By: Lindsey Rowland
Lrowland@wbcowqel.com
As the Director of Education for 4-H in Crawford County, Allison Cooper’s passion lies in teaching the younger generations about the value of agriculture in the area, and at the 2015 Crawford County Fair, Cooper exercised her best work with an event called the Commodity Carnival.
For the past three years, there has been a booth in the Whetstone Building boasting this endeavor, which gives kids a chance to understand what it takes to raise an animal and take it to market. This time around, the animal in question was a pig, and required participants to fill a pink, plastic egg with dried corn and tokens representing medical, care, and transportation costs for the animal. From there, the egg is weighed and, through a final plinko game, the final profit or loss is determined. According to Cooper, about 40 kids a day came through to play, win prizes, and, ultimately, learn.
While the Commodity Carnival has been a part of the Crawford County Fair, this is the first time that Crawford County has played host to the kit that was given after Crawford County was one of only nine counties in Ohio to be awarded a grant. The money comes through CME Group and National 4-H, and entails Crawford taking care of the kit and looking after the carnival as it moves through multiple counties on a rotation schedule.
While there are some tweaks that Cooper would make, which include changing the time for the activity from the afternoon to the evening when more kids are at the fair and finding a way for 4-H members to take the lead, overall, the event has gone wonderfully, especially with its incorporation into the Whetstone Building, which serves as the Farm Bureau’s activity center. In fact, it has already been decided that, should the grant not be awarded a second year, 4-H and the Farm Bureau would team up to make their own Commodity Carnival.
In Cooper’s eyes, the carnival is an extremely important feature of the fair.
“First of all, it just gives the kids something to look forward to this whole week,” Cooper said, “This building has different activities that kids can come and do and learn about agriculture.”
Cooper went on to lament the lack of awareness about the details of what goes into raising animals or tending a farm.
“Even though we’re a rural based community, I still feel like there’s a lot of people out there that don’t know everything that goes into agriculture and there’s a lot, and I don’t expect people to know everything, but it just gives them a general idea about what agriculture’s about and why it’s important for their community.”
For anyone interested in getting involved, the Farm Bureau offers paid intern positions for Fair Week, and volunteers will be needed to help run the educational stations in the Whetstone Building. For more information, contact the Farm Bureau.