Utilities have been a way of life for Kent Farmer, president and CEO of Fredericksburg, Virginia-based Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC), who brings decades of industry experience to his new post as president of the CFC Board of Directors.
[section separator="true"]
[section-item 6]
[row]
[column 12]
Farmer grew up in a small Old Dominion State town where the local cooperative (Bowling Green-headquartered Virginia Electric Cooperative) was a major participant in community life and well known as a great landing spot for a job.
“My father had worked for the regional telephone company for more than 40 years, so joining an electric utility seemed a natural fit,” Farmer explains.
[/column]
[/row]
[/section-item]
[section-item 6]
[row center]
[column 12]
[image-caption title="CFC%20Board%20President%20Kent%20Farmer" description="%20" image="/cfc/PublishingImages/KentFarmer2.jpg" /]
[/column]
[/row]
[/section-item]
[/section]
He was first hired as a management trainee at Virginia Electric Cooperative in 1979—the year before it consolidated with Northern Piedmont Electric Cooperative in Culpeper to form REC—and worked in every department over his first five years. He took the REC helm in 2004 and a decade later was seated as the District 1 manager-director representative on the CFC board.
“I have worked with the team at CFC my entire career and was thrilled to be elected to represent District 1,” says Farmer, who will leave office on
March 2, 2020, when his second three-year term as a director—the maximum allowed—concludes. “CFC is an outstanding organization made up of cooperative people from across the country working daily to help us better serve our members.”
[section separator="true"]
[section-item 6]
[row]
[column 12]
Today, REC maintains more than 17,000 miles of line stretched across 22 rural counties in Virginia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, with roughly 170,000 connections, less than 10 per mile. In June 2010, the cooperative added 51,000 new consumers through the acquisition of territory from Allegheny Energy/Potomac Edison, an investor-owned utility, in a deal that received financial support from CFC.
[/column]
[/row]
[/section-item]
[section-item 6]
[row center middle]
[column 12 center middle]
[image-caption title="Farmer%20with%20a%20young%20co-op%20consumer" description="%20" image="/cfc/PublishingImages/KentFarmer1.jpg" /]
[/column]
[/row]
[/section-item]
[/section]
“Being a former CFO at REC has proven to be a tremendous benefit to fulfilling my duties on the CFC board,” Farmer acknowledges. “And in my position as CEO I understand what our members’ financial needs are and how CFC can assist us in satisfying them.”
He adds: “My biggest honor, however, is being given the trust of my fellow board members to lead them as their president, while my biggest challenge has been balancing CFC responsibilities with those of my co-op.”
In addition to his CFC and REC roles, Farmer serves as president of Rappahannock Electric Communications, REC’s wholly owned subsidiary, and on the boards of REC’s wholesale power supplier and statewide arm—Old Dominion Electric Cooperative and the Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Association of Electric Cooperatives, both based in Glen Allen, Virginia.
Extremely active locally, Farmer also sits as a director with the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance and Virginia Chamber of Commerce and on the University of Mary Washington Business School advisory board. He was named the Germanna Community College Educational Foundation’s 2015 Philanthropist of the Year.
Farmer and his wife, Sharon—married for 40 years—have two grown sons and three grandchildren. In his free time he enjoys golf or activities on the nearby Rappahannock River. He holds bachelor’s degrees in business management from Radford University, and accounting and finance from the University of Mary Washington.
