HURON, S.D. — The South Dakota Governor’s Agricultural Summit was held June 12 and 13 at the South Dakota State Fairgrounds in Huron, South Dakota. Industry and business leaders from across the state came together to discuss pressing issues within agriculture and shed some light on the state’s No. 1 industry.

“We do (agriculture) better than anybody else in the world and we do it better in South Dakota than anybody else in the country. We have, in South Dakota, more cows per people than any other state. So that’s a good thing to maintain,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told the audience. “We like that about 95% of our South Dakota farms are still family owned and family operated, which is something I’m very proud of. And ag contributes over $32 billion to our economy in our state. About 30% of our economic output comes from the agriculture industry. When ag prospers, all of South Dakota prospers.”

Noem made an appearance to present the 2024 Governor’s Ag Ambassador award to this year’s recipient and longtime WNAX radio newsman, Jerry Oster, from Yankton, South Dakota. Noem also highlighted the importance of the work that goes into agricultural policy and how that affects the state’s farmers and ranchers.

“I’ve been working on policy for over 30 years and for me, it’s been a very different type of discussion than I think some people have when they look at ag policy. From my time first serving on committees and working on commissions in Washington, D.C., in my twenties, it’s been a national security issue,” Noem said. “One of the things I would hope that when we leave here, we remember the bigger goal is that it’s about how we feed the world and that’s important. We also have our policies, our programs, farm bills, in place to keep a safety net out there so that we have a lot of farmers and ranchers that can be successful and keep our No. 1 industry strong and safe.”

Beth Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian and executive secretary of the South Dakota Animal Industry Board, presented an update on the highly pathogenic avian influenza, highlighting the impact on both poultry and dairy farms.

“In South Dakota, it’s been some months since we’ve seen highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry, which is good because we just made it through the spring migratory season,” Thompson said. “Unfortunately, we are seeing avian influenza in dairy and we’ve had five sites here in the state of South Dakota. The animal industry board is working very closely with those dairy farmers and their veterinarians and hopefully, we’ll be at the end of the cases and move forward into the summer.”

Thompson said in mitigating spreading of the virus, biosecurity becomes king.

“Biosecurity is important because you want to keep whatever disease you may have on your site, on your site and not share it with your neighbors,” she said. “But you also want to keep anything off your site, too. So things like watching your visitors, making sure that nobody’s coming on your site unless you know about it, making sure that you’re watching your animals and working with your veterinarian very closely in case you see anything going on with your herd or flock.”

The impacts of trade on South Dakota’s economy fueled a panel discussion led by Luke Lindberg, president and CEO of South Dakota Trade, with Jerry Schmitz, executive director of South Dakota Soybean, Dennis Harstad, general manager of Houdek, and Cesar Garcia Arevalo, export sales and marketing manager for Advanced Sunflower, participating.

“South Dakota is a prolific exporter of agricultural products. It’s $5 billion a year, roughly speaking, and our state only exports about $7 billion of goods and services. So agriculture is definitely our No. 1 export product. When we look at it in comparison to states all across the country, we’re actually the second highest per capita ag exporter,” Lindberg said. “A lot of those markets are overseas, 96% of the world’s population lives outside the United States, 4% live in the United States. So those are the markets we’re trying to position them for and find ways to sell their products.”

While businesses and organizations work to secure new markets for agricultural products, Elaine Kub, a market economist based in South Dakota, said that going into 2024 and 2025, the outlook is “looking a little less sunny this year than it has in some of the previous years.”

While Kub pointed out that the frustrating part about markets is that producers really have no control over the prices, she mentioned some steps they can take to get through this period of low markets.

“They have to make decisions for their own costs of production, and we can try and bring that down. Land prices are a big piece of that and interest rates, how much interest you’re paying for land or any other input is a big piece of that. Of course, we don’t have any control over interest rates, but we have control over spending patterns or borrowing patterns, she said. “Operational decisions like that can make a difference and also marketing — you can be kind of smart about marketing grain ahead of time and seasons of the year that tend to typically have higher seasonal prices than those harvest time prices.”

Despite the low commodity prices, Hunter Roberts, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, remains optimistic.

“We have plenty of challenges like every state, every industry, but agriculture itself is in a great spot,” Roberts said. “We need to continue to move forward. Commodity price wise, we’re down a little bit but moisture wise, we’re looking pretty good. We have a good crop in the ground, so I’m very optimistic about the future of agriculture. I think things are looking up.”

The Governor’s Ag Summit continued on June 13 for day two with presentations on the history of the South Dakota State Fair, touring a nearby Spink Hutterite colony and Kasemeister Creamery and a concert in the DEX building on the fairgrounds featuring country music artist, Thomas Rhett.