NASCOE BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS WITH FARM GROUPS

The next Farm Bill development will be based on many hours of educating our legislators on agriculture issues and how the farm bill will affect every aspect of farming in the United States. This is not ONLY a farmer issue, it is an issue for everyone in this country because the very food that we eat is directly affected by government policies. It is the duty of every citizen who has an active role in agriculture to be sure that our legislators get the facts to make a farm bill that will protect our food supply and the producers who work so hard to provide it. The following information is regarding building partnerships with farm producers and groups. Please read the NASCOE plan and the producer profile. If you know of a group or producer that NASCOE could work with as a partner on farm bill or agricultural issues, fill out the producer profile and send it to: Kevin Dale, 137 Country Club Rd, Durant, OK 74701 or e-mail at: kdale@texomaonline.com

If you have any questions concerning the Coalition, please contact Deb Esselman at debessel@pcpros.net.

NASCOE COALITION PARTNERSHIP PROPOSAL REVIEW AND TAKE ACTION!

COALITION PARTNERING PLAN OF ACTION The NASCOE legislative Committee believes that the upcoming Farm Bill debate and development will be a very important time for FSA. Having a strong legislative initiative is essential if we are to be a major player in the next Farm Bill. Historically we have used our legislative conferences and our relationship with NAFEC as the number one way to have a legislative impact. With the development of CAP/WIZ and most recently our new PAC, our legislative efforts are now greater than ever. In addition to these new initiatives, we believe it is important to re-emphasis an old initiative, coalition partnering. This proposal isn’t extremely difficult, but will take a little work on everyone’s part. We know there are NASCOE members across the nation that have personal contacts with important commodity groups, agri-business groups, etc. that could benefit NASCOE. We need to find out who they are and keep an updated list with telephone numbers, e-mail accounts and addresses. Kevin Dale, the SW Area Legislation Chair has agreed to head up this new initiative and will be the contact for this issue. Listed below is a summary of the plan. 1. Identify at least one major coalition partner in every state. 2. Assign one or more NASCOE members to cultivate that partnership to the extent that we have an ongoing dialog with this individual or group. 3. Accumulate a list of these partners and the NASCOE contact for each partner. A partnership profile will be created that ranks the partners in order of importance to NASCOE. This would be a file we keep and update for years to come. 4. Strongly encourage states to bring one or more of these partners to our legislative conferences and/or our National Conventions. 5. Encourage states and areas to include some of these key contacts as speakers in their State and Area Conventions. The NASCOE legislative Committee will also include partners in our National Conventions and Legislative Conferences. 6. The NASCOE Executive Board shall consider developing a coalition award program. The Legislative Committee will oversee development of any approved awards program. 7. Become members (NASCOE) of key organizations and groups that NASCOE has developed close partnerships with. 8. The Legislative Committee will continue to work closely with our Legislative Consultant, NAFEC, RASCOE, and the Programs Committee in carrying out this plan of action. To accomplish this plan we need your help. We first need to create a list of key contacts. We need each of you to contact your membership and see if any of them have personal contacts with potential coalition partners. We then need the partners name and addresses, phone number, and e-mail address. We have included in the next page a form to complete for each key contact. This form will be mailed to the Legislative Committee for partner profiling.