Farm Bureau Governmental Relations Offers Summer Internship Opportunities for College Students

Former GR Intern Stefanie Kitchen with
Del. Peter Farrell

Know a college student interested in agriculture and Governmental Relations? 

Virginia Farm Bureau is organized as a federation. This structure means that when a farmer member joins a county Farm Bureau, he or she is considered a member of Virginia Farm Bureau as well as American Farm Bureau. There are 88 county Farm Bureaus in Virginia. The strength of the organization is its grassroots activities.

Virginia Farm Bureau Federation staff’s primary responsibility is to serve volunteer leaders. The Governmental Relations Department’s primary responsibility during the summer is working with farmer members on researching, developing or pulling background information on local, state and national issues to help them formulate ideas for issues on which county Farm Bureau would like Virginia Farm Bureau to take a position.

In addition, we attend appropriate legislative and regulatory meetings and study committees to represent our members’ adopted policy positions. When requested, we make presentations on policy issues and work on surfacing ideas for news stories on Farm Bureau priority issues. In odd-numbered years, we work with the volunteer leaders participating in our political action committee to coordinate interviews with candidates running for public office and develop background information on the candidates’ positions and/or voting records.

In general, the intern will be required to perform some duties including clerical, to synthesize and summarize information, and to observe a broad array of issues that our organization represents, from national issues to tax issues to land issues to commodity issues.

The intern’s primary project will be assisting with coordination of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation AgPAC (political action committee) activities.

• Work with district field services directors on setting up Local Evaluation Committee meetings (interviews between members and candidates running for office).
• Follow up with candidates with written and verbal reminders regarding interviews.
• Coordinate follow-up to questions or requests for information from candidates.
• Coordinate putting custom interview packets together for volunteer leaders.

Send us your resume:

If interested, send an email and a copy of your resume to Victoria Johnson atvictoria.johnson@vafb.com, as well as to Andrew Smith at andrew.smith@vafb.com, by March 1, 2015. Interviews will be conducted in mid-March.