Jim Meek of Okmulgee County was elected to serve his first term on the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Board representing District 9 during the 2016 OKFB Annual Meeting Nov. 11-13 in Oklahoma City.
Meek has been a Farm Bureau member since 1976 and has served on the Okmulgee County Board for about 10 years.
“I gave it a lot of thought and thought it would be a good way to give back to the community, give back to the young people and get involved again,” Meek said of his decision to join the county board.
Meek currently serves as the vice president of the Okmulgee County Board. After encouragement from several OKFB members, Meek decided to run for a position on the State Board.
“After a lot of thought, particularly after SQ 777, I realized a lot of our smaller communities don’t understand agriculture as much they need to,” Meek said, speaking of his decision to run for the state board. “I thought possibly by serving on the board, that would give me a venue that I could talk and visit with people to get them to understand the importance of agriculture, both as an industry and a way of life. I hope that, through my place on the board, I can help the members and the company all be efficient at promoting agriculture.”
Meek and his wife, Glenda, have raised cattle for about 35 years. They have around 90 head of commercial cattle year-round on their ranch in Okmulgee, Okla., selling their calves to stocker operations.
When Meek graduated Oklahoma State University with an agricultural education degree, he began his career in education in Keota, Okla., in Haskell County, where he taught for three years. He then started teaching at Stigler, Okla., where he led a successful agriculture program with an emphasis on leadership. Students were involved in livestock showing, several different contests and classroom activities.
After nine years in Stigler, Meek was selected as the southeast district supervisor of agricultural education where he worked for the next 25 years. At one point, Meek was the supervisor for 96 schools with 96 FFA programs in the southeast quarter of the state. He was heavily involved in developing leadership activities for young people for both the district and the state level.
After leaving his job as district supervisor, Meek began working for CareerTech Skills Centers, which provides a variety of vocational and life skills training to inmates and juvenile offenders.
“I was still involved in agriculture because we had floriculture programs and meat-processing programs,” Meek said. “I didn’t set those up, but I helped set up the training programs that were associated with those.”
Meek retired from education after 38 years to focus on his cattle operation.
“It was a real important part of my life,” Meek said about his dedication to agricultural eduction.
