The head of a typical large public company made $9.7 million in 2012, a 6.5 percent increase from a year earlier that was aided by a rising stock market, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive pay research firm.

CEO pay, which fell two years straight during the Great Recession but rose 24 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 2011, has never been higher.

But the numbers don't tell the whole story. After years of pressure from corporate governance activists unhappy about big payouts, many companies have revamped their compensation formulas. They have awarded a bigger chunk of compensation in stock to align pay more closely to performance, become more transparent about how compensation decisions are made and in some cases promised to claw back pay from fired executives.

Shareholder activists say the changes are a step in the right direction, yet they argue that CEO pay is too high and that there is still too much incentive to focus on short-term results.

Officials with the Appalachian Regional Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Education are meeting with nearly two dozen groups across West Virginia this week as part of an Appalachian Foodways Tour. It began in North Carolina, hit Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and continues next month in Ohio and New York.

In Romney, officials visited a high school where students not only sell and show their pigs but produce sausage for Hampshire County's school cafeterias. In the capital city of Charleston, they'll learn about a program that trains women in business planning, record keeping, and farm and food safety.

And on Wednesday in Philippi, they're seeing how an out-of-business IGA is becoming a new kind of supermarket, one where jams, flowers, baked goods and produce are gathered from dozens of sources and sold at a single cash register.