Mitt Romney says he resents being compared to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem after she bragged about killing a pet dog over its troublesome behavior.

The former Republican presidential standard-bearer insisted that he did nothing nearly so cruel as Noem by strapping a pet dog to the roof of his car, a much-mocked episode from his 2012 White House campaign.

“I didn’t shoot my dog,” Romney told HuffPost Tuesday. “I loved my dog, and my dog loved me.”

He called Noem’s story about shooting and killing the pooch “a tale of slaughter.”

Noem, a right-wing Republican hardliner who was once thought to be on former President Trump’s vice presidential short list, drew withering criticism from across the political spectrum with her bizarre account in a memoir that emerged last week.

Apparently hoping to burnish her tough lady image, Noem recounted a 20-year old episode in which she says she killed the dog named Cricket because it didn’t hunt properly and displayed other problematic behavior.

““I hated that dog,” wrote Noem, adding it was “less than worthless.” She also killed a goat that she derided as smelly and obnoxious.

Romney own doggie debacle came in 1983 when as a young father he packed up the family Chevrolet station wagon for a summer trip from Boston to the Canadian Atlantic seaboard.

With no room inside for the pet pointer, Seamus, Romney attached a dog carrier to the roof rack and created a makeshift shield to protect him from the elements.

The story was recounted by Romney’s son during his GOP presidential primary campaign as a way of humanizing the candidate who battles perceptions that he is wealthy and aloof.

But it backfired as political rivals pounced on the damaging claim that Romney strapped the pooch to the car’s roof.

BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University’s new precision agriculture program has had success at persuading in-state and some other Midwestern farmers to use more technology in their operations, while other states lag in their adoption of it.

SDSU was the first university in the country to create a

program that teaches and helps farmers use precision ag

, the science of new technologies and traditional methods that make operations more efficient to increase crop yields while reducing environmental impacts. For example, the use of global positioning satellites helps target chemicals and fertilizers where they’re needed most.

Ali Mirzakhani Nafchi, an assistant professor at the precision ag center, said the school is working to increase usage through education and research to make the technology more practical for farmers.

“I am very, very optimistic it is going to work. And we will see the changes not only in South Dakota, in the nation and in the world,” he said.

South Dakota has one of the highest percentages of usage, with 53% of farmers using precision ag technology,

according to a study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Other Midwest states where more than half the farmers also use precision ag include North Dakota, Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska,

according to a study done by the SDSU Ness School of Management and Economics

.

Nationally, just 27% of farmers use precision ag practices to manage crops or livestock, the Ness study found.

The most widely adopted precision ag technologies include auto-steering in machinery and guidance or “georeferencing technology,” the process of taking digital images.

Satellite imagery is the next most widely adopted technology, with nearly 60% of farmers having used it, according to the Ness study.

The technology typically increases crop production by 4% and fertilizer placement efficiency by 7%, according to a study done by the

Association of Equipment Manufacturers

. Precision ag also reduces herbicide and pesticide, fossil fuel and water use.

Despite the benefits of optimizing returns and yields, factors such as cost and lack of general knowledge about precision ag have prevented most farmers from using the tech products as widely as originally hoped.

Anna Karels, a student at the precision ag center, said it takes money to get started but will save money in the long term.

“I think it’s hard for a lot of farmers to (understand) that, yes, it (might increase) my costs … upfront, but it pays off over a certain number of years,” she said.

Nafchi said lowering the initial rate will incentivize more farmers to use the technology.

“Initial costs for variable rate application is too high,” he said. “So imagine if we get help. Somehow maybe make it less inexpensive, or lower the initial costs, or just go and do an incentive, investment for them, and ask them to just try it. And then they see the return on their investment is really good. I’m very optimistic they will use it.”

If the initial costs are unattainable for some farmers, there are programs in place to help operations use this technology. USDA and the National Science Foundation have provided almost $200 million for precision ag research and developmental funding from 2017 to 2021,

according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office

.

Another factor for the low adoption rates is the lack of knowledge about the new technology. But there are options for South Dakota farmers to learn more.

“Dealerships like John Deere, I know they have a lot of clinics that they put on and stuff like that. (The school) does a lot of that to where they go out and show farmers, ‘OK, this is what this does and how it can help you and benefit you’ and kind of like go through and show them how to use it,” Karels said.

The

Raven Precision Agriculture Center

was built for students in the major to learn about precision ag in interactive ways.

The building features rooms full of equipment and precision ag products students use to learn through hands-on technology. The $46.2 million building opened in August 2021, making it the first precision ag program in the nation.

Kasiviswanathan Muthukumarappan

, endowed department head and professor at the center, said the department is proud of being the first but is now changing its curriculum to become the best program in the nation.

“We would like to grow our precision ag program to the next level, and elevate the experiences for our students,” he said.

One change is to add more specialized majors to collect more data on precision ag.

“Previously, we had one recipe for all the students who are enrolled in (the) precision ag program, meaning that we combine agronomy and technologies together and make it one robust program,” Muthukumarappan said. “Now, we are making it more user-friendly. And we have three different tracks. One is for technology track. The other one is for agronomy track. And the other one is for data track, electronic strikers.”

The program, with 66 students currently, is trying to raise enrollment rates by 20% in the next five years to make this goal attainable. SDSU’s mission is to simplify this technology and make it more practical for farmers, Nafchi said.

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Contact Greta Goede at greta.goede@sdnewswatch.org.

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – Alligators in South Dakota. Of course, there aren’t any gators roaming around in a nearby lake.

However, alligators did once call the state home.

Believe it or not, alligators did roam the lands of what is now South Dakota millions of years ago.

Interim Director of Museum of Geology Darrin Pagnac says the earliest records of alligators in South Dakota come from the late Jurassic Period.

“Our earliest record here in the Black Hills is from about 150 million years ago from the Morrison Formation. Morrison Formation is where Dinosaur National Monument is. So, we get a lot of long neck dinosaurs and allosaurs and that sort of thing and crocodilians are very common,” says Pagnac.

Pagnac added that it is common to find alligator fossils from the late Cretaceous Period in the northwestern part of the state. He went on to say that although alligators survived the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago, the reptiles would later go extinct in the lands of what is South Dakota today.

“About 38 to 35 million years ago, that’s probably about the time they went extinct. And their extinction coincides with uh drying and cooling trend that we see throughout South Dakota. We lost these tropical swamps and forests and things really changed to a more temperate kind of seasonal environment,” says Pagnac.

Reptile Gardens General Curator Terry Phillip says historically crocodilians have been one of the most successful groups of animals in the world and they have undergone very few changes in appearance in the last 200 million years.

“Anytime you have an animal that has a fossil record that goes back that far, with very few changes, size being the biggest change that you’re going to see. They just got a little smaller. But, when you see an animal that successful, it just shows the design concept was perfect to begin with,” says Phillip.

Since alligators have been non-existent in South Dakota for millions of years, Earl Brockelsby opened Reptile Gardens in 1937 as a way to reintroduce them to the state.

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