After 105 weekly episodes, Brent Adams left his award-winning Fastline Fast Track show in late April to help build a new brand — FarmLife Media LLC.
In early May, Adams took on the role of Vice President of Content Development/Programming for FarmLife Media, a Cape Girardeau, Missouri-based media company founded to create content for radio, television, internet, and social media.
Adams immediately went to work creating a new show, Inside FarmLife, a 30-minute weekly radio show featuring agriculture industry newsmakers, hot-button industry issues, educational features, and a traditional country music segment. Also, he records a weekly long-form podcast with more in-depth versions of the interviews featured on the radio show, and he hosts agriculture and country music-themed livestreams. The podcast may be found at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Deezer, Audible, Audacy, and YouTube.
Guests since the show launched in May have included International Dairy Foods Association President Michael Dykes, National Farmers Union President Rob Larew, American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Jerry Bohn, and United Soybean Board CEO Polly Ruhland.
Contributors to Inside FarmLife include Farm Broadcaster and Market Talk Host Jesse Allen and “The Hot Rod Farmer” Ray Bohacz, host of “Farm Machinery Digest Radio” on Sirius XM’s Rural Radio.
Adams also is the host and co-creator (along with Agricultural Economic Insights Co-Founder David Widmar) of “The Big 4,” a new YouTube-based monthly program featuring grain market experts who make long- and short-term predictions about grain stocks and discuss how other important factors affect the grain markets. Adams and Widmar were joined on the pilot episode by Farm Progress Farm Futures Grain Market Analyst Jacqueline Holland and veteran commodities trader and Technical Market Analyst Ken Morrison from “Morrison on the Markets.”
Adams also has been hard at work putting the pieces together for the company’s new website, www.farmlifemedia.com, which is being designed by Houston- and Nashville-based BubbleUp.
“We have a lot of moving pieces now, but they are all being designed around the idea of creating community through agricultural content,” Adams said. “We want to build a gathering place for the largest farm family on the planet and serve them educational, informative, inspirational, and entertaining content. We are intent on building a hub where people can go for podcasts, a 24/7 internet radio station, video content, blogs, and community pages where they can engage in an open exchange of ideas and best practices for all facets of farming and ranching.”
A focus of FarmLife will be coverage of major agricultural events such as national and regional farm shows, conferences, and conventions. A busy eight-month run began at the end of August 2021 when Inside FarmLife partnered with AGCO at the 2021 Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois. Adams recorded his radio show and podcast from a mobile studio on the AGCO lot and did live social media check-ins throughout the show. He also plans similar coverage at additional 2021 and 2022 events, including the Farm Science Review in London, Ohio; the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis; the Sunbelt Ag Expo in Moultrie, Georgia; the Nebraska Ag Expo in Lincoln; the American Farm Bureau Federation Convention in Atlanta; the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California; the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky; and Commodity Classic in New Orleans.
“The common refrain we hear from so many people in farming and ranching when we go to these events is, ‘We need to do a better job of telling our story,’” Adams said. “So, we approach every content project looking through that lens. We want to help tell the story of agriculture, not just to those in agriculture, but to those who, over the past 18 months, have become acutely aware of the agricultural supply chain they previously had taken for granted. Our mission is to educate and inform all stakeholders, from farm to table.”
But he doesn’t plan to go it alone. Adams said he hopes to create opportunities over time for other NAFB members to have their voices heard on a national platform, both on Inside FarmLife and through the creation or curation of their own shows.
“NAFB is a body of extremely talented broadcasters who hail from very agriculturally diverse parts of the country and who have an amazing depth and breadth of agricultural knowledge,” Adams said. “I look forward to sharing more of their topnotch content with our listeners.”
As it was with Fastline Fast Track, country music is a staple of Inside FarmLife, and Adams said he wouldn’t have it any other way. As a former public relations representative for a Nashville firm that represented country music artists, Adams has a heart for singers and songwriters who create traditional country music but have had limited airplay in recent years because of the genre’s shift to a more pop-influenced country sound.
“I grew up on traditional country music and I know many people also did, especially in rural America,” Adams added. “That’s why I wanted to create a conduit that would allow many of those exceptional traditional country music artists to take true country music back to the country. It has been a successful model that has resonated with farmers, ranchers, advertisers, and artists. We are excited to continue to build on what we have started.”
To do so, Adams has enlisted the kin of some legendary country music figures. In late July 2021, Whey Jennings, the grandson of iconic country outlaw Waylon Jennings, recorded Inside FarmLife’s new theme song, “That Farm Life,” at Hazzard County Studios in Luray, Virginia. The studio is owned by Ben Jones, who played Cooter Davenport on the television series “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
This fall, Adams also will welcome Singer/Songwriter John Paycheck, the son of country music great Johnny Paycheck, as the co-host of a series of artist Q&As and performances that will be taped in Nashville. Prior to the pandemic, those sessions were recorded at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.
Inside FarmLife will be back in Fall 2021 with a new musical sponsor and venue that pays homage to another Hall of Fame country music legend. An announcement about that arrangement is expected to be made in the coming weeks.
“I have been told by so many people that there is a tremendous opportunity here because we have a captive audience of farmers who spend long hours in the cab of a tractor, sprayer, or combine or have time alone in the barn, the shop, or a truck,” Adams said. “I create each show with those listeners in mind. I want to offer objective information, then education, then top it off with some amazing country music.”
The weekly radio version of Inside FarmLife is distributed every Thursday for weekend airing. It is available free of charge to radio stations nationwide via email distribution or FTP site. For more information, contact Brent Adams at brent.adams@farmlifemedia.com or phone (502) 410-8546.
