Future Farmers of America count on community support at upcoming
county fair
By Betsy Avelar Staff Writer
Gilroy – Regina Lopez is not sure if she’ll sell her lamb at the Santa Clara County Fair this weekend. After six months of sheering, feeding and pampering her lamb, she is now ready to auction it off, but is not sure if she will have someone there to buy it from her.
“I think I might have one buyer for my lamb,” she said. “I had to send the letter out to different stores and different marketing facilities. It took me about two weeks to find the buyer.”
Lopez, a sophomore at Gilroy High School, belongs to Future Farmers of America (FFA) and is participating in the auction to raise money for college and to re-invest in buying more animals.
Every year before the fair, club members who have raised livestock send out letters to prospective buyers to entice them to come to the fair and buy their animals. The club focuses on the leadership building of students by allowing them to choose projects like raising an animal, growing a plant or performing community service work through an agricultural class at GHS.
Heather Nolan, 28, agricultural instructor and club advisor, has worked at GHS for four years and has seen a steady decline in the interest and participation of the students in the club. One of her worries is that the students will not get many buyers at the fair for the auction.
“We need tons more support. This fair is one of the lower paying fairs in terms of auctioning, unless you have return buyers,” said Nolan.
It is usually a small auction, but it’s smaller than most years and Nolan believes that the interest in the auction is dwindling in part because the barns have been torn down from the fairgrounds. Now, the farm animals must be kept under tents.
“Since they’ve torn down the barns, numbers have been declining, things have just slowly been declining which is sad,” said Nolan.
The interest the barns brought to the fair contributed to the attention the auction and animals received.
“When the kids are more excited it gets the community more excited,” said Nolan. “Community involvement and support; that’s the biggest thing.”
In 1941 the first Santa Clara Fair was held with 55,000 people in attendance. At one point, it lasted 16 days, then was cut to 10 and in 2002, it was cut to three days because of the low community participation.
A $38,000 legal battle between the city and the county forced the fair to move south and now Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage wants to move it to South County since Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill are said to be strong in the agriculture community. In August the board of supervisors will vote on whether to renew construction plans for a new concert hall on the current fairgrounds.
“I know a lot of people that go to the fair and the fair was losing money every year. I think we could put it in a good place, back to the old fashioned way,” Gage said.
But this might not be the best move according to Nolan.
“There are other FFA chapters that are down in San Jose too,” she said. “I’m afraid we are going to lose some interest. It’s not necessarily where the fair is.”
Nolan also believes that the interest of students with the club is due to the misunderstanding of the purpose of the club.
“We just don’t have as much kids interested,” she added. “Most kids just have this preconceived notion that the FFA is just about farmers.”
The club is actually geared to helping students develop leadership skills through speech-giving, by attending conferences, teaching them responsibility through raising animals and more.
Jiana Escobar, a recent Gilroy High graduate, agrees there are students who do not understand the true purpose of the club.
“A lot of people misunderstand us,” Escobar said. “It’s really about the leadership. They just see the whole farming thing and put a stereotype on it.”
Escobar will auction off one of her animals to help pay for tuition at Modesto Jr. College, where she will begin in the fall. Her goals include using the skills she learned in the club to become an agricultural activist.
