Earlier in our program, we heard from him at the annual Country Ham breakfast at the Kentucky State Fair.

It turns 60 this year.

Since 1964, Kentucky's swine herds have been able to put their hams up for the charity auction while the winning hams make headlines for selling millions.

Now, the first winner of the contest sold for a mere $124.

Kentucky Edition caught up with the Kentucky Farm Bureau for a closer look at the insurance provider signature event.

We started in 1964 Country ham as kind of a breakfast food, so they started a breakfast here before we're going to have country ham for sure.

And then we'll have we'll have eggs and biscuits and honey, and there'll be probably watermelon tomatoes.

There will also be sorghum that will be on the table.

So if people want some sorghum molasses, that will be there also.

And it's kind of become a political event that all of our elected officials or people that are running for office, they love to come to the breakfast and meet folks and and maybe do a little campaigning and talk about what's important to them and what's important to agriculture and our organization.

People want to enjoy that day.

It's a fun day, can have a little fun.

And, you know, there might be a few political punches that are thrown during the day, but that's that's normal in the world we live in.

And that's okay.

You know, Leader McConnell has probably been in more ham breakfast probably than any elected official that we have right now.

I don't know that he's ever Mr. Ham Breakfast.

He's been a great partner for Kentucky Farm Bureau and Kentucky Agriculture in his time in the Senate.

We feel the grand champion ham at the Kentucky State Fair.

You know, opinion one I had a number of winners over the years, but all in all, it's over the 60 years.

It's brought almost $34 million to charities here in Kentucky.

So we're really excited to continue that tradition on.

And last year was a record.

It brought $10 million.

It was split between Central Bank and Luther dating Luther Date and does their bidding for central bank.

And then also Joe and Kellie Kraft.

So they split that they decided that they would they would share in that and they both gave $5 million each.

And so that was our record.

So the person that buys all the ham gets to pick the charities of their choice that they would like to give it to.

And so we always let them pick their charities and they get the recognition of buying the ham.

When I live, when I go to other parts of the state, other or other parts of the country and other Farm Bureau leaders or agriculture leaders, most people have heard about the ham breakfast and they hear about the price that a country ham brings and nobody believes it.

And they want to know the story.

How does it do it?

There are others, Farm Bureau folks that like to come to Kentucky and want to come and see what we do.

How do you sell a country ham for $10 million?

It's one of the largest farm city events for sure that we do as an organization where it brings rural Kentucky and urban Kentucky together.

And we can come into one room and we can talk about things that are important to agriculture and let them know of the issues that we're facing out on the farm and talk about some of those issues and that they can understand better of where their food, fuel and fiber comes from, because that's what we do in agriculture, is that we we provide food, we provide fuel, and we provide fiber for our clothing.

So agriculture is something that none of us can do without.

And we're glad to bring our our urban folks and our and our rural folks together.

And for a day of fun.

Taking the last 57 years into account, the auction brings in an average price of nearly $573,000 per ham.