Cary King: President’s Thoughts

Cary King KCA President

I hope everyone has had a great Christmas. It is a time we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and spending time with your family is so important. It helps us recharge. I would like to thank every member of KCA for allowing me to serve as your President this year. I have traveled to a lot of county, state, and other organizational meetings. I have enjoyed every opportunity. Your leadership has a lot going on with great people working on so many different projects. You can rest assured that if you have 10 head or 10,000, every situation being addressed is leading to keeping more of the meat case dollar in your pocket. If you will allow me to share my vision for Kentucky’s cattle industry, I realize it might just be a dream. We have come so far in the quality of our cattle. All of the programs over the years have really improved the genetics of the Kentucky cattle herd. And yet, for the most part, we continue sending our top-quality calf crop off to far away states to be finished and packaged. I see great opportunities for us to change this. While we are seeing more producers finishing and direct marketing their beef to consumers in their communities, and others are joining together with likeminded cattlemen to sell their calves together in value added sales, these are paying dividends and are steps in the right direction. But when you look where the big population centers are located, we are sitting in the perfect spot to ship finished product on a much larger scale directly to those metropolitan areas. God continues to bless our region with rain while so much of the country is dry with little ability to raise much grass. This allows us to produce a heavy, backgrounded calf pretty efficiently. I realize that moisture is also the main reason that not many calves have been fed out here, we all fight mud in winter, but we have seen success in small finishing barns across the state and it makes me wonder if we could build large facilities under roof that would feed thousands of head of cattle much more efficiently. Producers could possibly retain ownership. These finishing barns would be a lot more effective at providing the best nutritional programs to produce exactly what the retail markets demand while utilizing our Kentucky grain, and the many byproducts from our growing bourbon distillers. We have developed a wonderful relationship with Kroger. They want more products along with our ground beef. We have product in their stores in several states and we must grow this relationship. It’s good for us, good for Kroger, and really good for the consumer. But we must improve the supply chain. Red meat is a very complicated business but if we can expand the feeding and packing portions then we can then send high quality beef directly to consumers all up and down the east coast. In my opinion the partnership we have been working on with UK has huge potential and would give us a one stop shop for everything animal agriculture, especially as a workforce development center to assist in training those employees all along the meat supply chain, from those cutting to the marketing and management. Your association has become a leader not only in Kentucky, but all across the nation. I said before that we are becoming the Denver of the east and what I was saying is, we have the opportunity to be the “Center” of the eastern United States when it comes to animal protein. The way I see it, the sky is the limit for agriculture in this state, but we must not hesitate to change how we do things to look for every opportunity, make our cattle better, and to always seek new opportunities to get our products directly to the consumer plate. I sure plan to continue to help in any way I can to see our state become the beef capital of this nation. Again, I say thank you for allowing me to serve. I know you will be in good hands as my friend Andy Bishop leads as President. May God bless your family with a prosperous and healthy 2023! If I can help you in any way, please don’t hesitate to call, I’ll be here!

Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association President 859-613-3734 cell • 859-278-0899 office

The Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association (KCA) has been a longtime supporter of youth across the state through FFA, 4-H and scholarships. KCA has a youth scholarship available funded by the Kentucky Cattlemen’s Foundation (KCF).

The KCF Youth Scholarship started in 1991 and has provided over $156,000 in scholarship funds to students across Kentucky. Five $1,500 scholarships will be awarded to graduating high school seniors from each of the five KCA regions who plan to major in Agriculture or an Agriculturally-related subject, with the possibility of two $1,500 additional scholarships from any region.

Deadline for submission of the KCF Youth Scholarship is March 31, 2023 to the KCA Office at 176 Pasadena Drive, Lexington, KY 40503. To download an application, view the requirements, or for more information, please visit KCA online at www.kycattle.org under Youth Activities.

The Mission of the Kentucky Cattlemen’s Foundation is to pursue opportunities that promote the profitability of the cattle industry in Kentucky through educational and philanthropic endeavors.