NAFB Blog

Gary Truitt (Hoosier Ag Today Network, Zionsville, IN) spent much of August at the Indiana State Fair, but this is not unusual, he has been doing it for the past 31 years.  Founder of the statewide radio network Hoosier Ag Today, Gary attended his first State Fair in 1985. "I was in a trailer parked just outside the swine barn doing my broadcasting over a telephone line," he remembers. “This was before satellites and the Internet so there was literally a copper wire that ran to almost every radio station in the state that carried my live reports.” Today, Gary and his team of HAT reporters use wireless technology to produce and distribute digital audio reports to their network. He’s been an eyewitness to the transformation of the fair over the past three decades.

The United Soybean Board (USB) completed its annual summer See for Yourself trade mission to China, which for the first time also included Vietnam. Ten soybean growers from around the country were joined by three USB board members and USB staff along with two ag media representatives, a print journalist and STARadio Farm Director Jim Dewey (WTAD, Quincy, IL). The trip began with a visit to a DuPont facility in St. Louis, MO, on July 30. The group departed the next morning on an early flight to Chicago followed by a 14-hour non-stop trip to Shanghai, China. The Shanghai visit included a trip to a fish farm and a visit from the Deputy Director of the U. S. Consulate Agriculture Trade Office in Shanghai, Zach Henderson. 

Tom Donley is a product of Adams County, IL, where he graduated from Unity High School in Mendon. He is studying journalism at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Tom worked with Jim Dewey (WTAD, Quincy, IL) for a couple of weeks during the winter semester break and returned as an intern this summer. “All summer long I have been prepping Tom to cover for me while I traveled to Asia with the United Soybean Board See for Yourself tour.

She began her duties August 31. “Carah will be a huge asset to the Red River Farm Network (RRFN). She is an excellent farm broadcaster and will be a wonderful addition to our organization,” said Mike Hergert, RRFN President, who served as NAFB President in 2001. Carah joins Mike, Don Wick and Randy Koenen.

Making pottery is a favorite hobby for North Carolina farm broadcaster Rhonda Garrison (Southern Farm Network, Raleigh, NC). “For as long as I can remember I’d wanted to learn to make pottery, but had little opportunity or time while living in the Texas Panhandle,” Rhonda said. In the summer of 2007 she moved to North Carolina with three dogs, and only one family member east of the Mississippi so, she said, “I finally had lots of time, and little did I know that I’d moved to the epicenter of handmade pottery on the East Coast!” She explains how she got started. “In the fall of 2008 I took my first class that involved throwing clay on a potter’s wheel at a city-owned art studio, and about the best I could do was throw a fit.