During the Covid pandemic, beef producers were on a six month waiting list to have a cow slaughtered.

In response, more meat processing plants were cropping up across Kentucky.

There are now more than 120 of them, averaging roughly one per county.

Our Laura Rogers has more from Taylor County and our farm focused segment we call rooted.

Doctor Randy Smoot grew up on a family farm in Bourbon County.

One of the benefits of being the dentist.

You can set your own schedule.

The Campbellsville dentist would later pursue a side hustle and Angus cattle farming.

And I'm going to feed my cows and do my morning chores one Saturday.

And I'm thinking we have to become more profitable.

And the way I thought would work would be for us to start selling our own product.

The wheels started turning in 2017 and take about five years and a pandemic for that idea to come to fruition.

The latter proving how essential farmers are to the local food supply.

As we all remember, grocery sales were empty, with supply chain issues.

Now we have the ability and the capacity to keep the shelves full with local products.

Randy Smoot and Jeffries opened green River meats between Greensburg and Campbellsville.

A 12,000 square foot meat processing facility and retail store.

Most of years, livestock producers do not make money.

And the reason is, is because they have limited marketing ability.

So by us engaging in the processing business, we've been able to increase our markets, whether it's through our retail stores, whether it's through our wholesale outlets, whether it's through some of the institutions that we provide meat for.

The Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund has invested in 92 facilities like this one over the past 25 years.

60 of them since 2020.

Incentivizing local processors with low interest financing and grants to build new facilities or increase capacity at existing ones because.

They realize the need for local beef that can help supplement the local farms.

In response to industry growth, the Kentucky Association of Meat Processors formed in 2022.

They said in a statement local processors give farmers options, consumers transparency and communities stability, and that's something worth protecting.

That means stronger rural economies and more resilient food supply chains.

We have a better infrastructure now in place within the state to supply the customers with their needs.

Tender pardon us.

Local butcher shops can fill that need.

A USDA inspector is on site daily to monitor safety procedures and protocols.

What Jefferies describes as a well documented process, with.

Us being a USDA processing facility, humane handling is a huge deal for USDA.

So all of our all of our employees are trained on the proper way to unload animals, to push them through the system, to get them across the scales in their pens.

Every pen has water in it.

If they're here overnight, every animal gets them.

He says they use a machine designed by animal scientist Temple Grandin to harvest the animal.

So we try to make it as easy and stress free as we can for the animal.

As they go through the process.

It's easier for farmers to get their product from the pasture.

Come on to the pallet.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you for that, Laura.

Green river meat processing.

Beef, goat, sheep and pork.

They will also process wild game for deer hunters.