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A new Web site will go online this June that will give farmers a place to learn about everything from registering to vote to who’s running for which office.

The Web site is designed to be a "source for the agricultural community for election information," according to Deering Dyer, Ohio Farm Bureau’s director of political education.

The site, www.ohioagriculturevotes.org, will initially be geared toward getting Ohio’s farmers registered to vote. "The best way to amplify our voice is to make sure our own people are registered," Dyer said. Then the focus will be to educate those voters on the issues and candidates and encourage them to get to the polls.

"It’s true that as a segment of the population, farmers are above average as far as being registered voters," Dyer explained. "But we’re not at 100 percent; we need to get as close as possible to that so we can maximize our effectiveness."

So why is it so important to get out the agricultural vote this November?

"Those engaged in agriculture already represent a minority in society with less than 2 percent of the population," Dyer said. "To be effective as a voting block, we all have to be singing out of the same hymnbook." Thus, the push to get common agricultural platform issues in front of the agricultural voter.

The Web site, which is supported by the Agriculture for Good Government Political Action Committee, will address agricultural platform issues that are relatively common to most farmers in the state. The goal is to elect public officials who are friendly to the agricultural community and supportive of those platform issues, Dyer said.

"Agriculture is really up against it here," he said, especially with the prospect of more burdensome federal and state regulations, higher taxes and increased urbanization. "These are all issues that affect the way we do business," Dyer said. "That’s why we need to maximize our voice."

He added that farmers need to take advantage of every opportunity they have to vote -- including the use of absentee ballots if harvest is something that would prevent them from visiting the polls.

"In our state, it’s very easy to register to vote. In our state, it’s very easy to vote period. It’s just a matter of seeing the importance of it and taking the time to do it," Dyer said.