Hart County, Kentucky has had a strong showing of food manufacturers for years, and recently, local farmers were interested in the possibility of using locally grown products to supply these manufacturers. Knowing that some of the manufactures ship ingredients from as far as California, significantly peaked the desire to find local solutions. In an interview with BRADD, John Bunnell, one of the minds behind the Value Added Agriculture Study, described the need for the study stating, “we can grow so much around here but we are like, it makes sense, it would not only potentially help the manufacturer, but definitely would help agriculture around here.” Specifically, locals looked at manufacturers using soybeans, eggs, vegetables, and other locally available crops.

Once the need was determined, organizations such as the Hart County Industrial Authority, Hart Fiscal Court, Local Agriculture Development Board, and the University of Kentucky Extension Office procured a firm conduct the Value Added Agriculture Feasibility Study. The procured firm looked at the needed products, what the costs would be to grow the products locally, and what the current cost to the manufacturer is using non-local produce.

As it turns out, the study found that current value-added agriculture opportunities were not feasible for the county. The study showed Bunnell and others that the biggest barrier to processing local agriculture products is the processing plant (or lack thereof). Building the infrastructure necessary to have a processing plant would cost millions of dollars, and the plant would need more agriculture products than Hart County alone could produce to be profitable. Surrounding counties would need to sell crops to this plant as well. Food manufactures around Hart get their value-added agriculture products from places as far away as California, and it still costs less to produce and ship these products to Kentucky because the plants there are efficient and produce large volumes of product. The study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic and the current inflation issues -specifically high gas prices- and Bunnell is looking into whether or not this might affect the feasibility of a plant here in Kentucky.

When the Value Added Study was originally conducted, it focused on mostly processing fruits and vegetables for products, instead of processing things like soybean oil. In retrospect, Bunnell says “we should have looked at them both because your plant for soybean extraction is going to be different than your plant for processing vegetables and packing the way the manufactures need to.”

Bunnell also stressed the importance of cooperation in order to get the study conducted. The cooperation between the farmers of Hart County, the Industrial Board, Fiscal Court, and the Agricultural extension service were necessary to conduct a successful study.