#StillFarming: Pandemic doesn’t stop Kentucky Farmers

When Americans resorted to panic buying as COVID-19 shutdowns began to happen across the state, Kentucky Farm Bureau created the hashtag #stillfarming initiative to boost confidence in farmer’s and rancher’s ability to produce food and reassure consumers of the strength in the U.S. food supply as well as bring awareness to how farmers are coping with the challenges brought about during the pandemic.

During these times, farmers throughout Kentucky, as well as Ohio County, have continued to work hard to put food on our tables.

“It all started early last spring when the pandemic hit and everything in the country was shutting down,” said KFB First Vice President Eddie Melton. “Farmers still had to take care of our animals and put out our crop.”

During the COVID-19 shutdowns, while many places across the country and the world ceased operations, the farmers were among those who had to keep working to provide essential products to consumers. Melton said the initiative was started to show what farmers were doing during this time.

“Everybody that is in agriculture and farming probably knew that we were essential, but I don’t think the general public knew how essential farmers were until they walked into grocery stores and things weren’t on the shelves like they had been in the past,” he said. “The supply chain had slowed down getting things from farmers to the consumers.”

Despite the effects that the coronavirus pandemic has had on the world as a whole, farmers have to be out planting a crop and taking care of their animals.

Among those #stillfarming in Ohio County, is Darren Luttrell, who is known to many throughout the county as “Farmer Luttrell.”

Luttrell currently farms approximately 4,000 acres primarily corn and soybeans and has eight broilers houses for Perdue near Dundee. He said as a whole last year the biggest thing that has affected the farming industry was corn prices. He said the change in the price of corn was partly because of the decrease in the use of ethanol. According to Luttrell, most gas has a 10 to 15% blend of ethanol which is often produced with corn. When the ethanol plants were basically shut down and when people stopped traveling as much at the beginning of the pandemic it affected corn prices.

In late fall or early spring, Luttrell said, corn prices began to rise drastically as more people began to drive more and ethanol plants were reopening and starting to “crush more corn.”

“Personally our operation, I can’t really say that we have been hugely affected by the pandemic other than corn prices,” Luttrell said.

But, despite any of the challenges of the past year, Luttrell has continued farming.

“Farming is the food and fiber of our nation,” he said. “Our industry is used to ups and downs because of weather, market fluctuations and trade wars. There are so many things that are beyond our control that we had to overcome. Farmers are used to overcoming or at least dealing with these types of situations.”