No stranger to Trigg County and the agriculture scene in west Kentucky, Brian Lacefield served as guest speaker for Thursday morning’s 46th Annual Trigg County Country Ham Festival Kickoff Breakfast.
A native of Caldwell County and former longtime resident of Christian County, Lacefield has donned many hats — but now serves under Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles as the executive director for the Office of Agriculture Policy.
During the last fiscal year, Lacefield said more than $48 million came back to his station — with some of that available for redistribution among Kentucky’s counties.
Certainly the tobacco industry has changed over the years, with national cigarette consumption trending downward consecutively over the last two decades.
Interestingly enough, Lacefield noted the nation’s cigarette sales recently spiked.
In 1997, Trigg County’s total farming cash receipts came to $25.5 million, with $6.1 million of it coming from 194 tobacco farms.
In 2017, Trigg County’s total farming cash receipts surpassed $58.7 million, with $9.9 million of it coming from 59 tobacco farms.
That’s more money from fewer tobacco farms, as Lacefield added that farmers have taken heed to the message of diversifying operations. West Kentucky agrarians are quite literally refusing to put all of their eggs in one basket, and Lacefield said it’s easy to be reactive to current market conditions.
More than $700 million has already been spent in trying to help diversify Kentucky’s agriculture portfolio, and recently more than $2 million has been spent in Trigg County alone.
Lacefield mentioned two such success stories, centered in Trigg and Christian counties.
Part of this diversifying isn’t just in the tilling of ground or in the feeding of livestock, but also in the veterinary care of farm animals.
Already in his travels, Lacefield said he’s seeing critical concerns about the next generation of veterinary science — and it’s something the KY Department of Agriculture plans to address in the coming months.
Lacefield was gifted with a large basket of local farm commodities from the Trigg County Chamber of Commerce.
