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Since 1997, Ohio Farm Bureau has made building a better relationship between farmers and consumers a priority. With events and activities coordinated through the organization's Promotion and Education program, agriculture is receiving attention in classrooms and the community.

An education project undertaken this year took an innovative approach to reaching students with agriculture’s messages. "To Market, To Market" was designed to partner with a large urban market and provide a "model" event to train Farm Bureau volunteers. The program is designed to assist county Farm Bureau efforts to deliver Farm Bureau's promotional messages about agriculture and aid teachers with their efforts to teach economic concepts to elementary students. At the "To Market, To Market" event, students rotated between hands-on learning stations that integrated what they were observing at the market and the economic concepts the students had been learning about in their classrooms. More than 400 students and teachers had a better understanding of agriculture and 10 county volunteers were trained to adapt "To Market, To Market" back home at school events and farm tours.

This fall, OFBF organized a professional day at Farm Science Review for 60 Columbus Public Schools science teachers. They saw the best of modern agriculture and were provided with materials to help them incorporate what they saw and learned with the district's curriculum guide for a new Environmental Science class.

Ohio Farm Bureau debuted a new coloring book, "We Grow in Ohio!" It includes fun activities for children to help them connect food and farms and includes agricultural facts about the State of Ohio. In a unique partnership, the Ohio Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program distributed more than 100,000 coloring books to all 76 local WIC agencies. The WIC program worked with Pat Petzel, OFBF director of promotion and education, to further the distribution of the coloring book throughout the state.