Local buyers group reorganizes to support local agriculture students at upcoming Santa Barbara County Fair

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A local buyers group recently reorganized and rebranded and is now ready to help support agriculture students at the upcoming Santa Barbara County Fair.

The 37th District Buyer’s Coalition has essentially taken the place of the James W. Brabeck Youth Legacy Fund, which was established to provide financial assistance to junior livestock exhibitors at the fair.

Through community donations to the coalition, funds will be directed towards the purchase of animal projects during the fair auction, helping ensure that students who apply for coalition help will potentially have their animal bought.

"We're set out to increase the awareness of ag in the area," said 37th District Buyer’s Coalition board member Jessica Ruffoni. "We want to be able to support students and the community at fair, and we do that through fundraising. We use that fundraising money to buy animals at fair."

Ruffoni went on to emphasize why the need for the agriculture education is so vitally important on the Central Coast, where the industry is one of the area's top leading economic drivers.

"The need is really twofold," explained Ruffoni. "We want to be able to support the community and support kids. We want to encourage youth to come to fair and either sell an animal or do a project, whether it's a welding project or a carpentry project, or they're selling an animal at fair. We want to be able to support them through our fund. We want to increase the awareness so more kids are doing ag. We live in a very prominent ag community, and the standards of kids that do participate in fair or ag projects is very low. so we want to be able to support the kids at fair, and to be able to buy their animals."

Ruffoni added the second component to the buyers group is that all of the meat from the purchased animals will later be directed towards worthy causes.

"We are able to keep that meat local. All that food and ll the meat from the animals that we purchase at fair gets donated at no charge to local community-based nonprofits and soup kitchens throughout Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties," said Ruffoni. "Last year, we purchased 91 animals at auction, and we were able to donate a little over 24,000 pounds of meat into the local community."

A benefit of a buyers coalition is to bring together members of the community, as well as local businesses and organizations who want to help exhibitors, but don't necessarily want to buy an animal themselves, either because they can't afford to pay for a whole animal or they don't have a way of taking a whole animal for themselves, or are not interested in having an animal processed.

"Not coming from an agricultural background, one thing that I really struggled with coming into the agriculture industry and raising animals was finding a buyer for my animal," said Nipomo High School FFA student Nola Zavala. "Last year, I sent out over 70 buyer letters, and I was fortunate enough to have a family friend buy my lamb instead, but with kids who aren't as fortunate, it is really the coalition's job to step in and ensure that these kids are getting the funds that they need, and are breaking even, or even making profit, and these funds can go towards these future things, such as education or a career in the agriculture field."

Youth exhibitors who wish to be considered for assistance from the 37th District Buyers Coalition will need to complete an application by this Friday, June 28.

The application process is only available open to students in 4-H, FFA, and Grange organizations based in San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County that are officially registered for the Santa Barbara County Fair livestock show.

"It's a short application," said Ruffoni. "The application deadline is Friday because there's some letters that have to be mailed as well. Those do need to be postmarked by Friday. so we do want to encourage, the local students who are participating in fair and, and teachers to be able to message out so that kids are filling out those applications."

The Santa Barbara County Fair will be held at the Santa Maria Fairpark from July 10-14.

"I'm real excited," said Grady Pope, with El Camino 4-H. "It's going to be real fun, getting set up and everything. It's always such a fun time of year, all the friends, and everything. It's so much fun."

For more information about the 37th District Buyer’s Coalition, click here to visit its official website.