The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling against Chad Jarreau of Cut Off, Louisiana. The local government agency in charge of protection from hurricanes took the dirt from just under an acre of Jarreau's property to build up a nearby levee.The agency initially paid him just $1,326. Jarreau won a judgment of $164,000 for the dirt after a trial, but ended up with less than $12,000 after the state high court ruled.Jarreau had dug up most of his 17-acre tract and sold the dirt for use in construction projects. [node:read-more:link]

Cargill said it will launch an initiative this month in Canada to test new technologies for tracking cattle with the goal of developing a verified sustainability standard to give consumers more information about the beef they eat. Called the Cargill Canadian Beef Sustainability Acceleration pilot, the effort should move the company’s customers -- by the end of 2018 -- a step closer to providing consumers with beef from operations that have been audited from ‘birth to burger’ using an industry developed sustainability standard, Cargill said. [node:read-more:link]

Kansas Grain and Feed Association’s (KGFA) board of directors announced senior vice president of government affairs, Ron Seeber, as the association’s president and CEO Monday morning. On Nov. 15, 2017, Seeber is set to become just the sixth person to hold KGFA’s top executive position since its inception in 1896. Seeber also will be the president and CEO of KGFA’s longstanding management contractors, Kansas Agribusiness Retailers Association and Renew Kansas. [node:read-more:link]

Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies.The number of US banks with assets under $100 million dropped from 13,000 in 1995 to under 1,900 in 2014. The regulatory burden imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act exacerbated this trend, with community banks losing market share at double the rate during the four years after 2010 as in the four years before. [node:read-more:link]

The Federal Reserve Board released its October 2017 Beige Book update, a summary of commentary on current economic conditions by Federal Reserve District. The report included several observations pertaining to the U.S. agricultural economy. “On balance, crop conditions worsened in late August and September as drought conditions spread in the District. [node:read-more:link]

President Trump’s commission on combating the opioid epidemic plans to encourage the federal government to establish drug courts in every federal judicial district, adjust reimbursement rates for addiction treatment, and streamline federal funding used by state and local governments to implement drug treatment and prevention programs, according to a draft of the panel’s final report. [node:read-more:link]

Enter the Clean Label Project, which made a splash after releasing a study on Wednesday alleging that many of the best-selling baby food and infant formula products on the market (determined by Nielsen data) contain arsenic, lead, acrylamide and other “contaminants.” Sounds scary, if these contaminants in our precious babies’ tummies were a justified fear. They’re not. Fact-checking site Snopes published an analysis on Friday, explaining that the project hasn’t published data to substantiate its claims, and has not subjected its study to peer review. [node:read-more:link]

Numerous false narratives have been advanced to sow division in the American electorate, with few more pernicious than the myth of voter fraud. Created as a tactic to justify discriminatory voter suppression practices, this mythos threatens our most fundamental constitutional right and undermines the core democratic values of republican government. The myth that voter fraud is rampant and our elections are infiltrated by undocumented immigrants was used as a pretext for state legislatures across our nation to make it harder for minorities to vote. [node:read-more:link]

President Trump’s nominee for a top position in the U.S. [node:read-more:link]

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday proposed lifting a mining ban on land near Grand Canyon National Park as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to sweep away regulations impeding development.“Adoption of this recommendation could re-open lands to mineral entry pursuant to the United States mining laws facilitating exploration for, and possibly development of, uranium resources,” the department wrote in a report to the White House seen by Reuters.The area potentially affected by the reopening is managed by the department’s Forest Service. [node:read-more:link]