A man from Murray, Kentucky has been named Kentucky Farm Bureau’s 2018 farmer of the year.
75- year- old Danny Cunningham, owner of Cunningham Farms in Calloway County says he was surprised by the honor and very humbled.
“I’ve just always been proud to be a farmer. I just never did want to do much of anything else. Always enjoying what I’m doing and still do. The smell of the earth early in the spring and the smells you get out here off of honey suckles. Things like that makes it worth it.”
Cunningham credits family members and a few men he employs year round for the success of the family run Cunningham Farms. He was brought up on a dairy farm but started his own farming operation more than 50 years ago with his late wife, Judy.
The western Kentucky man says some people think a farmer is a person who wears a straw hat, a red bandana, and has a piece of straw in his or her teeth. But they might not realize growing food is business.
“We have to be business people. You know the amount of money we sink in a crop and then rely on the weather and the prices at the end to make it. I’ve just always been proud to be a farmer.”
Cunningham farms 2400 acres of white corn, 1900 acres of soybeans as well as some tobacco and wheat.
He’ll be recognized for the award at the state’s farm bureau convention.
Copyright 2018 WEKU
