BY PHILL BARNETT
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN

INEZ — Jonathan Shell spoke with the Martin County Kiwanis Club at their Thursday meeting to campaign for Kentucky State Agriculture Commissioner.

Shell was elected to Kentucky’s House of Representatives in 2012, becoming the youngest member of the General Assembly.

Shell was tapped by Republican leadership to spearhead candidate recruitment for the 2016 election and oversaw the first shift to a Republican majority in the Kentucky House of Representatives in over a century.

His fellow House Republicans elected him as Majority Floor Leader, the first-ever Republican to hold the position in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

Shell was defeated in the 2018 Republican primary by Travis Brenda, a teacher at Rockcastle County High School.

Shell currently owns State Solutions LLC, which provides policy consulting for various organizations in Kentucky. He and his family own and operate Shell Farms in Garrard County.

At the Kiwanis Club meeting, Shell campaigned for Ag Commissioner by giving detailed insight into his plans for the office.

One issue that Shell brought up was bi-vocational farmers, who are farmers who also practice another trade.

“One of the things I want to do is put together, whether it be official or unofficial, a committee of bi-vocational farmers across the state of Kentucky,” said Shell. “Because most of the farmers want to be full-time. They want to be able to make enough money off their farm to be able to supply that for their family. So they don’t have to have that other job.”

Shell believes access to markets and ultimately customers is the main thing holding bi-vocational farmers back from being able to farm full-time. His committee will be “looking at a way that we can co-op together a contract with school systems and hospitals that are in the area or with the distribution companies that are supplying those businesses.”

While Shell believes Kentucky has the best farmers and farms in the world, he warns of a shortage of secondary support staff: “marketers, geneticists, scientists.”

Shell envisions larger Food Production Networks inside the state.

“Instead of us sending all of our corn out, instead of us sending all of our soybeans out, instead of us sending all of our beef and chicken and pork out of the state of Kentucky, let’s create those rural, manufacturing jobs where they are to keep our young people back in our own communities,” said Shell.

Shell says he aims to be a voice for rural communities in Kentucky. “We need better health care in rural areas. We need better connectivity.”

Shell stressed the importance of internet connectivity for access to the latest agricultural technology.

“The mountains run deep in my blood,” said Shell, leaving the Kiwanis club with anecdotes from his family lore. “My great-great-great-grandfather was John Shell from Leslie County. He lived to be 134 years old. He’s the oldest-living recorded modern human, as far as we know.”

While Kentucky historians debate the elder Shell’s actual age at death, he was a well-known storyteller who certainly lived a long life.

“He said he had three sets of teeth,” Shell told the Kiwanis Club. “He died breaking a horse. He got through breaking a horse in the middle of the night, took pneumonia, and died at 134 years old.

“He had his last child at 97; he outlived three wives,” continued Shell.

Shell recounted his great-great-great-grandfather’s involvement in the renaming of Greasy Creek.

“Somewhere around the 1850s, 1860s, there was a creek that ran down through his property and he was hunting in the wintertime – big winter had just come over – and he shot a bear. The bear must have been extremely big because it fell in the creek and he couldn’t get it out. Well, he just left it there, apparently. And all winter long as that bear decayed because he couldn’t get it out, it just had that fat just go down the creek,” said Shell. “Everybody said, ‘Look at that greasy creek.’ And that’s how Greasy Creek got its name.”

Shell’s ancestor was taken around to county fairs and shown off as the world’s oldest man. The cabin he built in 1850 is a landmark in Leslie County today.

Thursday’s Kiwanis meeting concluded with a Q&A with Jonathan Shell, which focused on worries about rising energy costs.