Farm Broadcaster Todd Gleason was honored in April by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for his service to agriculture and to the college. Each year, the College of ACES recognizes the remarkable accomplishments of its alumni through four awards. Gleason, a farm broadcaster for Illinois Public Media and Illinois Extension, and other award recipients were honored with the 2026 ACES Alumni Award of Merit at the college’s Alumni Awards Gala on April 13.
The ACES Alumni Award of Merit recognizes alumni with an outstanding record of personal and professional accomplishments, extraordinary humanitarian contributions, and a history of serving the college.
Gleason earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural communications in 1986. He has been broadcasting from the University of Illinois campus across five decades. Gleason’s work has always been in the public sector and in the service of agriculture. He joined Illinois Public Media in 1989 as a full-time ag reporter, transitioned to producing University of Illinois Extension’s Illini Farm Report in 1994, and has hosted WILL AM–580’s Closing Market Report and Commodity Week programs since July 2003. In 2005, Gleason expanded his reach by launching podcasts for the Closing Market Report and Commodity Week. These broadcasts are now highly regarded across the Midwest and serve as a staple for market news, weather, and research-based information.
Beyond his daily broadcasts, Gleason is an integral part of the university’s farmdoc team, hosting webinars and the in-person Illinois Farm Economics Summits. He and the late Charles Lindy co-founded Illinois Public Media’s All Day Ag Outlook meeting for the region’s farmers in 1991, earning them a Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Award for public engagement that first year. Gleason furthered this outreach by creating the Farm Assets Conference in 2014. Both are still running. He also served as the emcee for the Extension crop sciences team’s Corn and Soybean Classic series for all 17 years of its run.
The Award of Merit also highlights Gleason’s lifelong commitment to public service and humanitarian efforts. He served as a board member for the Eastern Illinois Food Bank for five years, and has been a committee member with the Cunningham Children’s Home, the American Red Cross, and United Way of Champaign County. For more than a decade, he also served as a key committee member and kick-off emcee for the University of Illinois Campus Charitable Fund Drive which raises more than $1.3 million annually.
In his personal life, Gleason’s mentorship has had a profound impact. He has worked closely with Cesar Delgado, NAFB broadcaster member with cerebral palsy who is non-communicative without a voice assistant. Together, they utilized an iPad and audio editing software so Delgado could achieve his dream of becoming a farm broadcaster and a non-commercial member of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting. Within his hometown of Mahomet, Gleason has managed the website for his son’s baseball team, served as a lector and congregation president for Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, and spent personal time photographing hundreds of local youth athletes, making the images freely available to their families.
