A group of Kentucky dairy farmers enjoyed a nice fall day in Fairbury Wednesday.
Members of the Kentucky Dairy Development Council stopped for lunch at the Dave’s Supermarket Third Street Deli and toured Kilgus Farmstead.
“It’s great to be here in Illinois,” admitted KDDC Executive Director H.H. Barlow. “We’ve been driving down the highway and were up at the World Dairy Expo yesterday at Madison, Wisconsin.”
Barlow and others on the tour were impressed with the beauty of harvest season in Central Illinois and the flat land with rich soil. The Dominy Library building also caught their attention across the street from Dave’s. Someone suggested the group stop in Fairbury to check out the community.
“Our countryside is much more rolling and has a lot more trees,” added Barlow.
After seeing every state in the Union, Barlow feels Illinois is truly the bread basket of the United States, if not the world.
KDDC represents dairy farmers in Kentucky with a task of promoting, educating and doing all they can to help farmers be more profitable and sustainable.
“Every year we try to involve our young people particularly in a trip to World Dairy Expo which is the premier event for dairy farmers,” notes Barlow.
The trip to WDE served as an educational adventure for the 15 college students on the tour who have not been exposed to dairy farms. There was a much larger crowd at this year’s WDE in Wisconsin after the event was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID and took some time to recover.
Several programs are offered through KDDC to improve farming operations. The council is funded by a tobacco settlement fund in Kentucky. KDDC helps ensure farmers are producing the highest quality milk they can. A new initiative of the group is known as “beef on dairy” to create quality beef that is more desirable than a straight Holstein or Jersey steer.
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