Mick Kjar reports that the Ag Central Radio Network is on the air. This network covers North and South Dakota and adjacent areas of western Minnesota. “It’s a little different than your normal or traditional radio network. Yes, we do farm news; in fact, nine three-minute reports and nine 90-second reports daily,” he said. “But stations can carry these as they fit into their programming, and not at a regular ‘hit time’ as is usually done on a radio network.” Mick adds, “The same format for weather programming is offered, with five longer version weather analysis programs and hourly 30-second weather forecasts 24 hours a day, and again, stations air the weather programs when it fits into their programming.” Ag Central also offers hourly regional newscasts which air at six minutes past the hour and hourly ag market reports which air at 40 minutes past the hour.
NAFB Farm Directors for Ag Central are (right to left) Mick Kjar, Shawna Olson and Juli Mauch. Mick and Shawna, in addition to being NAFB Farm Directors, are also meteorologists. Ag Central is carried on more than 20 stations in the upper Midwest and growing. When launching the network at the end of May, Ag Central gave away a Honda Pioneer 4x4 side-by-side for use on the farm. A veteran broadcaster, Mick has been on radio in the Midwest for 43 years. From 1988 to 2015, he was host for Mick in the Morning on Valley News Live television in Fargo, ND, serving as their farm director and meteorologist for NBC and CBS affiliates in Fargo for 27 years. Mick says he got into weather forecasting to provide farmers with an accurate three-day forecast, but he’s still working on that. Since 2008, his show Farm Talk has been on Ag News 890 (KQLX, Lisbon, ND) and is now carried by a number of stations across North and South Dakota. Mick’s favorite things to do include woodworking and spending time in the garden growing vegetables and flowers and going to farm shows to visit with farmers and agri-business companies. Raised on a beef cattle and grain farm in the Sheyenne Valley grasslands of southeast North Dakota, Mick spent his youth growing up around cows and corn. Although farming has always been a part of his life, listening to the tractor radio while cultivating corn on a tractor with a steel seat got Mick interested in a career in broadcasting. After graduating from Wyndmere, ND, high school in 1968 and a few years at Concordia College and North Dakota State University, he headed off to radio school in 1972 and has been on the radio since then.
