Menu

by Jack Fisher, OFBF executive vice president

The excitement over the Buckeyes’ national college football championship hasn’t faded much here in Columbus. Nor should it. Being recognized as the absolute best – at anything – doesn’t happen very often.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF).

Once again, OFBF has brought home our version of a national championship by winning the American Farm Bureau Federation’s prestigious President’s Award for the fourth year in a row and 10 ^th out of the last 12 years!

That kind of consistent excellence is almost unheard of, and it's something to be tremendously proud of. Every volunteer, every staff member, our friends at Nationwide and virtually everyone who's contributed to this success deserves the thanks and admiration of his or her fellow members. It feels darn good to be the best.

We won the award by excelling in the programs and activities we carry out on behalf of our members. What's interesting to me though, is that the specifics of what we do within those programs is changing. Our ultimate goal – to make a better life for farm families – has and always will remain the same. But in light of the way the world around us is changing, our challenge is to find new ways to do that.

Our Farm Bureau vision statement says we'll make that better life by "Forging a partnership between farmers and consumers." Creating that kind of a lasting alliance means that in some cases, our programs and activities will need to be reshaped and redirected.

Already, we've undergone some of that adjustment. For example, thanks to term limits, we no longer can rely on our long-term relationship with seasoned legislators. So we've prioritized our efforts to reach lawmakers even before they are elected. Farm Bureau is now more involved in identifying farm-friendly candidates, informing them about how farm issues impact consumers, and helping them win elected office.

Our public relations efforts also have changed to help build that partnership. With consumers becoming less connected to agriculture, we're putting more resources into building awareness and empathy. The "Farmers are Naturally Resourceful" advertising campaign, our COSI on Wheels elementary school project and the creation of Our Ohio magazine are all ways we're helping nonfarmers understand why they should care about the agricultural industry.

Partnership building is also being accomplished by enhancing the member benefits package to include things that help consumers as well as farmers. We're supporting other farm organizations which have direct marketing links to consumers, and we've even created the entirely new Agricultural Ecology program area aimed specifically at helping agriculture understand and enhance its role within society.

But there's more to be done. Ohio won't continue to bring home those national championships by sticking with programs and activities just because "we've always done it this way." Continued success will rely on new thinking and new attitudes. And I challenge you to contribute those new ideas.

How can Farm Bureau forge that partnership between farmers and consumers in a way that's good for our customers and good for you? What, as an organization, do we stop doing, and what do we start doing? How do we gather the resources, human and financial, to accomplish our goal? How do we maintain our track record of excellence amid the new challenges and opportunities facing us?

I have no doubt we'll answer those questions, and 10 years time from now, we'll still be celebrating OFBF's string of national championships. We'll get there using a different playbook, but the score will show we built a winning partnership between farmers and consumers.