A Message From Bob Luther, President of the Summit County Ohio Farm Bureau
Spring is on its way.
How can I tell? The mailbox is filled with seed catalogs.
Although I enjoy thumbing through their colorful pages, year after year my son and I turn to one catalog and primarily one local farm supply store to fill our needs for seeds to grow our next crops.
Farm Bureau is much like that one good seed catalog and serves us well as our primary local farm service organization.
We know that we have top-notch staffers working with our state representatives and senators. Shortly, three from each county – the county president, the Political Affairs Action chair and a young farmer – will be going to Columbus to meet with each of the senators and representatives.
In an urban county like Summit, we have a number of stops to make and usually we are warmly welcomed as we share our local and state Farm Bureau story with them.
We also know that we have an outstanding staff member making the rounds in Washington, preparing the way for me and the other county Farm Bureau presidents, to make similar congressional visits.
We will have fewer stops to make in Washington than we will have in Columbus, but the story is the same: agriculture is important to Ohio and the nation. We are the only major industry that touches every person, every day in many ways.
We will help them understand the legislative direction we believe will keep agriculture strong. We will work with our Senators and Representatives to help the farmers, food processors and distributors willing to devote time and talents to providing safe, local food and fiber succeed.
It is my pleasure to introduce to you our new member business directory. Here, you will find contact information for many of our members who have services or products to share.
This new Summit County member service is just one way we are working hard to serve our members, both producers and consumers. Locally produced food is great, but without local buyers, the effort is lost.
I encourage you to use this new guide to direct you to some of the riches found locally. We hope it will become as useful to you as the seed catalogs are to us as we plan and grow the New Year.
How can we offer all of these services? Our strength is in our membership. Each of us contributes to the effort through our dues.
Then our county Board of Directors decides how to best serve our membership through programs and opportunities. In turn, the State Board of Trustees does the same, maintaining a balanced budget and strong programs that serve Ohio agriculture.
If you haven’t yet paid your 2011 dues, we invite and encourage you to do so soon. We also encourage you to invite others to join our effort. (You can find our membership application here).
Help us help you have a strong and powerful pro-agriculture voice!