Our Ohio Weekly: The Golden Owl – Honoring Ohio’s agricultural educators
Meet the 2022 winner, Barrett Zimmerman, the state’s Ag Educator of the Year.
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Our Ohio Weekly: The Golden Owl – Honoring Ohio’s agricultural educators
Among the hundreds of outstanding agriculture education teachers throughout the Buckeye State, one stood out as the best of the best and picked up the prestigious Golden Owl Award from Ohio Farm Bureau, Nationwide and Ohio FFA.
Agricultural educators across the country devote countless hours, and often their own resources, to positively impact the lives of their students. Nationwide, along with Ohio Farm Bureau, Ohio FFA, Farm Credit Mid-America and AgCredit, ACA recognizes the state’s Ag Educator of the Year with the coveted Golden Owl Award trophy and, along with it, $3,000 in funding to help bring new opportunities to their programs. On this Our Ohio Weekly, meet this year’s winner, Barrett Zimmerman and find out how to nominate the next Golden Owl recipient.
00:00 – Brad Liggett, president of Agribusiness at Nationwide and Barrett Zimmerman, 2022 Golden Owl Award winner, talk about the amazing work of ag educators in Ohio and how they are being recognized.
23:50 – On the latest “To the Beat of Agriculture,” hear from a member of the Young Agricultural Professionals State Committee, Jaclyn DeCandio, as she tells us about the upcoming Winter Leadership Experience and gives just a few reasons as to why you should consider taking part.
32:20 – Now that the election season is over, we are entering into the lame-duck session for Ohio’s Senate and House. What are some of the issues Ohio agriculture is keeping an eye on during this interesting time in Ohio politics? Ohio Farm Bureau’s directors of state policy, Evan Callicoat and Stephan Shehy, tell us.
42:20 – Twenty Ohio Farm Bureau leaders are serving on the 2022 Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Policy Development Committee. The policy committee consists of 10 members from Ohio Farm Bureau’s board of trustees and 10 representatives of county Farm Bureaus. Mike Bensman of Sidney and Scott Bugg of Union County talk about their involvement and some of the tough issues they are tackling on behalf of Ohio Farm Bureau members.
I'm eternally grateful for the support Ohio Farm Bureau scholarships provided in helping me turn my dreams into reality.
I appreciate the benefit of having a strong voice in my corner. The extras that are included in membership are wonderful, but I'm a member because of the positive impact to my local and state agricultural communities.
I see the value and need to be engaged in the community I live in, to be a part of the decision-making process and to volunteer with organizations that help make our community better.
Farm Bureau involvement has taught me how to grow my professional and leadership experience outside of the workforce and how to do that in a community-centric way.
With not growing up on a farm, I’d say I was a late bloomer to agriculture. I feel so fortunate that I found the agriculture industry. There are so many opportunities for growth.
Labor has always been an issue, mainly because we are a seasonal operation. So that's a challenge finding somebody who only wants to work three months out of a year, sometimes up to six months.
Knowing that horticulture is under the agriculture umbrella and having Farm Bureau supporting horticulture like it does the rest of ag is very important.
If it wasn't for Farm Bureau, I personally, along with many others, would not have had the opportunity to meet with our representatives face to face in Washington.
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