The Marin County Farm Bureau was named the state’s most outstanding small county of the year by the California Farm Bureau Federation last week. It is the first time in over two decades that the farm bureau has received the distinction. “It’s a big feather in the hat for Marin County,” said Sam Dolcini, the farm bureau’s president and a fifth-generation rancher who works at a family business near Hicks Valley. “It demonstrates the fact that we’ve gone above and beyond what many other farm bureaus have been doing.”
Although the county bureau engages in a variety of activities to represent Marin’s agricultural members, two specific programs sealed the deal.
The first, an annual VIP luncheon, brings local farmers, farming organizations and elected officials together over a meal and an afternoon of networking during which folks learn and educate each other on things like best agricultural practices.
The second is Farm Day, held every year at Marin Center’s Exhibition Hall in San Rafael and featuring a wide range of agricultural groups that set up booths and displays for the enjoyment and education of over a thousand third graders coming from every school district in the county.
The latter program is a particular point of pride for the farm bureau.
“[Farm Day] is everything agricultural, from apples to bees, and anything A to Z,” said Mr. Dolcini, who will serve as the sole delegate-at-large representing the state of California at this year’s American Farm Bureau Convention in San Diego. “We spend that entire morning bringing agriculture to the youths of Marin County.”
The farm bureau qualified as a “small” bureau because it has 199 or fewer members. But being small in no way reflects the county’s quality of work, the state farm bureau said.
“Being a smaller bureau, they really represented their farmers and ranchers to the highest extent,” said Danielle Oliver, a program consultant for the state bureau. “It was really impressive the amount of work that their farm bureau has done for the farmers and ranchers of Marin County.”
Aside from these two programs, the Marin County Farm Bureau acts as a liaison between local agriculturalists and agricultural groups and state and federal agencies. Through its input on the county’s recently updated Local Coastal Program, the bureau sought to implement rules and regulations intended to protect both natural resources and the future of farming and ranching along Marin’s coast.