The Ohio Soy Sustainable Summer is quickly wrapping up as Brad and I have only a few more county fairs left to attend. We drove to the western part of Ohio to attend both the Miami and Mercer County fairs this past week, marking the program as more than 75% complete. Driving across Ohio in the Sustainable World Tour van has been great, especially when we pass through counties where we attended their fair earlier in the summer.
Our first of the two stops this week was at the Miami County fair. We were greeted by Demetria Woods, the local Extension Educator and 4-H Youth Development Agent. She was able to wrangle a spot by the fairground’s midway for us so we would have a steady flow of traffic throughout the day. Due to the prime location, we were able to speak to a wide variety of fairgoers about bioproducts. Some highlights of the day include speaking to a local farmer who was extremely interested in learning how he can contribute to the future of the bioeconomy, and a consumer who exclusively purchased Seventh Generation products. Despite only purchasing Seventh Generation’s products, the consumer was shocked to find out many of their products are biobased. After our conversation, she mentioned she will be on the lookout for the USDA’s BioPreferred logo in the grocery store.
The next day we drove to the Mercer County fair, and set up our booth right by the entrance to the fairgrounds. It was Kid’s Day at the fair, and we saw plenty of children running around the grounds to complete their scavenger hunt and be entered to win a prize. Some children were intrigued by our Sustainable World Tour van, and stopped by to ask us what we were doing. Many of them were fascinated by all the products we can manufacture using corn or soybeans.
Follow @OhioBioProducts on Twitter to keep up with the rest of the Ohio Soy Sustainable Summer’s schedule!
This article was written by Shivani Patel, OBIC Student Assistant and Senior at The Ohio State University.