Nevada farmers and ranchers have concluded that insuring an effective voice in state government today is going to require them to go the route of other industries and form a PAC.

"We haven't officially taken the action of forming it" yet, said Nevada Farm Bureau Executive Vice President Doug Busselman, referring to the Farm Bureau's prospective new political action and education arm. That, he said, would follow close of the 1997 Nevada Legislature.

But Busselman noted that voting delegates to the Farm Bureau's annual meeting last December in Elko had approved the idea and that now "we have our county leaders going through the process of putting together their ideas on who they would like to represent their county farm bureaus" on the new organization.

"As soon as the [legislative] session is over," he said, "the plan is we would then call an organizational meeting for the development of the details of how we go about doing this."

Busselman said member interest in forming the PAC -- as yet still unnamed -- did not stem from reaction to any particular recent issues.

Rather, he said, it was more a continuation of the priority the Nevada Farm Bureau has already placed on the state legislature.

"As much as anything," he said, creation of the political action and

education committee, would reflect "a desire on the part of our leaders and members to become a full player in the public process."
That would entail, he said, "doing what we can to elect the type of people who would represent us in the legislature.
"There are legislators who have been very supportive of legislative initiatives or things we needed to get done in the legislature. And working to re-elect your friends, or to attempt to elect individuals who support the concepts that you support -- that's how the process works," he said.
The Nevada Farm Bureau Federation is composed of 13 county farm bureaus, made up of individual farmers and ranchers. The statewide federation, in turn, is a member of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
"There has been discussions of the creation of a PAC at the national level as well as here in Nevada for several years," said Busselman.

-- Steve Miller

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Form new PAC Nevada Farmers, Ranchers Gird for Political Action

Form new PAC
Nevada Farmers, Ranchers
Gird for Political Action