South Dakota
Economist tells SD farmers that success means adapting to changing world, regulatory climate • South Dakota Searchlight
HURON – An agricultural economist told a group of farmers Thursday they’ll be well served to adapt to the cultural and policy changes that affect their industry – even the changes they don’t like.
Matthew Roberts is a former Ohio State University professor who’s now a research analyst with a company called Terrain who speaks to farm groups across the U.S. on global trends in the business.
Roberts told attendees of the South Dakota Farmers Union annual convention that plummeting global poverty over the past 40 years has meant better access to food for a wider swath of the world population.
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Roberts flashed slides showing that the number of people worldwide living on the equivalent of $1.90 a day or less has dropped by two-thirds since 1980. That’s meant more people are able to afford healthier food, and more people around the world are eating meat.
“It is simple, fundamental human nature that the wealthier people are, the better they eat,” Roberts said.
Farmers play a huge role in addressing that demand, he said, by exporting the grain needed to feed livestock and humans. Since 2000, he said, China’s soybean imports have grown enough to require 73 million more acres from U.S. producers.
People in the U.S., China and a host of other countries that import agricultural goods from the U.S. are having fewer children, Roberts said, but he’s not concerned about a drop in demand for agricultural goods, because those children have more money and buy more expensive food.
That could mean changes in what’s grown or raised, but he expects demand to continue.
There again he pointed to China, which now consumes 90 million metric tons of meat each year. In 1990, that figure was 25 million metric tons.
Labor force worries
What does worry him is a smaller labor force. Fewer births mean fewer workers across every industry, and that will force every industry to adapt with technology, automation and outsourcing for certain positions.
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“The labor force decline is not a temporary thing, and there’s not any good evidence that there’s anything a government can do that really changes it,” Roberts said.
For farmers, he said, dealing with that will force them to pay even closer attention to profits and losses and yields, but also to learn the soft skills necessary to manage employees and keep them happy enough to stick around. Complaining about younger generations being too soft or unwilling to work might feel good, he said, but won’t change younger workers’ expectations from their employers.
“Hard skills” like agronomy and accounting can be outsourced, but managing workers on site means learning kindness, positive intent and understanding.
“That’s soft, that’s squishy, but that’s the world we live in,” Roberts said. “Otherwise, you’re going to have to learn how to run your operations.”
He also encouraged attendees with family operations to lean on their children to handle the books and technology side of operations.
Embrace consumer demands, regulatory frameworks
Farmers might also scoff at changing consumer tastes. Some consumers in the U.S. want to know where their food comes from, and many are willing to pay a premium for that knowledge.
Roberts recalled picking up farm-to-table deliveries for a vacationing neighbor and noticing that they’d paid $12 for a dozen eggs. Some of the eggs still had manure on them.
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The eggs in the carton were nutritionally identical to the eggs his neighbors could’ve purchased in the store, he said, but they wanted to know where the eggs had come from.
More importantly for Farmers Union members, he said, was the fact that the farmer who sold them kept all the money. A farmer who thinks consumers make silly choices can nonetheless benefit by serving those customers.
“How much of that $12 goes to the producer? Twelve dollars of it. Because I can guarantee you no processor is selling a poo-covered egg,” Roberts said.
He also urged farmers to adapt as quickly as possible to regulatory changes. Farmers in California who adjusted their operations decades ago to comply with that state’s farm management mandates are in better financial shape than those who thumbed their nose at them.
“Too many people say ‘I think that’s stupid, I’m not doing it,’ instead of ‘that’s stupid, but I’m going to comply better and sooner than everyone else and take advantage of it,’” Roberts said.
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The South Dakota Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at July 12, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from July 12 drawing
12-21-39-46-48, Bonus: 02
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize
- Prizes of $100 or less: Can be claimed at any South Dakota Lottery retailer.
- Prizes of $101 or more: Must be claimed from the Lottery. By mail, send a claim form and a signed winning ticket to the Lottery at 711 E. Wells Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501.
- Any jackpot-winning ticket for Dakota Cash or Lotto America, top prize-winning ticket for Lucky for Life, or for the second prizes for Powerball and Mega Millions must be presented in person at a Lottery office. A jackpot-winning Powerball or Mega Millions ticket must be presented in person at the Lottery office in Pierre.
When are the South Dakota Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 9:59 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 10 p.m. CT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky for Life: 9:38 p.m. CT daily.
- Lotto America: 9:15 p.m. CT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Dakota Cash: 9 p.m. CT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 10:15 p.m. CT daily.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a South Dakota editor. You can send feedback using this form.
RAAPID CITY, S.D. — Incarcerated women will start moving into a new $87 million prison in Rapid City next month, a South Dakota Department of Corrections spokesperson confirmed this week.
The medium-security prison will be the state’s second for women. The South Dakota Women’s Prison in Pierre has operated beyond its capacity for years, with dozens of people serving their sentences at the Hughes County Jail or in halfway house facilities.
The new prison in Rapid City, which was approved by state lawmakers
in 2023
, will add 288 beds to the state’s capacity. The Department of Corrections will begin transferring women there next month, according to spokesperson Michael Winder, who said the exact date of full operations won’t be released for security reasons
The prison includes a work release area, a mother-infant building that lets new moms stay in a home-like environment with their babies, a vocational training facility to be staffed by instructors from Western Dakota Technical Institute and 96 beds for chemical dependency treatment.
The majority of the women held in South Dakota prisons are incarcerated on nonviolent drug charges, and 97% have a substance use disorder diagnosis.
“Drug addiction is a disease that must be treated,” Corrections Secretary Nick Lamb said at Friday’s ribbon cutting, adding that “Through dedicated treatment space and the therapeutic community, women will receive the counseling support and skills that they need to break the cycle of addiction and successfully return to their families and communities.”
The mother-infant program
mirrors one launched a few years ago in Pierre
.
Mothers who qualify under security guidelines stay in a group home separate from the main prison facility with other women and children for the first few years of their child’s life. The program was launched by former Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko and was championed by Lamb in his first public conversations with lawmakers on the state’s budget committee during the 2026 legislative session.
Photo courtesy Gov. Larry Rhoden’s office
At Friday’s event, Gov. Larry Rhoden said family connections and parenting skills are key factors in rehabilitation. He framed the program as an extension of a commitment to the well-being of South Dakota families.
“This program gives mothers and their children the opportunity to build that foundation from the very beginning,” Rhoden said.
Rhoden also called out the vocational training, drug treatment and work release programs as vital to rehabilitation — and to public safety by extension. The state recently broke ground on a new $650 million men’s prison in Sioux Falls, which is set to replace the state penitentiary and is also designed to expand programming and rehabilitation.
When combined with pending policy recommendations from the state’s correctional rehabilitation task force, Rhoden said, the new prisons will help improve public safety statewide by reducing the number of people who return to prison within a few years of their release.
“At the end of the day, every person in our corrections system is a human being,” Rhoden said. “They are sons and daughters. They are mothers and fathers. People who’ve made mistakes but also have the capacity to change.”
Winder, the corrections spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight that staff will spend the next few weeks training at the new facility in preparation for the arrival of inmates in August.
The state hired Eric Aldridge
to serve as warden in March
. Aldridge, who came to South Dakota after a stint as warden of a medium-security women’s prison in Troy, Virginia, said Friday his goal is to “to facilitate an environment, an atmosphere, a culture where people learn, they grow, they heal, and where people develop through dignity and respect.”
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