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The Beefmaster Pay Weight
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Expanding Opportunities and Overcoming Challenges By Rylee Barber, Beefmaster Breeders United While 2020 certainly provided everyone with some challenges, it also allowed the chance for growth and new opportunities. The Junior Beefmaster Breeders Association has taken what 2020 threw at us and turned it into endless possibilities for youth involved in the Beefmaster breed. The Junior Board of Directors have discussed their goals for 2021 and what they hope to accomplish this year, and every goal centered around expanding opportunities and overcoming challenges. Many junior members around the country in 2020 had to change some aspect of their daily life. Whether that was virtual learning, an extracurricular activity cancelled, or spending more time with their Beefmaster animals, it was an adjustment in their life that happened suddenly. With all these changes and challenges that they were facing, many JBBA members turned to the world of agriculture to get their sense of normalcy. When it came time for the 36th Annual JBBA National Show and Convention many exhibitors and families expressed their gratitude that they were able to compete and be surrounded by
friends and families and have a sense of normalcy. Looking at 2021 we wanted to continue the normalcy that we could provide for the JBBA membership and improve upon their experiences. The JBBA is known for their complete and well-rounded slate of programs, which were expanded for 2021. The directors and ambassadors sat down and looked at different contests and different events that they could add to improve the program. What they ended up adding was an additional six contests based around professional development and improving necessary life skills, a program for younger JBBA members to feel included and a series of events to help welcome and reach more members. With the addition of the Professional Development Contest juniors have an advantage preparing for the “real world” after college or high school. This new contest provides juniors with three different agricultural job descriptions and the junior member must prepare their resume based on the description. Each junior member must use information on their resume so that they may use their resume for
future use. Once resumes have been submitted, the top applicants will be placed in an interview setting to help them prepare for a job interview situation. The addition of this contest was to give senior age members applicable realworld experience before they are thrown into the job or internship market. Another contest that the directors were enthusiastic to add to the schedule was the Individual and Team Sales competitions. These contests are focused on the juniors “selling” their Beefmaster projects. In doing so, they learn about marketing techniques and relevant selling points that are pertinent to the Beefmaster breed. This also requires the juniors to study different Beefmaster pedigrees and learn everything they can about a single animal in a short period of time. The Marketing Design and the Creative Essay Contest are two new contests that will also take place in 2021. Both contests are targeted for our members that prefer to express themselves more creatively in an artistic fashion. The Marketing Design contest allows junior members to showcase their computer
design talents in designing a marketing or promotional piece for JBBA. With the amount of marketing that is going digital, this is a valuable skill set for members that are wanting to promote agriculture and Beefmaster cattle. The Creative Essay contest targets juniors that have an interest in journalism or writing about agriculture. Each contestant will draw a unique topic related to Beefmaster cattle and the agricultural industry and will have the allotted time to write an essay related to the topic. These essays will be featured in the JBBA Journal and possibly other Beefmaster publications. While the Junior Board and Ambassadors focused heavily on adding educational contests to our existing line-up, they also didn’t want to leave out the younger JBBA members. They decided to revamp the PeeWee program and add more activities to the week of the National Show and Convention specifically for them. This will allow younger JBBA members and younger siblings of JBBA members to have their own time to meet other members their age and complete projects of their own.
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