It was a celebration of all things agriculture at the Salute to Agriculture breakfast at the James E. Bruce Convention Center Tuesday morning, where they handed out awards, scholarships and auctioned off a ham.
Before awards were handed out, attendees got to hear from several local FFA members, who gave the invocation, led the pledge of allegiance and recited the Future Farmer of America Creed. United States Congressman James Comer was the keynote speaker and he says these students are the future of agriculture in the U.S. and its good to see agriculture still thriving locally.
Calling farmers ‘the most important people in the world’, Comer says there’s a lot of struggles farmers face on the state, local and federal level. One of those concerns H2A migrant workers, with Comer saying they’re working on putting protections for that program in place, in the face of deportations.
The Congressman says getting legislation passed in Congress is a nearly impossible task, but he and others intend to make sure the Farm Bill—which includes items such as crop insurance and SNAP benefits—doesn’t lapse.
He says he knows tariffs set down by President Trump are certainly unpopular, but he now thinks they’ll be worth the pain in the long run to increase domestic production.
Numerous awards were presented at the banquet, with Higgins Insurance awarded Agri-Business of the Year, while Farmer of the Year went to a father-son duo in Dixon Farms and for the first time, the Christian County Agri-Business Association presented the Kentucky Agriculture Lifetime Achievement Award.
After a strong introduction that featured a video highlight his numerous accomplishments, that award was presented to Wayne Hunt, who says he has been blessed, and Christian County is the best place in the world to live.
Five scholarships through the Troy Goode Memorial Scholarship Fund were awarded to Mollie Goode, Micah Goode, Bailey Kington, Rebecca Wood and Cheyanne Rodgers.
To wrap things up, an auction to benefit the scholarships handed out by the Rotary Club of Hopkinsville and the Memorial Fund was held, auctioning off a country ham—and that ham was sold for $12,000 to H&R Agri-Power.
