When it comes to evaluating information that flows across social channels or pops up in a Google search, young and otherwise digital-savvy students can easily be duped, finds a new report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education. The report, released by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), shows a dismaying inability by students to reason about information they see on the Internet, the authors said. Students, for example, had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles or identifying where information came from. [node:read-more:link]

As we've seen long before the election, there is a clear, and growing, wall being built between urban and rural America as a result of the recent and ongoing media consolidation that RFD-TV has been witnessing now for the past several years.  If it's not a drought, a disaster, or something bad happening in rural America, there is no longer national news coverage of any kind.  There is also a total disconnect by many executives in major cities who now really do view this as flyover country.  In May 2014, after RFD-TV was dropped by Comcast Cable in Colorado and New Mexico, I was invited to t [node:read-more:link]

Lower cattle prices have begun to spill over into the retail price market, according to USDA’s latest Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Outlook report. [node:read-more:link]

On the basis of October and early November slaughter data, USDA raised its  forecast for fourth-quarter commercial pork production by 30 million pounds to just under 6.7 billion pounds, or 3 percent higher than a year ago. [node:read-more:link]

A maker of organic granola bars and cereals in Blaine, Wash., has been fined $22,000 for water quality violations, mostly by releasing acidic wastewater into a city sewer system, the state Department of Ecology announced. Nature’s Path Foods, based in Richmond, British Columbia, violated its wastewater permit 39 times over a two-year period that ended in July, according to Ecology.  The company violated permit conditions for flow, dissolved oxygen levels and suspended solids, according to Ecology. The agency, however, singled out acidic wastewater as the primary problem. [node:read-more:link]

Rail traffic is still recovering from years of steep declines in coal, oil shipments. Shipments of grain and soybeans are up around 6.5% this year, and set a record of over 26,000 carloads a week during the peak of the harvest in October, according to the Association of American Railroads, a trade group. Leasing company GATX Corp. said every one of its grain cars was in use during the third quarter. CSX Corp., the third-largest U.S. railroad, said grain shipments shot up 27% in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, helping fuel a rally in the company’s stock. [node:read-more:link]

Many eyes were on the Arkansas state pesticide board Nov. 21 as officials that oversee pesticide regulations wrestled with decisions on dicamba herbicide. At the end of a packed, three-hour public meeting, the Arkansas Plant Board voted to push measures toward that state's governor that would ban some forms of the herbicide and limit how and when newer dicamba formulations are used in the state.  The situation has been brewing for months after cotton and soybean seeds engineered to tolerate dicamba were released in 2015 and 2016 without the special herbicides designed for those seeds. [node:read-more:link]

The local food movement may be growing in popularity, but barriers exist between buyers and producers that make locally grown food harder to find, a pair of experts says.  Producers have difficulty finding local buyers to purchase a large portion of their crops, while buyers such as schools, restaurants, catering companies and stores complain they can’t get sufficient volume locally to meet their needs.  Those were the findings of a survey by California State University-Chico professor Jake Brimlow and Golden State Farm Credit marketing and outreach director Noelle Ferdon, who are a married [node:read-more:link]

Land in WMUV is valued based upon its appraised value prior to conversion to Wildlife Management Use.  For example, if prior to conversion, land was valuated under Open Space Valuation as native pasture, it would remain to be valued based upon native pasture calculation [node:read-more:link]

Sand mining in Minnesota and Wisconsin boomed and waned along with the oil and gas production practice known as hydrofracking.  The particular kind of sand found in parts of southeast Minnesota was in huge demand by exploration companies, which use it to prop open cracks in the underground shale formations that produce oil and natural gas.  Mining supporters in Winona County have said they’re trying to protect private property rights, provide jobs and preserve the region’s chance to cash in on changes in the nation’s oil industry. Commissioner Steve E. [node:read-more:link]