Union County Fair junior auction raises $365,000 for local youth
Union County's junior auction brought in $365,000, giving 4-H and FFA youth a major cash boost for livestock projects, education costs and future ag careers.
The Union County Fair Junior Auction raised $365,000 for local youth, putting a six-figure boost into 4-H and FFA projects across the county. That total sits just below recent Union County livestock sale peaks above $375,000 and $380,000, but it still shows that buyers kept spending despite economic pressure on farm budgets.
For students, the money is the payoff for months of feeding, training, grooming and showing animals or other projects at the fair. The proceeds help offset project costs, reward the work that goes into a fair exhibit and can ease education expenses for young people headed toward college, technical training or careers in agriculture.
The auction is one of the Union County Fair's most important fundraisers and one of the clearest public tests of support for youth agriculture in La Grande and throughout the county. Each bid connects rural families, producers and local business owners with students whose projects are often the result of a year or more of work. The dollars also reinforce the educational side of the fair, where livestock showing is tied to responsibility, record-keeping and entrepreneurship as much as to competition.
A 2025 sale order for the junior auction listed the live sale for 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, and credited the Union County Fair Board, the Union County Fair Auction Committee, FFA advisors J.D. Cant, Hailee Jameson, Brendan Kelley, Daniel Bolen, Ellissa Chatfield and Luke Coomer, and Oregon State University Extension staff Karie Kelley, Honour Bowen and Kimi Starner with helping make the event possible. It also asked buyers to pay at the close of sale so organizers could get money to the kids as soon as possible.
The junior auction also fits into a longer Union County youth livestock tradition that began in 1987. That history matters when the final tally comes in, because it shows the fair is not just a one-day sale but a long-running system of community investment that has helped generations of local youth build skills, confidence and a stronger start in agriculture.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
