For Abbey Garland, the combination of agriculture and electric cooperatives has shaped not just her interests, but also her future.
She’s a six-year member of FFA, and currently serves as Ohio’s state secretary. She’s also beginning her sophomore year at Wilmington College, where she majors in agricultural communications — funded in part by a scholarship she earned from her co-op, Oxford-based Butler Rural Electric Cooperative.
Abbey has spent much of her life discovering, through an agricultural lens, how leadership and service can work together, and she says the co-op has been instrumental in her personal and educational development. Throughout high school and now into college life, she’s been able to gain hands-on work experience and valuable insight into ways the co-ops work to improve the communities they serve, and in 2023, she was one of six students selected to represent Butler Rural as a delegate in the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour trip to Washington, D.C.
She’s bringing that passion and that unique perspective to the Farm Science Review, Sept. 16–18 at the Molly Caren Center in London, as a volunteer ambassador in the Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives Education Center. “Abbey has a diverse collection of experiences and a passion for meeting new people,” says Missy Kidwell, who manages both the Youth Tour and Farm Science Review programming for OEC. “She’s a perfect representative to encourage her peers to get interested in the opportunities their co-op has to offer.”
Abbey says her goal is to give visitors, especially her peers from FFA chapters across the state, awareness of the many opportunities that the co-ops have to offer.
“No matter what age you are, if you visit the OEC building, you’re going to leave it with a deeper understanding and more insight into your community,” she says. “More specifically, how co-ops give back to their communities.”
Evey year, the Farm Science Review, sponsored and hosted by Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, attracts over 100,000 visitors from all over the United States and Canada. Hundreds of exhibitors show off thousands of product lines, and OSU experts lead educational sessions and demonstrations across the 2,100-acre grounds.
Inside the OEC Education Center on Wheat Street, energy advisors from several Ohio co-ops will be available to answer questions, and visitors will have a chance to test their co-op knowledge to receive useful prizes like rain gauges. Co-op members also can drop off the entry form in the back of this magazine for a chance to win a $100 credit on their electric bills.
Advance tickets for FSR are $10 online, at OSU Extension offices, and select businesses, or $15 at the gate; children 5 and under are free. Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 16–17 and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 18. For more information, visit www.fsr.osu.edu.
