NAFB Blog

Greg Merick grew up in the small northwest Oklahoma town of Seiling. Greg’s parents and grandparents owned a farm with a small cattle operation, so Greg spent many hours working cattle, hauling hay, building fence, and living the normal farm life. After high school and a few jobs trying to figure out what he wanted as a career, he decided to do what he had always thought about doing, and that was to get into broadcasting. He went to American Broadcasting School in Oklahoma City, where he graduated in early 2002. That fall, he began his first broadcasting job in the small Alaska village of Galena as the sports director, news director, and operations manager. After a couple months there, he came back to Oklahoma City and went to work for iHeart Media’s KTOK/WKY radio.

Ty Higgins, formerly a farm broadcaster for the Ohio Ag Net, has made a move to the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation as its Director of Media Relations. “When the chance of working with such a trusted and well-respected organization like Ohio Farm Bureau comes, you take it,” Higgins says. “I am so glad I did. I have been involved in agriculture my entire life on both of my grandparents’ farms. Those farms no longer exist, but my love for farming and the deep desire to be a part of agriculture remains.”

Gabriel Osborn was born and raised in Coffeen, Illinois, only 15 miles from the station where he works today as agriculture director for WSMI AM & FM (Litchfield/Hillsboro, Illinois). Growing up in a small town of 650 people, farming was right outside the city limits. Both sides of his family come from farming backgrounds. Through his father’s side of the family, he is one generation removed from a six-generation, centennial family farm that was started sometime  in the late 1850s/early 1860s. The farm unfortunately became a victim of the farm crisis of the 1980s.

With no experience in radio but a love to share the news, Jessica Domel started her radio career on AM 1580 KWED (Seguin, Texas) in 2007. Initially, Jessica was a print production intern for the radio station’s newspaper, the Seguin Daily News, but a willingness to try radio and serve in different roles landed her a full-time job two days after her graduation from Texas Lutheran University. Her first experience on-air was memorable, to say the least. While co-hosting the station’s most popular weekly program, The Trading Post, the bracket holding the microphone broke, crashed onto the sound board, and scattered papers everywhere.

NAFB members covering the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 100th annual convention, held January 2019 in New Orleans, were treated to a ghost and vampire tour of the French Quarter by the Big Easy’s premiere vampire Lord Chaz. New Orleans boasts a colorful and often-tragic history. Tour participants heard of infamous murders, suicides, and other tragedies that have inspired such famous authors as Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Robert Lynn Aspirin.

Carey Martin (Voice of Louisiana Agriculture Radio Network) organized the two-hour tour on both Saturday and Sunday nights of the convention. The tour took broadcasters and Farm Bureau media staff through the streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter to explore many unsolved murders and haunted buildings on the original streets of the Crescent City.