Oklahoma Farm Bureau honored two leaders during its 66th annual meeting in Oklahoma City with Distinguished Service Awards.
The pair of awards is designed to honor those who have made outstanding contributions to agriculture and to Oklahoma Farm Bureau, according to Matt Wilson, executive director.
Texas County’s Joe Mayer and Noble County’s Scott Dvorak were honored Nov. 9 during a special evening award’s program in the Cox Convention Center.
Mayer was presented with the Distinguished Service to Oklahoma Agriculture Award while Dvorak received the Distinguished Service to Oklahoma Farm Bureau Award.
Mayer, 58, of Guymon, has served agriculture for more than 40 years while being active in cattle production, wheat, corn and feed grain production, conservation and commodity promotion.
He grew up on his family’s farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle, where his great grandfather settled in 1883. Mayer now has an extremely large operation of his own, with a cow-calf herd, yearlings and wheat being the primary enterprises.
Mayer has served on three statewide task forces for two different Oklahoma governors. He was on Gov. George Nigh’s Task Force on County Government and Gov. Frank Keating’s Task Force for Ad Valorem Taxes and Water Quality as well as the Department of Agriculture Rules Review Committee.
He also has served on the Oklahoma FSA Committee at the pleasure of both Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.
He also has served as a member of the State Regents for Higher Education, appointed to a nine-year term in 1995.
Mayer, who has been active in Farm Bureau for more than 35 years, was elected to the Oklahoma Farm Bureau board of directors for district one in the panhandle and northwestern counties. He served from 1993 until 2002, when term limits forced him to step down from the position. During his tenure on the board, Mayer was elected vice president several times by the members of the board.
After leaving the board, Mayer was picked to serve on the Farm Bureau Political Action Committee. He currently serves as chairman of the PAC, which has one of the most successful track records in the state.
He and his wife, Mary Anne, have three grown children, Katie, Margie and Paul.
Mayer is a 1968 graduate of Hardesty High School and earned his bachelor’s degree in speech and business administration in 1972 at Panhandle State University.
He has been awarded the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association Service to Agriculture Award in the late 1990s and won the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Service To Agriculture Award in the late 1980s.
Dvorak, 51, a Noble County farmer and rancher, has been active in Farm Bureau for more than 29 years. He served as chairman and vice chairman of the county YF&R Committee; as a county board member 16 years; and as county president five years.
He grew up in Perry and graduated from high school there in 1974. After graduating from Oklahoma State University in 1978 with a degree in agronomy, Dvorak began his farming and ranching career. He operates a diversified operation, with wheat and milo, stocker cattle and a cow-calf herd.
When Dvorak was elected to the OFB board of directors in 1996, he already had served six years on the Noble County board. He still holds a seat on that board today.
Dvorak served from 1996 to 2005 on the OFB state board as the district seven director, representing members in Woods, Alfalfa, Grant, Kay, Major, Garfield and Noble counties. He left in 2005 after serving the maximum consecutive years of service allowable due to organizational term limits.
During his state board service, Dvorak was twice elected by his peers as board secretary and was a delegate to the AFBF convention three years.
He has attended the AFBF Leadership Conference four times, the OFB Congressional Action Tour 10 times and served six times on the state Resolutions Committee and represented his county 19 times as a delegate to the OFB annual meeting.
Dvorak currently serves as vice president of the Oklahoma Beef Council. He has served on the Noble County ASCS Committee nine years, and sat as chairman seven years.
He was named the Jaycees Outstanding Young Farmer of Oklahoma in 1991 and also has earned two Outstanding Young Farmer/Rancher awards.
Dvorak is an active member of the Perry Chamber of Commerce as well as the Perry FFA Parents’ Club and Livestock Booster Club.
He and his wife, Carol, have three children, Joe, Allison and Justin. Dvorak and his family are active in the St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church were he has been an Eucharistic minister for 22 years.
