Menu
- Deadly rural roads and securing a safe ride home (12/17/24)
- The fall of Assad: A sobering lesson in pragmatism (12/13/24)
- Finding transparency in TEEOSA (12/12/24)
- In with a heavy hand, and out with a whisper (12/10/24)
- Applauding leadership that listens: a triumph for local representation (12/6/24)
- Are elected officials above the law? (12/4/24)
- Shopping tips to reduce holiday stress (11/29/24)
Editorial
Celebrating another important state crop
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Nebraska: The Cornhusker State.
Whatever the fortunes of our favorite football team, Nebraska is inexorably linked to those fields of corn growing along our highways, nourished with water drawn from the Ogallala aquifer through center-pivot systems, many of which are manufactured right here in McCook.
But not all of that water goes on corn, and not every mile of those highways is lined with maize.
Some of them are lined with beans.
A lot of those acres are soybeans -- Nebraska produced 207,085,000 bushels of soybeans and exported $1.4 billion worth of them in 2012.
Most soybean exports go to China, and soybeans generally go into meal and oil, winding up in shortening, margarine, cooking oil and salad dressings, as well as paint, varnishes, caulking compounds, linoleum, printing ink and other products. We were fourth in soybean exports, $1.4 billion and fifth in production with 207 million cwt.
But it's another type of bean -- dry edible beans -- that is celebrated today, National Bean Day, Jan. 6.
Nebraska is no slacker in that category, either. We produced more than a million hundred weight in great northern beans in 2012, putting us at number one in the nation. We were second in pinto beans, 1.8 million cwt., and third in all dry edible bean production, 3.19 million cwt.
Overall, Nebraska is third in dry edible bean production behind North Dakota with 32 percent of the nation's production, Michigan with 17 percent and our state producing 11 percent.
Yes, we've heard all the jokes about the, uh, "side effects" of consuming beans, but the value and versatility of the bean vegetable, which has been cultivated for thousands of years, easily overcomes any "musical" qualities. And, there's a lot of potential -- of about 40,000 bean varieties in the world, only a fraction are mass-produced for regular consumption.
All joking aside, green, red, dark red, kidney, lima, soy and legumes of all types are an important source of protein, a healthy choice for any meal or snack, an excellent source of fiber, low in fat and high in complex carbohydrates, folate and iron.
A cup of cooked beans provdes between 9 and 13 grams of fiber, which can help lower blood cholesterol.
Check out recipes and more information at http://bit.ly/1BuNJGJ