Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles (right) listens to Barren County farmer Richard Mattingly on Thursday as Barren County Judge-Executive Micheal Hale looks on Thursday after Quarles spoke to a group of Barren County farmers.

GLASGOW – Barren County farmer Richard Mattingly is already an innovator, having installed robots that milk most of his 240 dairy cows. Now he’s looking at an innovation that will go beyond technology and improve the market for the milk those robots are squeezing out.

A big proponent of opening international markets in the wake of the United States’ withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, Mattingly nodded his head at the words of Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles on Thursday at the University of Kentucky Agriculture Extension office in Glasgow.

A big part of Quarles’ message to the 30 or so farmers gathered at the extension office was focused on the importance of opening China and other markets to Kentucky agricultural products.

It was just the message Mattingly came to hear.

“I’m glad they’re trying to promote our products on international markets,” Mattingly said. “Trade is such an important part of agriculture.”

Mattingly, who also dabbles in poultry farming, believes more foreign markets could be the cure for a depressed dairy industry.

“Milk prices are tremendously depressed from what they were a few years ago,” he said. “My dad has been a dairy farmer for 50 years, and the best year of his entire career was three years ago. Prices are down about 40 percent since then. We’re barely at a break-even price now. International trade is what drove prices up.”

Mattingly is in lockstep with Quarles, who told the farmers: “The Kentucky Department of Agriculture is putting a lot of emphasis on international trade. The rest of the world needs Kentucky agriculture.”

While looking to potential customers in other countries, Quarles is also hoping to build on Kentucky Proud, the state’s official farm marketing program.

The agriculture commissioner revealed plans that he hopes will help Kentucky beef farmers while also benefitting the state’s Kroger supermarkets and boosting beef processing in the Bluegrass State.

Called Beef Solutions, the plan calls for Kentucky beef cattle to be processed at The Chop Shop in Wolfe County and then distributed as ground beef by the Creation Gardens wholesale food distributor to 88 Kroger locations in the state.

“Kentucky is the No. 1 beef cattle state east of the Mississippi River,” Quarles said. “My goal is to get more Kentucky beef into Kentucky grocery stores. It’s an opportunity for Kentucky Proud beef to be sold in Kroger stores.

“I think Kentucky consumers will buy Kentucky beef if they know it comes from Kentucky farmers.”

Quarles said the Beef Solutions program should debut later this year or early in 2018. His plan calls for it to grow beyond ground beef into ribeye and other cuts and to grow beyond Kroger into other Kentucky supermarkets.

Eventually, Quarles sees the Beef Solutions program as a solution for Kentucky’s dearth of beef processors.

“At the end of the day, the market will decide if a business will succeed,” Quarles said. “If this works, it will encourage other processors to open in this area. We don’t have the slaughter capacity we need now.”

Even as he looks inward with the Beef Solutions program, Quarles still has his eye on the burgeoning foreign markets and the growing demand in China for U.S. agricultural products.

“We want to get Kentucky Proud beef into export markets,” he said. “China wants products to be source-verified. We can do that. Four percent of Kentucky agriculture exports are going to China now. We want that to grow.”