be filed on or before December 31 of the first year of the MYFA term for which the application is being made.
A MYFA is just one of the tools that farmers can use in their efforts to best manage their water. In addition to the flexibility provided by the MYFA option, farmers are also encouraged to consider water conservation practices such as drought-tolerant crop varieties, cropping patterns, water conservation areas, and irrigation technologies such as soil moisture probes, mobile drip irrigation systems, remote monitoring systems and more. By implementing the water conservation tools available, producers can work together to extend the long-term viability of the Ogallala aquifer which supplies water to the western third of the state.
KDA-DWR oversees water appropriation, including annual water use affiliated with water rights. For more information about the benefits of a MYFA and how to apply, go to www.agriculture.ks.gov/MYFA or call your regional field office or the main KDA-DWR office at 785-564-6640.
