Core Services

• Government Relations
• Public Affairs
• Policy Development
• Interest Group Outreach
• Forecasts and Analysis
• Strategic Counsel

Lesher Russell Barron

Founders

In 1985, two distinguished careers of public service merged to form Lyng & Lesher; a food and agriculture consulting firm that would later become Lesher & Russell; the standard bearer for food and agriculture government affairs service in Washington, D.C.

Richard “Dick” Lyng led Lyng Company, a family seed and bean production and processing firm from 1949 to 1967. In 1967, he was appointed the chief deputy director of the California State Department of Agriculture. From March 3, 1969, to January 23, 1973, Lyng was the USDA Assistant Secretary for Marketing and Consumer Services in the Nixon Administration followed by six years as President of the American Meat Institute, a national trade association that today represents companies that process 95 percent of red meat and 70 percent of turkey in the US and their suppliers throughout America. From February 5, 1981, until January 18, 1985, he served as U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary. On February 22, 1986, one year after opening Lyng & Lesher, President Ronald Reagan appointed Dick Secretary of Agriculture, where he served until the end of President Reagan’s term in 1989. Lyng past away at the age of 84 on February 1, 2003 in Modesto, CA.

Bill Lesher grew up on a family farm in Indiana and later attended Purdue University (B.S.), Oregon State University (M.S.) and Cornell University (Ph.D) where he majored in agriculture economics and public policy. Before coming to Washington in 1977 to serve on the staff of Senator Richard Lugar, Bill served as an officer in the U.S. Army and on the faculty of Cornell. Soon after arriving, Bill quickly began leaving his imprint on American agriculture policy as Chief Economist of the Senate Agriculture Committee and then as Assistant Secretary for Economics at USDA during the first term of President Reagan.

President Reagan’s first term marked a period of great consequence for American agriculture - - -a period that tested America’s foremost agriculture policymakers. It’s during this time that Lyng, Lesher and Randy Russell, Chief of Staff to then USDA Secretary John Block forged an unbreakable bond that became bedrock for Lesher & Russell. Bill retired from the firm Lesher, Russell & Barron in December 2008.

Today, Russell & Barron carries forth the spirit, commitment and unyielding desire for results that personified the founders of our firm and defined its earliest days.