NAFB Blog

Patrick Cavanaugh (California Ag Today Radio Network, Clovis, CA) reports on the California water woes. “Throughout the vast farming areas of California’s  Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, intense concern and anxiety are growing over the lack of water for the critical irrigation of permanent crops such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios, tree fruit and citrus,” he said. Patrick speaks with farmers every day about what looks like a slow-moving crisis on the farm. California is in its fourth year of drought with the last two years being extremely tough on growers in many areas of California that depend on promised Federal surface water deliveries to their farms. Instead of flowing southward to help farms and cities, excess water is being diverted from the Sacramento Delta area to the Pacific Ocean to protect the Delta Smelt, a three-inch fish listed by the Endangered Species Act.

Katie Miller joined American Ag Network (Fargo, ND) in May 2013 as farm broadcaster working with Rusty Halvorson. “I’ve worked in commodities markets and brokerage for several years. In fact, I still own a market advisory service. Through that, I’d done several radio interviews and market commentaries, especially for Terry Loomis (KQLX, Fargo, ND).” In fact, when she took her job with American Ag Network, she was working in the same building as Terry’s studio.

Cody Glaser (KKOW, Pittsburg, KS) has been in radio for over six years and in that time, he’s done “a little bit of everything around the station jumping in and helping out wherever needed.” He explained, “I've been our production manager, traffic assistant, on-air personality, and now Ag Director.” In describing himself, he said, “I have a general love for broadcasting regardless of what the subject line may be…agriculture, news, music, or weather. I enjoy gathering and delivering the information that our listeners depend on.” He feels that nothing is more exciting than a listener calling to say, “Letting us know about that storm update really helped out,” or “Our farm depends on your market numbers every day. 

The Linder Farm Network began in 1976 with four Linder family-owned radio stations in Minnesota. Network Farm Director Lynn Ketelsen came in from KMA (Shenandoah, IA) radio to establish the initial farm programming and set up the network. Linda Brekke has been with the network for 16 years, and Jeff Stewart has been there for 18 years.

On February 1, 2014, Ken Rahjes launched agview.net as a way to have flexibility “to be there for his parents as they were going through some medical challenges,” but also to “take a leap” and focus on delivering agricultural and rural information to the "next" generation of production agriculture and those who have a real interest in rural issues.  In October 2014, Ken launched AgView Radio and currently has an expanding network of affiliates in Nebraska and Kansas, which carry daily programming that consists of three 2-minute ag business updates and three 2-minute market updates.