What Can I Learn From Farm Broadcasters?

For a long time, my daily lunch ritual was to take my sack lunch to my car and listen to the farm broadcast on our “boomer” station, WHO-AM.  I don’t really know how I got started on this, but it became a habit that I just really liked.

I’m not a farmer, and I don’t own land or livestock, so I don’t really have any skin in the game, so to speak.  I do have fond memories of my grandfather’s farm, and I did spend a good portion of my early professional life with a large agricultural concern doing research on silage production and animal nutrition.

I guess what I really like about the local farm broadcast is that you get to observe the market in real time, as it reacts to weather, and to the news and events of the day.  The broadcasters, if they are good professionals, will help you to understand the ins and outs of this dynamic marketplace, and how the food you are eating for lunch fits into the entire matrix of local, regional, national and world events.

Like most everything, technology has vastly influenced farm broadcasting and in the case of my own local station, it has been positive.  We now have podcasters doing features, we have multiple ways to receive the live broadcast including streaming audio, digital radio and regular over the air signals.

If you’ve never tuned in a farm broadcast because you’re not involved in agriculture, why not give it a try?  You don’t need to live in ag-land, you can “surf” to many ag broadcasters, including our local station at http://whoradio.com where you can click the “Listen Live” link at the top of the page from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM Central Time.  Alternately, you can also visit the site’s own dedicated farm show page, http://www.whofarm.com/, where you can read about the “Big Show”, as the daily farm broadcast is called.

If you are a regular ag listener, why not reply and let us all know which station and show are your favorite?