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The message of affordable food was driven home via mass-media as OFBF and county Farm Bureaus promoted this year’s Food Check-Out Day (FCOD). Radio and TV commercials celebrated the event in several metropolitan markets. Elsewhere, county Farm Bureaus invited local media to their events.

FCOD – Feb. 5 this year – marks the date the average American has earned enough disposable income to pay for the entire year's food supply. According to USDA, Americans spend an average of just 10 percent of their disposable income for food.

In Columbus, OFBF and the Ohio Grocers Association partnered with WCOL FM to give away groceries to draw attention to the consumer’s investment in an affordable and safe American food supply. Hamilton, Montgomery and Warren County Farm Bureaus partnered with WHOK FM. Their promotion included a radio personality spending time on a farm. OFBF and Lorain County Farm Bureau worked with WGAR FM airing announcements and driving thousands of listeners to OFBF’s and the county’s Web sites.

OFBF also produced three video news releases. In Lima, the story aired on WLIO. It focused on Cooper Farms, of Van Wert, and carried the FCOD message, a food affordability message and how the Cooper family gives to Second Harvest Food Banks. Another FCOD story ran on Youngstown's WYTV and covered White House Fruit Farms in Canfield and its partnership with Second Harvest Food Banks. A similar story was aired on WMFD in Mansfield about Apple Hill Orchards.

"Since the start of Food Check-Out Day, Farm Bureau members have been extremely effective reaching consumers one-on-one in grocery stores, putting the producer out front," said Emily Kahrs, OFBF metropolitan program coordinator. "This year, OFBF worked to enhance that effort by reaching thousands at a time, and quickly, through a mass communications tie-in using radio and television."

Caption: Above: Hamilton Co. Farm Bureau President Lou Schindler (right) gave a tour of his farm to local radio personalities and Organization Director John Walter (left).

Top right: OFBF’s Jack Fisher and Ohio Grocers Association’s Tom Jackson talk affordable food on a Columbus radio station.

Right: Cuyahoga County President John Cossel and TV personality Del Donahoo talk Food Check-Out Day in a Cleveland area grocery.