Industry sign banking kentucky agreement secure
all right well thanks everyone for joining us this is our first zoom policy lunch that we've done as we transition to this temporary new normal we all find ourselves in and what we encourage everyone to do commissioner was to buy some lunch from their favorite local restaurant bring that back to their home or their office and enjoy that during the zoom meeting since we can't be eating together today so hopefully this also helps stimulate the local economy and help out some members of the Richmond Chamber I do want to give a special thank you to Kentucky Bank they are our policy luncheon sponsor for the year I know Allen Lunsford is on and now and we appreciate you and your team and your support of this speaker series and it's been disrupted a bit but we look forward to getting back to normal over the coming months and using zoom during that time as well so Allen thanks to you and your team we're very lucky fortunate to have Commissioner Ryan Quarles with us today to talk about I think some of the issues that are at the forefront for all of us as we continue to emerge from this coab at 19 pandemic and I would just encourage you as the conversation goes on if you have questions that you want to ask submit them in the chat section and we'll be sure and touch on those or you can feel free to shoot me a text if you don't want to send something via chat and I'll try to work that in dr. Ryan Quarles serves as Kentucky's Commissioner of Agriculture first elected to that position in 2015 he was reelected in 2019 winning 117 of 120 counties under his leadership the department started several new programs including initiatives to combat hunger and connect Kentucky farmers to new markets because of the department's Kentucky higher hunger initiative the Commonwealth now has the strongest legal protections for food donors in the nation dr. Quarles is leadership on international trade issues saw the reopening of race for six exports to China a trade action that benefits all sectors of Kentucky's agriculture economy dr. Quarles has also been a leader in helping diversify Kentucky's agriculture portfolio to include hemp and haul and hops dr. Quarles is outspoken advocacy for farmers has been recognized on the regional and national level he serves as vice president of the National Association of State Department's of Agriculture president of the Southern Association of State Department's of Agriculture and he previously served as chairman of the Republican Agriculture Commissioners committee dr. Quarles graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2006 with three undergraduate majors and two graduate degrees in 2008 he was awarded a full scholarship to Harvard University and graduated with a master's degree in higher education he returned to Kentucky in 2010 to complete his legal education at the University of Kentucky dr. Quarles received his doctorate in higher education from Vanderbilt University in 2018 from 2010 to 2014 dr. Quarles represented Scott Owen and Fayette counties as a member of the Kentucky House as a member of the House of Representatives in the Kentucky General Assembly he grew up on his family's dairy farm in Scott County and has lived and his family has lived and farmed in central Kentucky for more than 200 years there we made it through there's a lot of educational attainment to work through there Commissioner but thank you for being with us today well thank you for having me and kudos on bringing back the Chamber lunch I know things are a little bit different than what we're used to but I sure the same mentality as most Kentuckians that we're ready to to get back at it and I know things will probably never be the same but we look forward to moving the ball down the field and I just want to say a few opening comments number one there's probably no organization that's been more severely impacted besides the health care industry than our than the chamber you know we represent a lot of folks who are moms and pops of industries the employers of Kentucky and if anything the global pandemic of koba 19 is first and foremost a public health issue but secondly it's had enormous economic repercussions globally and here in Kentucky I know that most of us are just eager to get back to work we have a 40% unemployment it's the highest in the nation it's unacceptable and I think a lot of Kentuckians are just eager to get back at it and I know that that Madison County is both a mix of many things it's a strong agricultural area it also has a vibrant higher education presence of EKU it's an education accounting that I'm not talking about that more here in a second but it's also one that has industries and vibrant businesses as well and so I hope that we can be smart and responsible about reopening it's time for us to do that so when when kovat really started shutting down the economy agriculture from day one was exempt and we fought so hard both at the national level with the Department of Homeland Security to get a special designation that were critical infrastructure and critical industry and the same thing to state level for the governor's office we had to fight to keep agriculture untouched and so for a lot of our farmers and agribusinesses you may have noticed they haven't taken a single day off during this pandemic and right now is planting season across Kentucky it certainly is here in central Kentucky I'll be on to the back instead or this evening with my dad learning character building exercises working for him but the important thing here is that whenever we see in the course of human history armed conflict economic collapse natural disasters a lot of times food insecurity and famine complicated those major issues and we are determined that in 2020 regardless of who you are regardless if you're unemployed right now a barbless of whatever your background of situation may be during this pandemic we are going to keep you fed and that's one of the very first things that we did after Tobit started shutting things down especially our school systems and immediately we applied for a waiver at the USDA so that kids can be fed and I know that Madison County did a great job people like Scott Alexander s'en has really really had a gold standard of not only how to provide food for kids that may not have nutritious food at home but also connecting our local farmers markets with the school system they're doing such a great job another thing that we're trying to really focus on right now and I look forward to your questions is keeping our grocery stores stocked with food you know for the first time in our lives the first time since World War two really Americans may have gone to a grocery store in Sol's elves that were not fully stocked and that's somewhat of an uncomfortable feeling it's aerialist Ramin but you gotta stop and remember that in World War two half of all food consumed that America came from backyard gardens I didn't come from farms people were growing it in their backyard and they looked at you fast forward to 2020 a lot of people have taken food for granted and they somewhat forget that food starts from a family farm long before it magically shows up at a grocery store and more recently we've been trying to keep our meat processing plants open right now probably see limits on meat purchases across Kentucky or working our way through those issues but if there's one message that I asked you all to remember today it's this there is no food shortage in America there's it's simply a distribution issue there's some bottlenecks along the way but we will keep you fed and and unlike what you might see in other nations unlike what you might see in other periods of history we will not complicate kovat 19 with a food shortage the foods out there Thank You farmer well thank you Commissioner let's jump into some some topics that I know we're on everyone's mind you mentioned Scott Anderson you may see in the chat there Scott posted a comment he's on with us today and I know everyone in Madison County is proud of Scott and the work that he does with the Madison County Schools food program part of your hunger initiative is the mobile meal distribution program that you've really focused a lot on lately can you talk a little bit more about that and also the the critical groundwork you laid over the recent years with the hunger initiative overall how did that position Kentucky to respond to the needs that have arisen because of Kovac you know we come from a really blessed state our farmers punch above their weight class or more efficient technology driven producers that we are a net exporter of food and so years ago I was very concerned that that even though we produce a lot of crops raised livestock in really extraordinary ways one in six Kentuckians and one in five Kentucky schoolchildren today and that numbers only increased recently our food insecure we started the Kentucky hunger initiative and very briefly here is the whole point was to connect our agricultural community with our food banks or school systems our food pantries because we can do a better job Kentuckians like to look out for each other especially during tough times and so what we did over the past few years was help literally connect our restaurants with our farmers markets with our charitable communities with higher ed k12 so that agriculture can step up during tough times and if we had not done that groundwork years ago the numbers I'm about to present to you right now probably would not have happened as soon as we saw the need especially with unemployment again being 40 percent the need our food banks increasing we had to do something there's been a 30% increase in the number of Kentuckians utilizing food banks and most of these people who are utilizing it recently have never visited a food bank before in their life and so agriculture knew we had to step up to the plate first and foremost Kentucky Farm Bureau donated a half million dollars to the Kentucky hunger initiative we've had other major donations as well some public some private some of anonymous and what we did with that money was bike up Kentucky proud produce we've had 5,000 pounds of cheese from Western Kentucky going to our food banks 10,000 pounds of panels old folks country sausage it's good sausage going to our food banks we've had over a half million eggs donated at no cost to food banks as well and just last week 48,000 hamburgers donated to Central and Eastern Kentucky as well and what we're seeing is our different AG and livestock groups not only taking care of fellow Kentuckians but we're also helping Kentucky farmers as well by buying the products that might rot in the field and and for me being the commissioner I talk with the other AG commissioners almost every other day yesterday I talked with secretary sonny Perdue and what you've seen in other states in Kentucky's not immune to this but mainly other states you see milk being dumped on the ground you've seen what we call depopulation of livestock herds because the value isn't there and and although we have had some isolated incidents in Kentucky we're trying our best to help provide for Kentucky farmers now the school systems are more or less closed for the academic year of k-12 that doesn't mean that those kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch suddenly don't have nutritional needs over the summer and so we help partner with our school systems and some other outside groups for feeding Kentucky and one thing that Madison County does very well and I visited a mobile feeding site last year is that it brings food to kids who need it and and this is not an easy task because you got to think about when these kids come to school each day you've got a cafeteria cafeteria you have a congregant area which we got to figure out how to do with how to deal with that this fall we're putting this food on school buses we're getting it out to distribution points across the county a Madison County does a really good job of this and one last thing on this Ethan just last week did to the generosity of Farm Credit at mid-america & Co Bank we have 10 school buses at no cost completely donated by these two banks which are retrofitted they're being wrapped they're taking the seats how these buses are put in cafeteria tables in it to put in refrigerators on these buses so we now have ten more buses out feeding Kentuckians and and we had this donation in the works long before kovetz started so it couldn't have come at a better time and we want to again tell our school system tell our kids aren't students that meals are available to summer all you have to do is ask that's great and I see Scott has left a comment here that Madison County Schools would be more than happy to purchase Kentucky beef if the farmers need to move it so maybe your office can help connect Scott with some more Kentucky farmers that need to move that beef we can definitely make a deal yeah and Commissioner that's right along the line of a question I was emailed from Angela Lewis who's one of our members that's on the phone on the call today and she was talking about this issue with farmers basically having to just sit there as their product goes bad because there's not a market for it and she had a question about being able to purchase directly from the source in other words for Kentuckians to go straight to the farm buy the product and consume it that way is there any update on that front anything we should know and anything your office is working on to make that more feasible that's a great question and look one of the silver linings of kovin is that there's a greater appreciation for local agriculture you know we have our Kentucky proud fans and supporters that continue to grow at over 8,000 Kentucky proud businesses selling to Kentuckians right now record high number but we've also seen an influx of Kentuckians that may not have cared to buy local that are now actively looking for it and for instance if you're to go to our thirty or so local butcher or processing facilities that process meat used to be able to go by at your leisure buy what you want fully stocked that's not the case anymore these folks are working beyond capacity and in fact in similar processing plants you have to wait until January 2021 to get an animal processed and so we're actually just set aside a million dollars at the back of settlement money to help expand these plants and you've got some great ones right there in the area like marksberry etc that are that are great people to work with that are already helping put food on the shelves but we've seen a resurgence of local agriculture and one thing that you can do today is go to a farmers market we have a hundred and sixty of them or so we kept them open during kovat they're deemed an essential service just like our grocery stores you can support local agriculture by going to or farmers markets across the state secondly especially in Kroger but other grocery stores we have by local kiosks to buy local sections in those grocery stores you know for a fact that that's going to help out a Kentucky farmer or the third thing you can do is that we have these things called roadside farmers markets or Farm Bureau and this is where farmers are selling produce straight strictly off their farm and that's where I would encourage you if you really want to get to know your neighbor you can go to our website and go to the Farm Bureau website and figure out where your local roadside market is and most of those are open daily or a couple days a week and you know for a fact because you're actually gonna meet the farmer who's producing that food and protein as well but I don't want to sugarcoat things the the meat shortage is it is real or a lot better than we were a month ago we're running at about 90% capacity on chickens right now only about 70% capacity on on beef import right now farmers are losing money every day in Kentucky so we're fortunate that the cares act it will help address some of that but not only is the price of meat going up at the grocery store and it's not the grocery stores fault farmers are losing the value of their herds right now so it's a double whammy for Kentucky agriculture it's tough times out there we have a good question from state representative Deanna Frasier who's on with us today an
she wants to know if there are any plans or relationships with our long term care facilities as it relates to the food supply and getting young I guess Kentucky proud farm-fresh products into those facilities i representative keep up the good work good to hear from you and there are other local officials think our judges on as well as of right now there's no formal relationship with lawn care facilities care facilities and that's a great idea I think we're gonna write that one down and see what we can do with it we do have some relationships with our hospitals a lot of our hospital networks are when they can utilizing local agriculture and Kentucky proud I know that Markey Cancer Center in particular is a big supporter of Kentucky proud but that's something we should look into it and look a lot of Kentuckians including myself have spent a lot of extra time in the kitchen we're learning how to cook again that doesn't mean we're great cooks but we're cooking again and I hope that this local agriculture movement is not a fad I hope this is something that sticks with this long term it gives some of our farmers a bright spot to look forward to especially on our meat processing side and so we'll be sure to look into the long term long long term care facilities as well but one thing we do with EKU as well as other higher education institutions that we have what's called a farm to campus relationships where they make a commitment through their food supplier often times earmarks not always where they're making commitments to buy local as well and in one last point on this Ethan the old phrase that my mom and grandmother used to tell me you know when I was eating ice cream and not the broccoli is that you are what you eat and I really hope that that this is an opportunity for to reinsert the fact that that healthy living includes a healthy diet as well in just this past week we released what's called the Kentucky proud Victory Garden program if you look back if you remember if you ever seen these posters in World War two there was a big effort by the USDA Department of Ag to encourage people to grow food in their own backyard and they had some really cool vintage posters in just this past week through UK and KSU extension office's we have relaunched the Kentucky proud Victory Garden program and all you have to do is go to the Madison County Extension Office today you can pick up a poster as well as a an enlistment kit or kind of saying join the land army and and show your patriotism and so this is a really cool project for kids as well as adults but mainly kids during the summer months where we may not have may not get the opportunity to go to summer sports like we did in the past get your hands dirty or in about agriculture and and have some fun in your own backyard right and you mentioned the Extension Service I do just want to give a shout out to Brandon Sears Brandon's on with us today he's our AG extension agent here in Madison County and Brandon does a great job for the citizens of this county so Brandon thanks for being a part of this today it's not more about the meat processing facilities I know that's something that's been in the news a good deal all around the country several states I think South Dakota comes to mind had some really big issues very early on and kovat I know you've spent a lot of time working with the United Food Commercial Workers Union to ensure that their workers have the protections that they need on the front line to make sure that that food supply is not disrupted any more than it already is so I guess the question is how are we faring overall in Kentucky based on what you know from when the pandemic started until now and talked about your work to keep these employees safe on the frontlines well first and foremost employee health always comes first when it comes to agriculture whether that's during the middle pandemic or not and the one thing that complicates the meat processing industry is that these packing plants are designed where workers literally stand immediately next to each other so it's hard to implement social distancing when your job station is literally next to each other and what we saw in South Dakota was was a mega outbreak I think it was two or three hundred people accounted for I think half of the state's total kovat patients came from one work facility and that's really tough to recover from here in Kentucky we've been pretty lucky we have had some some COBIT workers and some of these plants test positive but we really haven't had the massive shutdowns you've seen in other states we have had two or three of our meat processing plants shut down but there's usually just for a week or so so they can do some trace some traceability issues but also they've also increased the amount of PPE available and they have also have installed Plexiglas or workstation dividers between these workers in almost all the situations and I had the opportunity to go into a very large processing plant just a couple weeks ago and they're doing everything right we were covered head to toe with PPE and we had to temperature checks before I was even allowed on to the processing floor so and and they're doing a good job of saying if you have any symptoms if you don't feel well stay at home you're not gonna lose your job and oh by the way people have been I've gotten a pay bump as well at minis processing facilities and so as Kentucky looks to reopen its reopening right now the lessons we learned in our meat processing facility I think can be applied to other industries and I think one of the long-term effects of coded is this whole concept of sick leave that that obviously we want you to stay home and in the past pre Covino a lot of people may be and may have been afraid of losing their job because of attendance issues and that's the conversation that every employee is gonna have employers and I have to have about moving forward etc but to get back to your original question we're doing okay we had I've had a couple short-term shutdowns in Kentucky but we have actually worked with the Union to work with not just the management but also the employees on the live floor to make sure they get what they need but they need PPE we need additional testing and we need childcare incentives to help since a lot of these folks their kids weren't in school a spouse may not be able to take care of the kids or a guardian experience etc those are the three things we're asking for and we hope obviously obviously the medical and frontline workers get this stuff first no-brainer but we're hoping that agriculture is high in priority when testing and PPE become more available right I have a question from Joyce gullet she wants to know more about the farm to Food Bank program is this still going and is there anything you'd like to share on that front yeah so thanks to the generosity and Kentucky General Assembly and also private donations we have what's called the farms of food bank trust fund where money is used by our food banks to buy up commodities from Kentucky farmers that would otherwise go to rot and for example orchards zucchini different vegetables food that may not make it to a grocery store or may not make it to a farmer's market that would otherwise go to way is bought up by our food banks and then distribute it to our food pantries so that is going on right now and that half-million dollars I mentioned from Farm Bureau more or less is being used for that purpose and so we're doing two things there number one we are helping a farmer out they get paid a basically at cost or a below market rate but they're getting some compensation set of zero number two you are exposing and Kentuckian to a kentucky proud product and hopefully they become Kentucky proud consumers on the way and and and that were maybe changing diets along the way as well and so it's a win-win not only for the food insecurity issue but also a win-win for Kentucky agriculture and in fact what we're seeing on the national level with USDA with a with a box program from our farms to families more or less is what we've been doing in Kentucky for year so we're really proud about that right Joyce thanks for that question why don't we move on to the business side of the industry and talk a little bit about where we go from here I know that leader McConnell has recently announced 16 billion dollars in federal support for producers and farmers and I know we all appreciate his leadership at the national level it really puts Kentucky at the forefront that's for sure talk a little bit about this and what those funds mean for our farmers and for our producers here in Kentucky and maybe some insight and how they can go about accessing these funds how your office can help with that and who they can contact well as I mentioned earlier it's tough times on the family farm and it was tough for us long before code that hit us due to trade Wars etc and what we're gonna see in 2020 is a year of uncertainty where parts of the AG economy simply are not there anymore particularly when it comes to some of our commodities we're very fortunate that Congress passed and USDA is now implementing the cares Act funding for our farm community and just the fast-forward here this is money that's being spent on two different endeavors number one there's three billion dollars which are buying up add commodities on the open market they help stabilize prices so kind of like what we're doing our farms the food bank trust fund except on a massive scale so a lot of milk being bought a lot of produce is being bought nationally and that food is going to our food banks the national level an additional 16 billion dollars are going to be going into direct payments for losses suffered directly as a result of kovat 19 economic impact and and so a farmer that may have livestock they may have corn wheat or soybeans actually not we didn't mess around but corn soybeans livestock what you need to do is contact your local Farm Service Agency office or visit farmers gov the good thing about this is almost all the data you need to know is online at farmer's gov they can talk about how you can start your application but you will need to make contact at the local Farm Service Agency and they'll get you in the pipeline and I talked to secretary sonny perdue and leader McConnell just yesterday their intention is that this is a good first round they want to get these checks out the door immediately and how much loss in if we suffered if you are a cattle producer in Kentucky which we have 38,000 beef cattle farms in our state where the biggest beef cattle state east Mississippi and in a normal year it's a billion dollars or the revenue for Kentucky's farmers if you had a live if he had beef cattle this this spring on your farm you've lost between 30 and 40 percent of the value of your cattle you may not have sold them yet or maybe you sold them at a loss and you just had to bite the bullet this is what this compensation is designed to help correct and make right if you're if you're a hog producer again 30 or 40 percent devaluation and in for coin corn-soybean folks etc we know for a fact that they've suffered economic damages plus what's happened with our trade issues as well and so please contact your Farm Service Agency or visit farmers gov very good thank you for that rural broadband is a topic that is important to so many Kentuckians especially during this time with students learning from home and doing the the distance learning and relying on internet and access to that but I know it's also critical to our farmers and to the AG industry I mean it's something you've been focused on so can you talk a bit about rural broadband what it means to the industry and what you're doing in that area well rural broadband is all these issues that's been around for a while everybody's for it but nobody knows what it means and so I think this is an opportunity with kids learning at home with businesses trying to reinvent themselves from home or farmers who are populating rural parts of our state who need connectivity to run their businesses or even run their modern-day equipment which requires internet access it is time for Kentucky to provide and build the infrastructure for high-speed broadband internet the same way that our grandparents or great-grandparents did with electrifying Kentucky in the 1930s and 1940s as well yeah I think it's considered essential infrastructure there's like roads railways and waterways as well we think that the United States Department of Agriculture can play a critical role this with rural development we all know Hilda legs she's actually a subject matter expert in broadband internet and it's my intention to push this as far as we can Farm Bureau is on board I know a lot of our local officials especially those in Madison County are for this as well this is a long-term infrastructure investment but we've got to make sure that it's done correctly that the taxpayer money is being respected at the same time but we simply need it and if we encounter a scenario where a distance-learning may become more of a permanent thing we have to have access otherwise our kids may not be able to learn at home and that's the thing that I think that we've all have learned maybe the hard way during kovat 19 is that we have to have better high-speed internet and in some of our counties in silver counties the local fast food restaurant or coffee shop may be the best internet in town we've got to change that and let this be something that we can all invest in let's shift gears a bit and talk about the restaurant industry I know we have several restaurant owners on the call today and these people have been impacted in a big way read recently CNBC had a piece out that the national restaurant industry estimates that restaurants in the US can lose 240 billion dollars by the end of 2020 where do you see things going for that industry and also what impact has the downturn and restaurants had on our overall AG supply chain and AG economy let me tackle the supply chain very quickly one of the things that complicated the fact that Kentuckians know we're no longer by law allowed to eat at a restaurant is that a lot of times restaurants buy food in bulk them only makes sense right that instead of buying a single steak at a time they're going to be buying it packaged uncut so they can cut it up in the restaurant instead of buying a gallon of milk at a time like I do restaurants are buying at twenty five fifty gallons at a time etc you can't exactly convince a shopper at a grocery store to say hey would you mind buying 25 gallons today instead of one and that complicated the food supply system because the bulk purchases into distribution and the packaging simply didn't align with the with the grocery store model and so that caused yet another complexity in the food supply system secondly our restaurant owners across Kentucky have had it about as bad as anyone else a lot of our restaurants are opening right now at limited capacity some of our restaurants aren't gonna open because they they know they've done the math they can't make money or sustain themselves on the limited capacity there's a restaurant owner here in Georgetown talked to yesterday that I was looking forward to being the patron his restaurant but he said if I'm not opening until we get at least 50% or 75% capacity it's not worth my time and then sadly I hate to bring this up but I've never been one to avoid a bad subject there will be restaurants that do not survive this Texas is more or less than open for about a month yesterday I was talking to their AG commissioner yesterday and about they estimate one in 10 restaurants in Texas are not coming back they're shuttered for good because you guys think about it a lot of these are mom-and-pop store family-owned it may have blown through their equity blown for their savings they didn't know how long they're gonna be closed for maybe didn't qualify for assistance and that really is a shame and so I would encourage our our Kentuckians to help be a patron if you can if you can afford to do it during these critical restart weeks secondly if you can't dine in pick up and take-out we have a dedicated website to Kentucky proud at KY proud comm and one of the tabs
there's called Kentucky proud takeout and this is a list of Kentucky restaurants that are buying local utilizing Kentucky proud that are open for business and so well my good friends a chef way to Michael she has several restaurants you know she's having a tough time though she's keeping the doors open to keeping Kentuckians fed and so visit our website at KY proud com visit a local restaurant in these critical restart' weeks but also have an appreciation that some of these folks may not start up again and just like it's tough times for farmers and stuff time for restaurant owners and workers as well well thanks for that and we'll do our part through the chamber Mindy and her staff to share that website link and encourage our members to check that out for the Kentucky proud takeout options here in Madison County well Commissioner those are all the questions that I had and I don't see any more in chat so why don't you just wrap up with some closing comments and then we will call it a day how about that well appreciate y'all's time today this is the new normal I guess but I look forward to getting back with you all in person and I look forward to going to a an EKU basketball game this fall I actually grew up with a W Hamilton your all's coach down there so he's good friend of mine y'all are doing great things just just a little bit south for me off i-75 it's gonna ask you to do a couple things number one if you know a farmer send them a text send him or her a text message a Facebook post scene thank you for what you've done they they have not taken a day off a lot of my staff at heart in the bag haven't taken any days off they've been out on the road wearing face masks doing a job each day number two if you can support local agriculture through Kentucky proud many of you all have already made that commitment and the last thing I want to leave you with is some inspiration Kentucky needs something to look forward to I sit on the Kentucky State Fair board we are determined to have a state fair that helps honor the traditions of Agriculture that celebrates farming in a state that appreciates it we have a lot of county fairs that have that have canceled this summer and understand the reasons why we're a big County Fair state of 93 of them and that's the local decision at the state level we have 700 acres in downtown Louisville we are determined to give those kids and those parents that have spent this entire spring and summer learning how to show animals an opportunity to do that we're gonna try our best to do it in August I'm determined to give Kentucky something look forward to look if we can pull off a modified Kentucky Derby in September we can pull off a modified State Fair and the last thing I want to leave you with is that AG technology continues to be a major focus of mine we actually have two agriculture companies in Kentucky that have kovat 19 treatments underneath FDA clinical trials as we speak so there are some Kentucky agriculture businesses are taking a stab at producing a treatment possible vaccine etc to help get us through this and agriculture will not only keep us fed but it could provide us a solution with one of the biggest pandemics we've seen in human history so thank you for your time today if I could be of any help to you please contact me at the Department of Agriculture I'm easy to find appreciate your time and if you all have any good news you can just tell me personally if it's bad news you can tell Ethan he'll fix it well Commissioner thanks so much I want to thank Mindy Goble and Sarah Durham and Linda Fritz and the staff at the chamber for all of their work and again thanks to Kentucky bank for their continued sponsorship of this luncheon series and stay tuned we have future events that we'll be announcing soon and we hope to see you all there thank you appreciate it guys
