Building international connections is an important aspect of the agricultural industry.

This year, farmer

Rudy Dotzenrod

hosted visitors from the Big Iron International Visitors Program to his farm to showcase his crops and Reinke irrigation systems.

“They were looking for a place to kind of showcase some of their swing-arm technology at the end of their pivots,” Dotzenrod said. “I’ve got a couple of them here, so they wanted to come.”

There were visitors from all of the world, including Turkey, Guatemala and Africa.

“We bring in anywhere from 50 to 150 international visitors every year,” said Lindsey Warner, deputy director of the North Dakota Trade Office. “The goal of that is, first and foremost, have agriculture machinery buyers learn more about North Dakota, our agriculture, our agriculture practices, the machinery that’s manufactured here.”

They got to see every part of the farming operation.

“I took a lot of them, and we walked around the farm, we went to different buildings and we looked at all sorts of different kinds of machinery, you know, from getting the ground ready, to planting, to spraying it, to harvesting it, just kind of looked at everything,” Dotzenrod said.

With Dotzenrod also being a black bean grower, that was beneficial to the visitors from Guatemala.

“They were very interested in irrigation and black beans,” Warner said.

However, most were interested in his corn production.

“I was kind of surprised, I thought there may be a few more questions on edible beans, but it was mostly in corn,” Dotzenrod said.

Bringing international visitors directly onto the farm is a big part of the tour.

“We live in a global world. A lot of the commodities that are produced within our state are exported outside of the U.S., so I think it’s really beneficial for people to see where their food is coming from, whether they are North Dakotas or they are international consumers of these products” Warner said.

“People kind of want to know where their food is coming from, you know, and if they can try and put a face on that or an environment, that gives them a better understanding of where it’s at,” Dotzenrod said. “A lot of this is beyond the economics of it. It’s relationship based. If they feel like they’re buying something from somebody they like, I think it makes it a lot easier for them to go ahead and do that.”

A nationwide cybersecurity breach has affected software used by North Dakota public schools, North Dakota Information Technology confirmed Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if any North Dakota student or teacher data was exposed.

The state agency has asked North Dakota principals, teachers and families that use the program PowerSchool to change their passwords.

All North Dakota public schools use PowerSchool to manage student data including enrollment, attendance, scheduling, transcripts and more, according to the NDIT-EduTech website.

The breach — which is still under investigation — affected one of PowerSchool’s customer support portals. The company has since secured the portal, and has found no evidence of ongoing unauthorized activity, according to information NDIT provided to school districts.

North Dakota Information Technology is working with PowerSchool to evaluate the scope of the data breach, the state agency said.

The state has cut off access to the portal as of noon Wednesday to anyone not using the state’s network.

North Dakota Information Technology will provide another update on the incident on Jan. 17 by noon.

Updates also will be posted to the NDIT-EduTech website. 

PowerSchool initially discovered evidence of the incident on Dec. 28, according to NDIT.

“We have taken all appropriate steps to prevent the data involved from further unauthorized access or misuse,” PowerSchool said in a statement to the North Dakota Monitor. “The incident is contained and we do not anticipate the data being shared or made public.”

Drew Wrigley wants to send a message to those who commit offenses against or in the face of law enforcement officers.

“There are too many people that turn to violence when confronted by law enforcement, and we can’t stand by anymore,” Wrigley, North Dakota’s attorney general, recently told Forum News Service. “There has to be an additional penalty. If there is not an additional penalty, they’ll do it every time. … We can’t let it go on anymore. It has to stop.”

And with that goal, he plans to reintroduce a proposal during the 2025 session of the Legislature that he hopes will set minimum sentences for crimes against officers — things like assault on an officer, resisting arrest and fleeing. Opponents contend Wrigley’s proposal will put more people through the court system and crowd jails, according to a Forum News Service report earlier this week. The cost could be in the millions of dollars.

We don’t care about the cost, the potential crowding or any of that. Wrigley’s proposal has merit.

He first pushed the idea during the Legislature’s 2023 session, but it died in surprising fashion. Despite an intent that we see as actually helping law officers do their job — and to protect them better — SB 2107 was derided by some.

Among the new proposal’s bullet points are minimum sentences of:

• 14 days in jail for resisting arrest
• 30 days for simple assault on an officer
• 30 days for fleeing an officer

And if a person commits another crime, the sentences for resisting, fleeing and assault would be served consecutively to that other crime, Forum News Service reported. At present, Wrigley said, sentences of crimes against officers run concurrently with a person’s other crimes. It means offenders of crime against officers often aren’t really punished for it. Thus, Wrigley believes, offenders consider it rational to resist, flee or assault an officer.

It’s been on Wrigley’s mind for some time now. In 2022, he told the Grand Forks Herald that a tightening of laws is needed to help cut down on things like police chases, which endanger not only police but others, too. At the time, he also was pushing for sentencing changes for concealed and discharge of weapons, but police chases and other crime against officers also were discussed.

He notably called police chases “a dramatic problem” and said the public has lost faith in the system’s ability and the will to protect them. Perhaps deep down, police officers might feel the same way, too. And in a time of a shortage of officers — many departments report difficulties filling open positions — doesn’t it make sense to do more to protect those who protect us?

Tougher sentences must be the way forward.

“Some people will say, this is going backward in time. But sentencing reform should be methodical and intelligent. It shouldn’t just be ‘people get out of jail earlier.’ That’s not sentencing reform,” Wrigley said.

Sure, some North Dakota jails are crowded, but that shouldn’t dissuade lawmakers from seeing the merit of Wrigley’s proposal. Mandatory, and tougher, sentences for certain crimes — especially those involving chases, assaults on officers and the like — seem like a common-sense fix to a rising problem.

Herald editorials are written under the byline “Herald editorial board,” since they sometimes include the thoughts, opinions or written input of multiple authors. Editorials generally reflect the opinion of a newspaper’s publisher.