A Sustainable Future in Kentucky Agriculture: The Influence of Jonathan Shell

[00:00:00.750] - Chris Griffin
Welcome to Back to your Roots, a podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you back to your roots. Thanks for joining us again on Back to your Roots. I'm your host, Chris Griffin.

[00:00:21.270] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Hey, guys. I'm Jordan Turnage. And as always, thank you for listening to us. Today, we are thrilled to have the Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture, Mr. Jonathan Shell, by phone with us. We'll go ahead and preface this. We may not be as cool as Luke Bryan, but we do appreciate you coming on here and giving us a little bit of your time. But I will say, though, we did have Steven Rudy in here last week, so we got some pretty good creds to our podcast, too. But thanks for coming and listening to us.

[00:00:45.350] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Yeah, absolutely, Chris. Jordan, it's good to be on with you all. I don't know, you all made it rain in Paducah, so you might be Luke Bryan.

[00:00:53.420] - Chris Griffin
Well, I'll be honest with you. Steven Rudy had some positive things. He said, Everything you know now, he taught you that, is what he told us last week.

[00:01:01.010] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Well, let me clarify something.

[00:01:03.950] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Yes, I learned a tremendous amount from Representative Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy.

[00:01:08.860] - Chris Griffin
To make sure you get all that title in.

[00:01:10.980] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
From West Kentucky, and he taught me what West Kentucky was, and I'll tell that story. But yes, I learned a lot from him. But this was the thing that Rudy loves telling people, is that whenever we took the majority back in 2016, Rudy always had all these great ideas and still does. He's an ideas factory, but he couldn't find anybody to help him execute them for a long time. I got to Frankfurt, and I'm an executor. I'm an action guy, so he'd have the ideas, and I would execute them. It was a really good tag team. He tries to tell people that he taught me everything that I know, but it was really just me implementing his ideas.

[00:01:44.050] - Jordan Turnage
That's right.

[00:01:44.520] - Jordan Turnage
Strong on it. You got to have some oomph behind that.

[00:01:47.380] - Chris Griffin
That's funny. Well, Commissioner, like I said, we're super excited to have you on the show and get some insight from you. But if you would, for the listeners, can you give us a little bit of background in yourself, your family, and how you ended up pursuing politics and where you're at today?

[00:01:59.500] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Yes. I'm not what you would consider to be a traditional political person, getting involved because of some type of political lineage or a last name or even really any interest in politics in general. I got my start in politics because of two things, Kentucky Farm Bureau and Rush Limbaugh. My grandfather, and both of those stem from him, when I was growing up, I didn't want to be anything other than GB Shell. I didn't want to be an astronaut or a professional baseball player. I wanted to be my granddad. He was really two distinct things. He was a prankster, a farmer, and a ladies' man. As I was growing up, that's all I wanted to be. My wife tells me today, Thank God that you're a farmer because you're not the other two.

[00:02:40.370] - Jordan Turnage
I was going to say two out of three ain't bad.

[00:02:42.110] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Well, one out of three. I don't have two of them. I only got one.

[00:02:46.820] - Jordan Turnage
Hey, you can bat 300 and make the Hall of Fame.

[00:02:48.790] - Chris Griffin
There you go.

[00:02:49.820] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Well, that's good. But I got involved in Farm Bureau after a pillar of our community had passed away in Garrard County, and they were looking for somebody to get on the board, and they called my granddad, and he said, I'm 76 years old. I don't really want to get involved in another board right now. He said, But I've got a grandson who wants to get involved. And so they pushed me in there. And if you know anything about Farm Bureau, the moment they see a young person come in that wants to do something, they'll just grab you by the back of the hair of the neck, and they'll push you forward as hard as they can. That's right. A great leadership organization. That's really how I learned that politics is local and policy matters. Then as I was growing up as a kid, from the time I was in diapers all the way through, we'd always had Rush Limbaugh on the vehicle, and that's where I learned how to be a conservative. I may not be able to quote you the 17 principles from Russell Kirk, but I know what matters in the real world about trying to help people make a living.

[00:03:43.180] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
I got that from hard work. My granddad and the stuff that we do on the farm. But that's how I got into politics. There's another story with yall's congressman, how I actually got in politics, signed up to run. Jamie Comer was the one that pushed me into doing that. I went a cattleman's meeting one time when he was running for Ag Commissioner, and this guy kept asking me to go. He said, You need to donate to him and put a bumper sticker on. I was probably 19, 20 years old. I said, Man, money's hard to come by. I don't know that I want to donate to somebody I've never met. He said, Well, come over here and meet him. He got up and he was just singing my song. Everything that he was saying was exactly what I believed. Up until that point, I thought all politicians were a bunch of bums, and we should throw them all out. It made me learn that there's people like Jamie Comer out there, you're all congressmen who just a regular guy that's got a family trying to make a difference. That's really what got me to sign up and run for state representative the first time.

[00:04:38.750] - Jordan Turnage
Oh, yeah. Just going out there and putting your boots on. Maybe you're not in the field every day, but you're right there representing all of us, and we really appreciate that. Going towards the side of what you're working on right now, what are some key initiatives your office are currently working on?

[00:04:53.410] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We've got some really exciting things going on. I guess the three main things that we're really focused on right now from an initiative from an administrative standpoint, is agriculture as economic development is the number one. We travel the state. We're having these summits, I guess you would call them, these meetings that we're having in local communities. We had one in Murray. That was where our first one was. We have a partnership with Murray State on an ag economic development master's level degree there that we created back in January with Chris Waridge and Brian Parr, and we were able to get that going. We decided to have our first one there. The main gist of it is we're trying to educate local communities, economic developers, and local government officials on the importance of what the agriculture economy is to Kentucky, because agriculture is economic development, especially in your all region of the state. Agriculture employs so many people. It creates so much investment in a community And the way that we look at this is we've done such a good job in agriculture of increasing our genetics and our practices that we have the best of the commodities in all the world, whether it's the corn, beans, and wheat or whether it's cattle, poultry, and pork.

[00:05:58.390] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We've got the best of the best in the state of Kentucky. There's not better farmers anywhere in this world than what we have in Kentucky. What we lack is the infrastructure to get this stuff to the maximum profitability point possible. And we've got some really good assets and infrastructure in the state, but we've got to have so much more. And what I mean by that is on the further processing in that end user of how do we get out the door to where somebody's paying that retail price. And I'll give you, for instance, in your grain markets that you have in West Kentucky, especially in Hopkinsville, you have the Hopkinsville elevator, which is an ethanol plant. That ethanol plant, if you buy corn, beans, or wheat, and you just put them on a rail, and you send them down the river, or you put them on a rail or a truck, you're adding five cents of value per bushel of corn. But if you keep it there at that facility, and you process it, and you make it into ethanol, dry distillers, greens, and CO₂, you're adding a dollar in value to that same bushel of corn that you're adding five cents by just pushing it out somewhere else.

[00:06:55.520] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
And so that's a 20 times greater value by creating processing in the state for that end user to have that. And so that's what we're trying to focus on on all agriculture products is how do we get more of that end user, more of that further processed market here so that we can get closer from the farm gate to the food plate. Another initiative that we're working on is around food is medicine, about trying to help connect the dots between healthy living, healthy eating, and agriculture. And we're working with the hospital association on really three key points is how do we get more fresh food inside the cafeterias at hospitals? How do we get more ready to eat materials there. Then how do we work on post patient care with more medically tailored boxes? We've gotten to a point in our country where we focus on sick care so much. How can we push out more prescription medications? How can we get more surgeries? How can we get more of these things on sick care done? What we want to do is to help people realize that this food is medicine. If you eat the right way, if you do the right things, you can make a difference in your health and make a difference in your community for a local farmer.

[00:07:55.750] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We're working towards figuring out exactly what this food distribution network looks like. Once we've figured out what the hospitals, what this food is, medicine, we'll be able to translate that into so many other areas, whether it's our universities, our school districts, or our restaurants. And I'll tell you, this food distribution system that we have in America and in Kentucky is very complicated. Every time we have a meeting, we learn something new and we're getting really close, I feel like, to making a big difference in this, to where we can get a really good local food movement into an industrialized national distribution chain, to where we're making a difference for farmers in the state. And then the last of the real three initiatives that we focus on is around agriculture education. We're working with the Lieutenant Governor's office and the Commissioner of Education on helping to create educational opportunities, not just in high school with the Ag departments and FFA's, because I feel like that if we're just getting them in high school, we're losing them. It's like having a good football team. You all have had some great football teams out in the West for the high school football teams.

[00:08:54.680] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
If you don't have a good Little League team, it's really hard to have a good high school team. If we don't start these kids educated around agriculture in elementary schools, we're going to lose this next generation the way that we've lost this current one. And so what we're focused on is how can we create a dedicated ag education week in the spring and a dedicated ag education week in the fall. And hopefully, we'll be able to announce this pretty soon in conjunction with Lieutenant Governor. I keep spilling the beans on it because I get so excited. She's a little more lip about it, but I'm really excited about this program that we're trying to put together. And I think it's going to make a big difference in helping educate kids, whether they're going into agriculture in the future or whether they're just going to be consumers of ag products, of really knowing the importance of what agriculture means in communities across the state of Kentucky.

[00:09:37.660] - Chris Griffin
That's a great point because I feel like a lot of times, just the lack of knowledge, even from people who, let's say, aren't in the agricultural industry, they just don't understand what that process looks like, what all it entails. Even from that side of it, it just would allow younger adults to have a little bit more appreciation for where their food comes from, the amount of effort and time it takes. That these farmers, they are putting their heart and soul into it. It's not something that they take lightly and that it is important to not only their well-being, but to other people's well-being. Definitely, that last one is a huge one where Farm Credits really pushing YBS this year. I think hearing something like that, it's just another great way to hopefully continue the ag initiative and keep people, the younger generation, informed and moving forward. One thing that gets brought up a lot on the podcast, actually, is the Farm Bill. Can you tell the listeners the importance of the Farm Bill, some things that are included, educate them on what that Farm Bill looks like, and hopefully what will come of it?

[00:10:39.670] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Yeah. A lot of the programs that we implement here at the Department of Agriculture stem from the Farm Bill, a lot of USDA programs that are out there, a lot of the FSA programs, Farm Service Agency, Department of Agriculture. Just to give a for instance of a couple of them that we have right now that we're working through is the Local Foods Program grant. We've had, I think, close to $30 million over the couple of years pushed into the state to where we've been able to distribute those dollars out to help increase our farmers that are maybe nontraditional farmers, minorities, women in farming, and helping get more locally grown food into the distribution system in conjunction with our food pantries. It's been a really good program of helping build out that infrastructure that we need. Then we have the Farm to School programs across the country and in the state of Kentucky to help have grant funds available for schools to be able to buy more local. Some schools are doing some really good work around this. I'll give you some numbers. I went to Marion County, which has been a little more central West Kentucky.

[00:11:39.000] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
It's east of Bowling Green, west of Lexington's in that south central area. But just to give you, for instance, it's a county of 22,000 people for the most part. They have about 3,000 students, P through 12, and they feed 800,000 meals a year out of that school district. And so when you think about the purchasing power that we have in our schools, same thing with our hospitals, there's programs that are at the USDA through the Farm Bill that are helping to connect those meals with farmers behind them to actually help produce that. That also goes along with the education. When we were at Marion County this past week, whenever we went through the cafeteria, they had names of the farms where the food came from so that the kids as they were going through the line new. If they saw maybe a farmer in their local community, Farmer John down the road, the kids were getting really excited knowing who that farmer was. Some other things that are in the farm bills around crop insurance, which is extremely important to our farmers in the state of Kentucky and to our ag lenders across the country. One of the things that helps us in agriculture to be able to get the capital investment that we need with such a risky and perishable items that we deal with is around crop insurance.

[00:12:45.060] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Our farm credit organizations across the country, whether it be River Valley, Farm Credit of Mid-America or Ag Credit across the state, it's a good safety net for our farmers to be able to have, to be able to go and get this money loaned to them so that they can create the crops that we need. There's no way that you can create the world economy that we have and pushing out the food to the rest of the world and to America without having the crop insurance that's in the Farm Bill. And so there's several really important products that are there. Now, as speaking of the Farm Bill, though, as you all know, we're in an election cycle. We're about, I don't know, six days away, as we're speaking right now from election day. And I don't foresee, regardless of the outcome, a Farm Bill coming before February of next year, if I had to guess. It's going to take some time after the transition of power here for people to get focused back around where things are. We're going to be ready to have the conversations with Leader McConnell, Senator Paul, Congressman Comer, and others in Washington.

[00:13:44.080] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
If we have a change in administration, if a Republican gets in and there's a new Secretary of Agriculture on the federal level, we've got great relationships with some of the people who have been rumored to be there. We're going to open that door pretty quick, and I'll be in DC the first moment that I get having the conversation on behalf of Kentucky Farmer.

[00:14:02.130] - Jordan Turnage
Yes, sir. We're going off of that with the small farmers that we've got going out right now. We're seeing a lot of weather and mostly economical disadvantages being taking place in the past couple of three years here in Western Kentucky, and it's just a small part of the overall scheme here as far as agriculture as a whole. But as part of your administration right now with the challenges that everyone's facing with tobacco growers getting cut out, rising cost, what is your office looking to do to combat these challenges?

[00:14:33.880] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Really, we can't dictate what the weather is and the disasters that are out there. The main thing that we try to do is advocate on behalf of our farmers whenever something happens. Whether it be through natural disaster relief funds or trying to help bring charitable donations in whenever the time comes, when these natural disasters hit, it's really important for communities to get together. We always do that. I tell people it's not been long ago that we lost five greenhouses on my farm to a straight-line win, and we had people showing up helping us. Whenever the time came over in Breta County, and they had that flood a couple of years ago, we sent 80 rolls of hay over to them ourselves from our farm. That's really what the farming community is, is picking each other up. In agriculture, next year is more important than this year. That's always a focus of our communities across the state, is just to really ingrain ourselves and knowing who our neighbors are so that whenever something happens, we can help them. We've got several communities across the state of Kentucky right now. Green County comes to mind that just sent 20 tractor-trailers to North Carolina for that hurricane relief when Helen came through.

[00:15:36.700] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We've got other organizations in the state that I think pretty soon are going to be announcing some pretty significant funds that they've raised in trying to help farmers in that Georgia, North and South Carolina and Tennessee area.

[00:15:48.740] - Jordan Turnage
Farming can be seen just farmer to farmer in the county to county, but when push comes to shove, they're always the first ones to put their boots on and get out there and help. It's something I hope that we as lenders and being pillars in the community, just being helpers, helps out with farmers going forward. I think it's a big part going back to what we talked about with educating our young kids and making sure that they know what it takes to make a dollar as a farmer, too, and where that money spent and what it takes to run these operations. I know I've said in previous podcasts, when you drive past a guy's farm, it's not just old McDonald had a farm. These are multi-million dollar operations that these guys are running, and they all are trying to do the best with what they've got. In the last three, four years, we've seen economic struggles with the weather being the way it's been, and they're always the first ones to take it on the chin, and they're always the first ones to offer a lending hand. I know it has to be just a real feather in your cap to be the one to go out across the state and see these guys and gals and be the tip of the spear when it comes to helping out with making sure that the state of Kentucky is properly highly represented in agriculture.

[00:17:01.770] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Yeah, it's the greatest honor that I've ever had. This is the best job in the world being Commissioner of Agriculture. You all may think you got good jobs. A lot of you listeners may think that they got good jobs, but it ain't being an Ag Commissioner. I can tell you this, what I get to see in this state every single day is the best of the best, not only of our people, but of our products and the economy that we have. And there's no replacement for being able to have this experience. It truly is the absolute best job in the entire world. And one of the things that makes it that way is not just our farmers and our communities as a whole, but our young people in this state. I know a lot of your listeners, and maybe you all yourselves, you get pretty frustrated whenever you see the news, you see things that are going on, you scroll through TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. And a lot of times it's just negative after negative after negative. A lot of times we look at this next generation and we think, is it ever going to get better?

[00:17:49.120] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Is there ever anything good going to come out of it? Two things that I'd like to say on that is that, one, we always talk about these kids are different these days whenever we look at them now. You're not born knowing anything.

[00:18:02.220] - Jordan Turnage
That's right.

[00:18:03.380] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We are different. We have taught these kids differently today. It's on us as a culture, us in our communities, to really pour back into our young people. The best place that you can start is at these local FFAs and 4-H chapters. If you're frustrated with the way things are going, shut off the social media, shut off the TV, and go find an opportunity to volunteer at one of these FFA chapters or these 4-H chapters, because there are some kids out there that are doing some truly amazing things in their local communities, and they're dying for someone to be a mentor to them, to pour into them, and to educate them on the right ways of doing things. We just actually got done having from Kentucky, Caroline Growth from Fayette County just got elected as the Eastern region, National Vice President for FFA. We've got an amazing state officer team.

[00:18:52.090] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We've got amazing local chapters across the state. That's one of the biggest positive and benefits that I get to do as a commission to be with our young people.

[00:19:01.310] - Jordan Turnage
I cut my teeth in agriculture in Tennessee, and then went to Murray State, and then moved up here. Now I get to call the Commonwealth my home. I never really picked up on until I was in college how big FFA is in Kentucky. Because where I grew up, you just always said, I'm from Brownsville, Tennessee, Haywood County. But everybody, when I was in the Hutson School of Agriculture, it's always about what county you're from, and that is completely derivative of FFA. Oh, yeah. It really is. It's so cool to be a part of just doing a little part in our local chapters and helping foster those relationships and helping grow that seed because there are so many things, there's so many benefits that you can't even put a price on that these kids get with the experience in the four years of FFA that they get. Even secondary school, secondary education, or going out there and learning a trade, they get such an invaluable investment. The least we can do is help be that mentor, like you say, and help out any way that we can in our chapters and helping out with our young kids.

[00:20:14.650] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Absolutely.

[00:20:15.390] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
I just couldn't say it better myself. It's great to be involved in those local chapters. One of my favorite things to do is I get invited to a lot of end-of-year celebrations and stuff with them. Whenever I go talk to these kids, and I know it may sound pious at times, but I try to always give them one of my six lessons of leadership that I've learned. You never know what impact that you're going to make on a kid. A lot of times we think that it's silly whenever we talk to them, we try to pour into them. I know a lot of times it's uncomfortable to do so, or maybe you feel like you're just talking to a wall. But one of the things I'd like to share is that I was at Lincoln County this last year, and I was given these six points of leadership that I give. I found out several months later that one of the girls was vying for a position somewhere, and she had to give a presentation foundation at the Bay Camp, and she actually used my six points of leadership as what she did for her project.

[00:21:07.260] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
It was impactful to her, and she took it to heart. It just made me realize that the things that we say, the things that we do really matter. Pouring into these kids, you can make a real difference pretty quick in somebody's life.

[00:21:18.660] - Jordan Turnage
They are listening.

[00:21:19.750] - Chris Griffin
Yeah, for sure.

[00:21:21.540] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
What do they say? Little corn has big ears.

[00:21:23.740] - Chris Griffin
That's right.

[00:21:25.390] - Chris Griffin
I know a lot of times, a lot of residents in Kentucky, they're just not really super familiar with the Commissioner or the Ag Department. What are some underutilized resources that you guys have that maybe aren't used by our citizens, and what government programs that most people don't realize that are available?

[00:21:43.170] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
We've got some really neat stuff here from programming. One of them is the Kentucky Office of Ag Policy, which is where our master settlement agreement funds from the tobacco lawsuits back in the year 2000 came. We as a state used them differently than every other state in the country. We decided to invest those dollars every year that we get them in instead of putting them in the general fund for the state. And so we created a grant program that has, depending on what year it is, $27 million that goes into it so that we can help build out the infrastructure across the state with our farmers, originally We originally started with diversifying away from the backup as that started to happen. But now we're really trying to focus on what are the needs that we have in the state to really maximize the opportunities. The other thing that we have is the Kentucky Office of Ag Finance, which is something I'm sure you all are very familiar with. One of the great programs that we have is the new and beginning farmer loan program.

[00:22:34.820] - Jordan Turnage
Yes, sir.

[00:22:35.210] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
The way that it works is you go to your primary lender, let's say it's River Valley Ag, and you go to your banker and he says, this may qualify for it.

[00:22:44.050] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Let's say you're trying to build four broiler barns. We see this a lot, especially with young people coming in. That's going to cost about $1.2 million to do that. So you'd go get a million dollar loan from your primary lender. You'd come to us and get a $250,000 loan, and our interest rate is 2.75. So right now, it's high interest rates across the country, that blended rate looks really good. And so as we see the national trend of an aging farming population, in Kentucky, we've somewhat stymied that. We've kept ours lower than everywhere else because we have programs that really try to focus on our new and beginning farmers.

[00:23:17.110] - Chris Griffin
Yeah, that program is phenomenal, honestly. It helps a lot of people start their operations up that otherwise may not have that opportunity. Actually, how that program is funded is also, I find really interesting. Like I said, it's just a great program for our farmers, and it's impacted some of our borrowers directly and allowed them to get in some poultry operations and other things that, like I said, they otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to do. So very, very fortunate, Kentucky, to have that.

[00:23:45.020] - Jordan Turnage
With this being one of your first years, getting this new position for yourself under your belt, what are some policy changes and some actions in your time as Commissioner that you would like to see done between now and when we get you re-elected?

[00:24:00.000] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
What we're going to do is continue to focus on agriculture as economic development, creating those opportunities for our communities across the state, really hyper-focused on how do we create value around the programs that we currently have here at the Department, Kentucky Proud and others like that. The way that I look at a lot of these programs is we want there to be such a value that we've created in those programs that it's not that you can be a part of it, but you have to be a part of it. That's really where we are trying to focus a lot of our attention on is whenever I got elected, we were I was talking about Steven Rudy earlier. He used to say that he didn't go up there to necessarily be a lawmaker, but a law unmaker. He said, We got enough laws. Maybe we need to get rid of some of them. Whenever you look at it in that room, a lot of times we want to do more programs, more government. As a conservative, looking at is how can we maximize the resources that our taxpayers give us to the fullest extent for the benefit of our citizens.

[00:24:51.850] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
It's really how we're evaluating everything that we do here at the Department on a daily basis. We're making some inroads. We're making some really good strides. I think that as we do that, we're going to see a healthier population. We're going to see more profitability in rural communities, and we're going to see rural development increase in the state of Kentucky like it's never had before.

[00:25:09.080] - Jordan Turnage
I really like what you said at the very beginning when we were talking about making sure we know the farm to table that we're doing, that you're implementing, making sure that folks know where food has come from and where it's grown and the way we know we're putting a face with a name. And it's not just, well, I get my... For kids and for people of all ages, not saying, Well, I get my groceries. They come from Kroger or what have you. And also I really liked you implementing that and cross-weaving in with the natural foods as ways of taking over over-medicating folks. I really hope that we as a state and we can hopefully be a pillar in the nation as far as I hope that really takes off and we can be the setting stone on how to do that as a state. So like, hey, if we can do it in Kentucky, what's your excuse? Making sure that we're not out there just slinging pills to folks and showing that with modern medicine and healthy eating habits, the good eating good, live good, you can't go wrong. I commend you for that.

[00:26:15.690] - Jordan Turnage
We thank you so much for coming in, Commissioner Shell. We thank you so much for coming here on the podcast today. It has been a great time to have you in here. I know your time is valuable and we really appreciate it. We appreciate all that you do as far as being Commissioner representing us here in the state. And just always know that we're out here in the west, and we're always here willing and ready and able to help any way that we can to help you out and promote agriculture, not just here in Kentucky, but throughout the nation as well.

[00:26:41.530] - KY Ag Commissioner, Jonathan Shell
Absolutely. I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you all. Anytime you all need me. You just holler.

[00:26:46.160] - Jordan Turnage
We will definitely remember that and take advantage of it. Thank you. Well, guys and gals, thank you for listening to the Back to your Roots podcast today. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you come back and listen to us again. For Chris, I'm Jordan. Thanks for listening.

[00:26:58.890] - Chris Griffin
Thanks for tuning in to Back to your Roots, where we dish the dirt on all things ag. Be sure to never miss an episode by following and subscribing. While there, leave us a review about what you want to hear next. Stay in the know between episodes by following us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. For more resources, go to our website at rivervalleyagcredit.com.