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other major crops, including wheat, corn, soybeans and oats, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• "This speaks to the fact that South Dakota is rooted in agriculture," state Agriculture Secretary Lucas Lentsch told the American News. "We may not have a large population, but we compete nationally in (farm) rankings.
• "The statistics also show where we can improve," he said. "We are still shipping a lot of our corn and soybeans out of state to livestock producers (for feed). I see room for growth in the livestock sector."
• South Dakota ranks sixth in the production of corn for grain, eighth in corn for silage and ninth in soybeans. Both Lentsch and Carter Anderson, director of the Agriculture Department's National Agricultural Statistics Service state office, said they think the state will move up in the rankings.
• "The corn belt is growing," Anderson said. "People will say the corn belt is moving north and west, but it is more accurate to say that it is growing in those directions. We are seeing corn and soybeans planted in South Dakota and North Dakota where they were never planted before."
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AP News in Brief
Obama weighs options for military action against Syria as US naval forces move closer
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Barack Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.
• Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.
• U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.
• "The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options -- whatever options the president (Continued on page 19)
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