Ambassador Kelly Craft, former U.S. Representative to the United Nations, spoke Thursday during Rooter Booster about her many travels and what she’s learned about the importance of community, agriculture and farming along the way.
The agriculture and farming industries were the focus during the virtual Rooster Booster, hosted by the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce. The program was sponsored by Daviess County Kentucky Farm Bureau and the Daviess County Cooperative Extension Service.
Chamber President and CEO Candance Castlen Brake spoke with Craft about the ambassador’s experiences both domestic and abroad.
Craft said she learned early on in life that it wasn’t so important to have a lot of friends, but that it was important to surround herself with people who were going to help and lead her in the right direction.
One of the most life-changing lessons Craft said she took from growing up in Kentucky was the importance of learning someone’s name, she said.
“When I’m talking with the other ambassadors — or with individuals from other countries when I’m visiting other countries — just looking at them and learning something about them completely disarms the conversation,” Craft said. “You forget the formalities and they let you in.”
Across the world, people looked to America as the real beacon, she noted. That reputation came with a lot of responsibility.
“When we visit other countries, we need to leave them in a better place,” Craft said.
Brake asked Craft about the importance of agriculture and farming across the world. Craft, who grew up on a farm herself, said she understood the pride that came with being part of an industry such as dairy or tobacco.
“With (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement) being the largest trade agreement in the world … it shows that you can take an economy such as Mexico’s, two strong economies, and make them all work together,” she said. “It removed a lot of trade barriers for Kentucky. We export to Canada as our number one export.”
The USMCA agreement also allowed the U.S. to help Mexico with their wages, she said.
“They’re no longer having to send people to the U.S. so we can enhance our own workers,” Craft said. “You’ve got Toyota with the automotive part of the USMCA and you’ve got farming, so it really benefits Kentucky.”
Craft saw firsthand the importance of American farming overseas when she witnessed the fleet of World Food Program trucks unloading at the border of Turkey and Syria. The trucks were filled with “enormous” bags of corn, wheat and flour that had been brought in from all over the United States as part of a trade deal.
“I was able to watch and know that this was life-sustaining nutrition brought into Syria, into these refugee camps,” she said. “Corn and soybeans, those are products from Kentucky. Being able to see the product, to us that might seem small. To them, that’s their lifeline.”
With the famine crisis continuing to affect so many countries across the globe, Craft referred to farmers and those in the agriculture industry as “frontline workers.”
“They may not be present there,” she said, “but their work here at home is part of that front line in the conflict areas.”
