“Connecting with our agriculture audience is critical to being a successful farm broadcaster, but it can also have its pitfalls,” said Pam Jahnke (WI Farm Report Radio Network, Madison, WI). She reports that in April, 58 Wisconsin dairy farms of all sizes, got an unsigned, impersonal letter from their dairy processor announcing that as of May 1, they’d no longer have a home for their milk.

For the past 10 months there has been a new, second voice sharing agricultural markets and news with farmers in Wisconsin. Kristin Smith joined WAXX 104.5 FM/WAYY 105.1 FM, Midwest Family Broadcasting’s Eau Claire farm department as the assistant farm director helping NAFB Hall of Fame Broadcaster Bob Bosold with the daily and weekly chores. 

Shawna Olson has been in the television industry since 1999. “I started out as a general assignment reporter, anchor and eventually became a meteorologist for the NBC and CBS affiliates in Fargo, ND,” she said. “I left the television industry to pursue a career in agriculture about seven years ago.

NAFB members at work during this year’s National Farmers Union Convention in San Diego, CA, interviewing Chuck Conner, President, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. Shown from left are Brian Winnekins (WRDN, Durand, WI), Chuck Conner, Mike Hergert (Red River Farm Network, Grand Forks, ND) and Sara Wyant (Agri-Pulse Communications, Inc., Camdenton, MO).

Rick Shields (WKZO, Kalamazoo, MI) said, “I've spent all of my adult life talking -- on the air and in the classroom for several years. A couple of years back I decided it was time to spend more time listening. I got hooked on travel early in life and had visited all the lower 48 states by the time I had finished high school.