Coshocton County farmers produce more than $100 million worth of products annually

COSHOCTON − Recognizing local farmers and those in the agricultural industry was the goal of the recent eighth annual Ag Day Celebration Luncheon held at the Lake Park Pavilion. The national Ag Day theme was Growing a Climate for Tomorrow.

More than 100 people attended the event held by Farm Credit Mid-America, the Ohio State University Extension Office of Coshocton County and Coshocton Soil and Water Conservation District. It featured a lunch catered by Schumaker Farms, Nathan Adams of River View FFA reciting the FFA creed and guest speakers Jenna Gregorich and Johnathan Woodward on poultry farming.

Deb Bigelow, district administrator for CSWCD, said the event was all about celebrating and appreciating the men and women of agriculture. She said everybody is connected to agriculture in some way, because everyone eats.

Bigelow said agriculture is the number one industry in Ohio and Coshocton County, but it's also vital to encourage the next generation to enter the field. Something the awareness day can also do.

"It encourages all of us to think about how food and fiber products are produced. Most of us in this rural community understand you just don't go to the grocery store, that food doesn't magically appear there. But, don't we all forget that at times," Bigelow said. "The day is to help us appreciate the role agriculture plays in providing safe, abundant and affordable products for us."

The luncheon was hosted by David Marrison of OSU Extension. He said Coshocton County farmers produce more than $100 million worth of products annually and are caretakers of more than $1 billion in land, machinery and livestock.

"The goal of today's luncheon is to allow us to pause, to reflect and be grateful for our great Coshocton County agriculture community," he told attendees.

Every luncheon has speakers focusing on a different aspect of local agriculture production and this year's focus was on poultry. Marrison said a 2017 study pegged the poultry sector in Coshocton County with generating about $22 million in sales every year, ranking 13th of all Ohio counties. On any given day there are around 1 million poultry birds in the county. Marrison believes those numbers will be higher when the new census completed in 2022 comes out.

Gregorich is the birds health program manager for the Ohio Poultry Association and owns a local farm with her husband.

She said a lot of people don't realize how big the poultry industry is in Ohio with the state ranking second in egg production behind Iowa. Ohio also produces more than 570 million pounds of chicken meat annually and 305 million pounds of turkey. The poultry industry is responsible for 16,000 direct jobs with another 60,000 positions related in support.

"A lot of the large egg producers are vertically integrated with their own feed mills and egg processing right on site," Gregorich said. "A lot of the cage-free egg layers, broilers and turkey companies utilize contract growers, which we have a lot of in this area. The contract growers own the house and equipment and the company provides the birds and the feed and support staff."

Woodward is a student at Ridgewood High School and has shown a variety of birds over the years at the Coshocton County Fair and Ohio State Fair. He had the grand champion market turkey at the Ohio State Fair in 2019, which sold for a then-record breaking $16,500. He's used money from sales over the years to build a poultry barn.

Woodward got his first turkeys in 2015 at the age of 9, a year that was devastated by an avian flu epidemic. Even though he wasn't able to show live birds that year, there were other events at the county fair that kept him encouraged.

He's currently focused on Narragansett turkeys, a heritage turkey that traces back to the 1600s. It's a type of turkey not as widespread as it once was. It's on a conservation watchlist. He's dedicated to bringing up their numbers and has set a goal to sale birds to all 50 states.

"My story started with a shed and I now have a 32 by 40 (foot) barn. My story began with two birds in the back of a Suburban and I now load a semi trailer with birds to take to a national sale. A purchase of two birds off of Craigslist resulted in now breeding, raising and selling quality birds all over the country," Woodward said. "Throughout my short agriculture time frame, I've learned firsthand the struggles all agriculture faces. However, as anyone involved in agriculture knows, the rewards outweigh the struggles faced every single day."

Leonard Hayhurst is a community content coordinator and general news reporter for the Coshocton Tribune with more than 15 years of local journalism experience and multiple awards from the Ohio Associated Press. He can be reached at 740-295-3417 or llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com. Follow him on Twitter at @llhayhurst.

This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Local farmers produce more than $100M worth of products annually