The Butler County Farm Bureau won the top award and several other awards at the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau's 69th annual meeting in Hershey.

The bureau won five awards, including the 2019 Premier County Award, the highest honor bestowed upon a county organization among Pennsylvania's 54 county farm bureaus, during the annual meeting held in November. The five awards were the most won by any county bureau.

Larry Voll, Butler County Farm Bureau president, said officers and members deserve the credit for winning the awards, including the Premier County Award, which it won for the first time.

“Our membership directors, Evelyn Minteer and Jim Boldy, through their hard work getting members to sign up and promoting the farm bureau, plus doing other things throughout the county, such as educational activities, is how these awards got accumulated,” Voll said.

The Premier County Award salutes a county farm bureau for its outstanding performance in the six program areas evaluated by the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

“We've come in second several times,” Voll said. “We were fortunate enough to pull it in this year. It's quite an honor. We're quite happy about it.”

In addition, Butler County won three President's Awards in the areas of agriculture education, media relations and member communications and county board organization, and was recognized for earning the Overall Achievement Award for county farm bureaus with 401 or more farmer members. Multiple county farm bureaus tied for President's Awards.

“Everything went great. We had a good year,” Minteer said.

Pennsylvania Farm Bureau President Rick Ebert commended the Butler County Farm Bureau and all bureau members across the state.

“Whether they are organizing legislative farm tours, attending our state legislative conference and meeting with elected officials, hosting children and members of their local communities on educational farm tours or participating in a variety of other activities, our farmer volunteers do an amazing job of representing agriculture through the leadership of our county farm bureaus,” said Ebert. “Over the past year, the Butler County Farm Bureau demonstrated the highest level of excellence in a wide variety of program areas to earn the Farm Bureau Premier County Award.”