Scottsville farm leader Al Pedigo received the Thomas Poe Cooper Farm Leadership Award from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment during the recent Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service conference. 

The award recognizes a Kentuckian who exemplifies leadership across the areas of agriculture, 4-H, family and consumer sciences or community and economic development. The award was endowed by Cooper, who was dean of the college from 1917 to 1951. 

Pedigo and his son, John, farm more than 3,400 acres producing burley and cigar tobacco, corn, soybeans, mixed hay, pasture, timber and cattle. Throughout his farming career, Pedigo has worked with Cooperative Extension, hosting on‐farm research plots and local and regional field days. He currently serves as chair of the Allen County Extension District Board. 

For more than 30 years, he has been a farm leader honing his skills through the Kentucky Agricultural Leadership Program, formerly the Phillip Morris Agricultural Leadership program.  

Pedigo serves on the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board which distributes 50% of the state monies received from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement for the general purpose of agricultural development in the commonwealth. He has held leadership positions at all levels within Farm Bureau and has served on state and national beef organizations. 

He is an advocate for tobacco growers, and he helped craft the tobacco buyout agreement that ended the Federal Tobacco Program. Pedigo served as vice chair of the Farm Bureau Tobacco Advisory Board, president of the Council for Burley Tobacco and on the board of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative. He currently serves on the executive committee and grower advisory committee board for a nonprofit training and certification program that helps develop standards, training guidelines and monitoring requirements for participating tobacco growers.