News

South Dakota’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation rate of 8.1% is among the lowest in the nation. As of 2024, the state was ranked 12th for percentage of people who receive food stamps.

The state minimum wage for non-tipped employees will increase from $11.50/hour to $11.85/ hour effective Jan. 1, 2026.

The Government Operations and Audit Committee will hold its fourth meeting of the 2025 Interim on Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. (CT). The meeting is being conducted via electronic conference and in Room 412 of the State Capitol in Pierre, South Dakota, to allow for both remote and in-person participation.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced today that Social Security benefits, including Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments for 75 million Americans will increase 2.8 percent in 2026. On average, Social Security retirement benefits will increase by about $56 per month starting in January.

A fisherman once described what happens when you catch a bunch of crabs and put them in a bucket. Logically, if all the crabs would just move to one side, they would almost all be able to crawl out of the bucket. A little teamwork would save the vast majority of them. Crabs, however, are incapable of this. As soon as one crab gets to the top of the pile, the other crabs claw and grab at them and pull them back down to the bottom.

On Oct. 19, Gregory High School held its annual local oral interpretation contest to decipher who would represent the school at the district competition. Each school can only take one entry in each of the seven categories: serious, humorous, poetry, storytelling, duets, oratory, and readers theatre.

The 2025 South Dakota Pheasant Season is underway, and the reports from opening week have been fantastic! “We live for pheasants, my family came back to town for the hunt, it was a little windy but we got our birds. On the second day we hunted a food plot and got 25 pheasants and must have seen 500 hens.

Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA Market failure is an economic term. It occurs when what should be a freely functioning market fails to reach an efficient and equitable allocation of resources.

On October 22, 2025, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced her agency’s plan for American ranchers and consumers. The plan includes increasing grazing access on federally managed lands, ending the current practice by global beef packers of labeling foreign beef with a “Product of USA” label, encouraging procurement of domestic beef for USDA Child Nutrition Programs, expanding opportunities for smaller beef packers, and working with the US Department of Justice to ensure cattle markets remain competitive and fair.

It’s hard to look at your television or social media and not see a headline about some “superfood,” supplement, or other product promising to “boost immunity.” And who doesn’t want to boost immunity, especially in a year in which measles outbreaks are becoming routine? Genuinely, there is one entity available to us that, more than any other fad, will help our immunity and protect us against infection: vaccines.