By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Four outstanding leaders in Ohio agriculture were honored with the Distinguished Service Award presented by Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF).

The honorees were former state representative Jim Buchy, volunteer Sarah James, communicator Esther Welch and educator Micki Zartman.

Jim Buchy, Darke County
Buchy served 18 years in the Ohio legislature. After that he was assistant director of the ODA. He ended his public career as policy director at the National Federation of Independent Businesses lobbying for small businesses. He is currently the president and CEO of Buchy Foods, a food distributing company and a family business in its 132nd year.

“I spent a public service career fighting for agricultural, for the preservation of the free enterprise system and fighting for my constituents,” Buchy said. “I worked hard to see that my constituents got the best return on their tax investments.
“While I was in the legislature I served on the house agricultural committee and natural resources committee for all nine terms.”
Agriculture is the number one industry in Ohio and Darke County is one of the top-producing counties in Ohio, Buchy said.
“The food that we eat today is the most wholesome, the most abundant, and the most economical in the world,” Buchy said. “And it is produced by the greatest people in the world. It was my privilege to work in the legislature on behalf of those fine people.”

Sarah James, Butler County
James served 37 years as an active volunteer for the Butler County 4-H program. She also served as a committee member, president, and secretary of the county Extension Advisory Committee.
James has been a member of Butler County Farm Bureau for more than 42 years. She was the originator of that county’s “Ag in the Classroom” program.

She was a 4-H advisor for 37 years and was inducted into the 4-H Hall of Fame.

James lived on a farm her entire life until moving into a smaller home in 2001.

“I was raised on a farm; so was my husband,” James said. “We milked cows, we had hogs, we had sheep, and beef, a little bit of everything.”

She liked animals, often keeping them as pets. She remembered her father farming with horses, and she drove a team when she was about 10 years old when her father allowed her to cultivate the potatoes.

James has been involved with the original Oxford Farmers’ Market since 1976. She is the market manager, with the help of two young men, she said.

Esther Welch, Ashland County

When Welch, a longtime agricultural communicator, was presented with her Distinguished Service award she told the story of how she met her husband, Eugene, through the Farm Bureau youth council.
“I said there was very little council and a lot of square dancing going on,” she said. The audience laughed as many shared those memories.

Welch said she started out as a farm wife with some interest in writing and she appreciated the opportunities that farm bureau and the Holstein association and the American Dairy Assoc., Mideast, had given her.

Welch covered the activities of the Ashland and Wayne County Farm Bureau meetings for the local newspapers for many years.
She also contributed news to many top farm newspapers. She has been the editor of the Ohio Holstein News for 20 years.
Welch served as a volunteer and leader for Buckeye Dairy Boosters, OSU Extension and Advisory Council and OARDC support committees, Ohio Holstein Assoc., Holstein Assoc. USA, Ashland County Board of Education and Ashland County-West Holmes Career Center Board of Education, and Ohio Farm Bureau.
In 1988, Welch was named as a National Dairy Woman at the World Dairy Expo.

She was also named to the OSU Dairy Science Hall of Recognition, and is one of seven women in the Ohio Agricultural Hall of Fame.
Micki Zartman, Franklin County - Ag Educator Award

At a dairy meeting in Washington D.C., a speaker told the audience that people in agriculture talked only to one another, and that it was urgent that they become proactive and share their story with the rest of the world.

“I thought she was pointing her finger right at me,” Zartman said.
That eventually led to Scarlet and Gray Ag Day at OSU, which Zartman founded in 1999.

“This is an outreach program designed to bring elementary students from the surrounding schools to campus to learn about the (agricultural) industry and opportunities within agriculture,” Zartman said.

“My greatest legacy will be the young people that I bring into agriculture and natural resources ...” Zartman said.
“In 2050, we’re going to have 11 billion people on this planet and only 1.7 people in America that are producing food. We’ve got to bring our best and our brightest into addressing these kind of issues.”

Zartman said she has worked with Judy Roush, of OFBF, since she began to develop Scarlet and Gray Day and that “working with Judy has been a blessing.”