It shouldn't be personal, you know, that that it is about the people of Kentucky.

A conversation with State Representative Joni Jenkins, who decided to step down after more than 25 years of service.

I could tell that it was all natural and sustainable year round, and people wanted to know where their food comes from.

We had the Western Kentucky to talk with one woman about the joys and the challenges of growing and agritech business.

For the most part, during the last ten years in my practice and this has been more of an obligation and commitment than it is a profit thing.

And why some say a shortage of large animal veterinarians is becoming a growing crisis in Kentucky.

Production of Kentucky edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

The Leonard Press, Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition on this Monday, December the 26th.

I'm Rene Shaw.

Thank you for spending some of your Monday night with us.

Kentucky farmers operate nearly 13 million acres of farmland.

Now, to put that into perspective, the entire state of West Virginia is about 15 million acres.

Agriculture is a big part of Kentucky's way of life and its economy.

In this special episode of Kentucky Edition, we'll look at some of the new agritech projects coming to the state, as well as some of the lingering issues impacting Kentucky farmers.

But first, a state lawmakers convene in Frankfurt next month.

One long time member won't be present.

State Representative Johnny Jenkins began serving in the Kentucky General Assembly in 1995.

I recently sat down with the outgoing House minority floor leader to look back on her years of service and to get some of her insights about where the state may be headed.

For many years, I had another job and it was really hard to hold down a full time job.

Chris The jobs I have, I was I was worked at a women's shelter and I was on call 24 seven.

So you were used to.

So after uncertainty.

After, you know, ten years, I'm like, I can't have two jobs at 24 seven.

It just is not working for me.

But it was more it is difficult unless you own your own business or you know, we see a lot of attorneys that can, you know, schedule their own schedules a little bit.

So, you know, I was pleased that they raised the salary a little bit.

And, you know, folks got folks coming in, have a little bit of bump in salary.

So, you know, I think I think that's good.

I think, you know, people will quibble about what legislators make, what their benefits are, what their pensions are, but what price do you put on democracy?

And that the house is really the people's house and and you want someone there to represent you.

I want who's representing me to be paid well and to be able to put all of their time and efforts into that.

So when we had this last constitutional amendment that was defeated pretty soundly, constitutional amendment, number one, that would have allowed, well, pretty much the House speaker and the Senate president to determine when you would go in session, special session.

Your thoughts on that?

Do you feel like you know.

Well, the voters spoke.

The voters spoke.

You know, it's interesting because I did vote to put it on the ballot.

Doesn't mean you support it.

Didn't mean I supported it.

It meant I thought Kentuckians need to have this choice.

They need to make the decision about how with what they want their represent tation to look like.

I was a little hesitant, even in that vote because I haven't seen this General Assembly in the years I've been there under two different majorities make the most mature decisions about things.

Mm hmm.

Right.

Any.

Any example you carried, do you know?

I mean, certainly, I could probably go back further, but, you know, the last couple of sessions where we have been juggling around the powers of the executive branch and taking away perhaps from the governor and giving it to the commissioner of AG or this or that.

Or the attorney general.

Or the attorney general.

You know, I don't recall us doing that when the Democrats were in the majority, but it's certainly been a thing, and I'm just not so sure that's the most mature and most important thing that we can be doing as a General Assembly.

Well, because it may not always be a Democratic governor in the governor's mansion.

Right.

Right.

And are we going to if things flip in some ways, are we going to.

Yeah.

Are they.

I mean, it's not a way anymore.

It's they are they going to come back and change that back?

Yeah.

Do you think that's you when you look at all of it, particularly in the last few years when when Democrats in the minority, the significant, perhaps most consequential pieces of legislation are about executive power.

Right.

Do you think that that, in your view, is like that's the big thing that will stick with you was how there had been more influence in the legislature and how the executive branch would conduct.

You know, I think in in my time in the legislature, there's always been a quest to make the legislature relevant.

And independent.

Independent and more powerful.

But there has to be a balance there.

And I think we may have flipped that balance a little bit.

And I think that's due to political philosophies more than what really works for Kentuckians.

Yeah.

It would be great to have a conversation I know you have with Tom Birch, who'd served how about 50 years more?

Almost 50, I think, yeah.

And who had seen the days where there was a fight for legislative independence.

Right.

Then most of us only just read about.

Right.

And how.

Here we are now.

When you think about.

I know that and just having spoken with you over the years that opioid addiction is heroin addiction, the drug scourge in this state has been really, really important to you and of course, victim services.

So let's talk about opioid addiction and why that's so important to you.

And do you feel like Kentucky has done enough?

And what do you hope maybe they'll they'll consider this new session of the General Assembly?

You know, there's one quote that I use a lot that says, sometimes you choose your passions and sometimes your passions choose you.

And this is a passion that chose me because we had a situation in our family where we lost my nephew to addiction and an overdose and I always tell people when they asked me about the balance of power and majorities and that sort of thing, I always say that 2015, when we passed the first really, really important kind of a model for other states, piece of legislation around opioids.

You know, the majorities were very close.

You know, it was and we had to sit in a room with Democrats, Republican senators and representatives.

And we seemed like we were lock ourselves in that room for our lives and we've really hammered out what I think was good policy because we had to listen to each other.

Right.

And we had to compromise.

And, you know, we passed one of the first syringe exchange programs in the country.

And I always remember we put that in the bill is kind of a throwaway that we thought we would negotiate something else for that.

And we start looking at the studies and the data.

And we came out with a bill, but we had hours and hours of study and discussions because you had to one party could not force something through.

And I remember that particular provision.

I mean, it was like 11 5830 on the last night of the legislature and we were all like, what's happening?

Right.

I mean, which is always I mean, for those of us who are political base, like, you look for those moments, right, right to happen.

And now syringe exchange programs are considered to be a linchpin of harm reduction right in the portfolio of harm reduction services.

You know, that's considered to be one of the most effective tools in the toolbox.

Right.

But it was taboo back then.

It was taboo.

Yeah.

That the conversations we had around it and some of the things that were said on the floor just seem like really silly now.

Right.

But you know, but we were on the forefront of that know and I remember it was, you know, left to the local health department.

So it would go through the legislative like the Metro Council in Louisville and Lexington seemed to be on the verge of being the first one.

And I called my Metro Councilperson, Rick Blackwell and said, Don't let Lexington Fever.

Louisville has to be far.

Well, certainly, you know, I'll have to have you back to ask you the question about things that seem taboo, that make sense now or that were non sensible then, that do you not have clarity on it now, why?

It didn't make sense to do that.

So that would be a future conversation because I always think it's important to sit those who've served in the General Assembly down later.

Yeah.

And just say, well, what do you think?

I had Brad Cowgill and Harry Moberly.

Oh my.

Who was chair of House and ah, Mike Cherry, who had also been chairman of House Appropriations and Revenue and another and it was for a Kentucky tonight and just the honesty.

Yeah right because when you're on the other side of it, you know, and you don't have anything to lose or gain.

Yeah you see things a little differently and you can lend advice.

So is there any advice you can lend to the future leaders of the Democratic caucus in the House and even for your Republican colleagues about.

Okay, let's keep the main thing.

The main thing.

But what is the main thing?

You know, I think that you have to know what your values are and stay true to your values and everything else kind of falls in place from that.

And, you know, as I've been leaving and having conversations with staff and other legislators, the one thing that people always tell me were you were always so kind to everyone.

And, you know, I'm very proud of that.

Yeah.

So I think you have to remember that it shouldn't be personal, you know, that that it is about the people of Kentucky and it's about the airing of ideas and philosophies.

And though that you leave it there on the chamber and you go out and you still ask about people's families.

Does that happen now as opposed to when you first got there?

Not as much as it used to be.

You know, I still have really good friendships with people in the majority and will always, you know, contact them and ask about their families and that sort of thing.

There were times that that even my good friends would get really personal on the floor.

And I, I hope they regret that and I hope they learn from it because it shouldn't be that way.

There's much more of my conversation with Joni Jenkins coming up on Connections in January.

So look out for that.

Climate change, land development and a growing population are some of the issues putting a strain on farmers here in the US and abroad?

The United Nations predicts food production must double by 2050, when the global population is expected to reach 10 billion people.

Feeding that many people may require changing the way we grow food.

As agriculture is facing an unprecedented challenge.

What role can technology play in helping to revolutionize the industry?

The fusion of technology and farming is often called agritech and batten.

A woman is leading a local family agritech business, growing leafy vegetables and raising fish.

Our Kacey Parker Bell visited West Kentucky aquaponics earlier this year to get a better idea of how small farms are using agritech to make a big impact.

I knew nothing about aquaponics.

I'd never even heard of it, but I could tell that it was all natural, sustainable year round, and people wanted to know where their food comes from.

And so I said, okay, you know, this this is what we're going to do.

Seeing a master class on aquaponics led former nurse Tammy McCullough to leave her job in the health care industry and start a new one.

Agritech was new to her, but she saw potential in the unknown when she created West Kentucky.

Aquaponics.

Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture where you just rice, fish and hydroponics, where you're growing leafy green vegetables.

So aquaponics combines those two.

Aquaponics is a closed loop system.

It uses the waste from fish for West Kentucky aquaponics that fishes tilapia to fertilize plants growing hydroponically or without soil.

The plants clean the water, which goes back into the fish tanks.

McCullough started her business in the agriculture heavy community of Marshall County.

Despite the love for her new profession, she says getting started wasn't easy.

Yeah, it can be a struggle, you know, because you're you're starting in the hole, basically operating, you know, for those 6 to 9 months with no income.

And then you're constantly trying to catch up.

It took a year for West Kentucky aquaponics to construct their greenhouse and have produce mature enough to sell.

But the heaviest task was paying the energy cost for the facility.

The utility costs were just astronomical, not sustainable for a small business.

In the winter, they run heaters and lights in addition to the pump that moves water through the facility.

She says the electricity was running 20 $500 a month.

It took government help for the business to sprout.

Solar panels are an integral part of this operation because those electricity bills would not have have been affordable and we would not have been able to to keep that up.

We were fortunate enough to get a grant from the USDA to help offset some of those costs for the solar panels.

For others looking to start in agritech.

McCullough says it's important to know what it takes before planting.

Unfortunately, it's not cheap to start an off photonics business, and you are operating for 6 to 9 months without any income.

So knowing those things upfront and being prepared, I think would be advantageous for someone looking to start an awful finance business.

What do you think localities and state governments need to do to help businesses like yours get off the ground?

From a government standpoint, as far as grants, a lot of those grants that are available also go to traditional farming, which, you know, we don't want to take away from those.

But if they had grants specific to the urban top, farming for the aquaponics hydroponic and that way maybe it wouldn't be so competitive and people could get more.

More funding for KCET in Casey Parker Bell.

Thank you, Casey.

You've probably heard of Appharvest.

The Agritech farm based in Moorhead, is expanding throughout Kentucky, but there is another farm you may know less about 80 acres.

Farms is based in Ohio.

The company is opening a new facility in northern Kentucky.

The 200,000 square foot farm will grow leafy greens, tomatoes and more.

We spoke with the co-founder and CEO to find out why 80 Acres chose Boone County, Kentucky, for its next location.

80 Acres is a high tech vertical farming company.

We essentially take a field stack on top of a field, on top of a field and a top of field, and create a perfect environment to grow any crop any time of the year, 365 days a year.

We have been over sold from this current farm and we've had so much customer demand that we want to move to where our customers and consumers are.

So Kentucky is our first major expansion.

Georgia is next and we're thrilled to be in Kentucky.

We've been operating in Alabama and Arkansas, North Carolina.

But Kentucky is very important to us because Kentucky is the largest farm that we're building right now.

The Kentucky farm will produce about four times the amount of product that we're producing here in the facility behind us.

We'll grow a variety of leafy greens, culinary herbs, microgreens, and we'll be following that up with fruiting crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries soon to follow next year.

We actually started seeding just last week and we're going to be harvesting from phase one in December.

Our goal is to grow the food in the community for the community by the community, thereby uplifting the communities where we operate.

And we're very excited to bring that to Kentucky.

COVID has demonstrated the problems with supply chains, and those problems have hit a lot of the communities that are not in the biggest towns in America.

We can get food to those communities, but we have not been able to get high quality, nutritious produce the communities and that's we're trying to fix.

Kentucky seems to really understand what we're calling agtech or agricultural technology and technology applied to agriculture to grow better, faster, higher quality produce.

We've had phenomenal support at the state level.

We've had great interaction with the universities, had great direction with a lot of different community organizations.

We're very focused on getting this farm built and built right and providing the freshest, cleanest, tastiest produce to our consumers and our friends in Kentucky.

Farmers have a passion for what they do, but factors like high expenses, extreme weather and a labor shortage can take a mental toll.

There are statewide efforts to help Kentucky farmers manage stress, anxiety and depression.

As farmers, we spend our lives producing food for this country and the world.

It requires us to put in pretty much our whole life into what we do.

The world is changing so fast and we're in an occupation that requires a massive amount of investment.

It's much easier to make a big mistake in a management decision or in a purchase of a piece of equipment.

There are so many things about farming that we have no control.

We have no control over the weather.

We have no control over our market prices.

And we really have no control over the input cost.

For a new farmer starting today with incredibly high inputs, a very uncertain market.

You know, if if crop and livestock prices were to collapse like they did in the 1980s, it could get really ugly on the farm in a hurry.

Compared to other the general population, farmers are about three times more likely to commit suicide.

It's one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation that we have.

I think for a lot of people, the days we're in and the huge swings in the market, it could be quite emotional for some people.

Race and Hope is a collaborative effort and there's many entities associated with this throughout the state.

The whole effort is to raise hope for farmers, to reduce depression, suicide among the farming population.

Trying to manage my perspective and that perspective includes not just the business side, but also the emotional side and the mental side, keeping the things that are most important first, like family and faith.

Anything you can do that builds family and relationships and community is a plus for mental health on any level in any occupation.

I think the consumer being two and three generations now removed from the farm, do not understand what farmers do and the practices that we use and why we do those.

We have 75,000 plus farmers in Kentucky.

We don't appreciate sometimes that those are the people that give us our food, our fiber and feed.

So many people in the world.

I would encourage consumers to talk to their farmers, to talk to those people, to ask them why they do what they do.

If a farmer is stressed and they're in suffering from depression and they're in a rural area, we know there's a stigma associated with mental health.

We know that we have limited health care providers that address mental health issues.

And even in rural areas, we want to make sure that those professionals are trained, educated to identify the farmers that are in crisis.

Farming has always had uncertainty.

We've always had weather events.

We've always had uncertain markets.

You're going to have peaks and valleys, and that's the nature of farming.

Farming is difficult work.

Farming is a difficult way of life, and it is something that requires a passion and a commitment.

As long as is, we're going to have something to wear and something that enables us to travel and something to eat.

It starts on the farm.

And so I think long term it's a positive outlook.

When we have food to eat and the health that we have in the United States, we should always think a farmer.

Thank a farmer.

Indeed, farmers can find mental health resources online at raising hope.

K Why dot.com?

It's a decline that's become a growing concern in Kentucky's ag industry.

The state faces a shortage of large animal veterinarians, especially those who deal with livestock.

The Kentucky Department of AG says more than 1 million cattle are being seen by only 3% of practicing veterinarians in the state.

One large animal veterinarian we spoke to says he understands why most vet school graduates don't want his job.

That's all I ever wanted to do.

Growing up, my grandfather had a dairy.

My dad, we had we had a beef farm and we were educated to where we're in a service industry and to help and provide for the community.

We do a majority equine and beef and dairy, some small ruminants, goats and sheep, you know, and that's declining.

We probably have about four dairies.

We do routine health for more than some of your beef farms in Kentucky.

There's about 695 veterinarians and only 54 of them in the state of Kentucky actually service primarily our large animal.

That would be our cattle, our sheep and our goats and our pigs.

He's very vital to our herd.

So he's been coming about 17, 18 years.

He helps me figure out what I need to do to, you know, to do better.

The herd, you know, health wise and breeding wise and and then you got vaccines to keep them healthy and stuff like that.

We have seen a progression over time where we see less veterinarians coming into large gentlemen practice into Kentucky.

I would have a difficult time getting an associate to come in and do nothing but a large animal.

If I wasn't from a rural background, if I wasn't from this area and had that background, then I wouldn't have been as inclined to enter that profession and do the large animal.

Why aren't vets going into rural practice?

There are several factors.

Number one is the salaries.

The salaries are significantly lower.

And when you think of the debt load that's coming out of school, the average debt load is about $218,000.

So if you look at that and you're looking at a ten year loan repayment on that, you're looking at almost $3,000 a month for that student to pay back their loans.

That's the reason I think you have more and more new graduates leaning more toward the small animal, which is physically less demanding and probably better compensation.

There is definitely burnout in our large animal practitioners because of the long hours.

The work is very hard in some of these areas.

Those veterinarians that are in practice now because there's less of them.

Not only are they driving further hours, they're having to see more clients.

So they're having longer days in the field.

And then if you get a call in the middle of night for an emergency and you're the only veterinarian around, you're kind of you're going to go out to that emergency as.

Well as Arkansas with him.

If I have a problem, if it's something I can't take care of, he comes out.

Thankfully, I've had Dr. Burkett, you know, and I haven't had to worry about it.

But if he decides to retire or or or whatever, I don't know what I'll do.

Almost 40% of our veterinarians are within ten years of retirement.

So we are seeing an older population of a retiring veterinarians that are serving our large animal areas in rural Kentucky.

So as they start to retire and we don't have replacements, we're seeing that shortage.

For example, last year, only one student, veterinary student that graduated came back to Kentucky to practice on a large animal in rural Kentucky.

The state of Kentucky has a contract with Auburn University and Tuskegee.

They take 36 and I think two respectively.

And the state of Kentucky picks up the difference between in-state and now in-state tuition, which is a really good deal for the state of Kentucky.

And that being said, that's 38 to 40 veterinarians per year.

All of this being turned out.

So it makes it hard to make.

Up from the farmer's perspective.

They are having more challenges of trying to find their local veterinarian.

If there's only one in the area and two farms have a crisis at the same time or have a need for that practitioner.

There's going to be a challenge of which which animal gets treated first.

I like having him close, you know.

You know, if you get it from somebody way off, you know, they're just going by what you talk about on the, you know, over the phone and they're not actually here.

So they're going to have to travel a lot farther if they do come out.

And that's going to cost a lot more.

What I always loved about especially in the large animal, you know, I'm in their houses, at their farms, you know, I know their parents.

I know their their children.

You know, a lot of times I sit down to have meals with them when we're out working.

So it becomes more and more of a personal.

And that's a big return on that, that a lot of these newer graduates don't have an opportunity to realize.

We thank you for watching our special edition of Kentucky Edition tonight.

And I'll see you tomorrow night.