Ag Needs More Media Attention

Editor:

Your editorial in the Oct. 31 issue “Calling for Communicators” was right on the mark.

I have operated and been involved in dairy farming all my life. One of the projects I became involved with after retiring from milking cows was farm promotion. For the past six years, I have hosted a weekly half-hour Orange County (New York) farm talk show on our local radio station, WTBQ. I had many good programs — some could have been better — but apparently I had many listeners.

Management decided to move my program to a different time slot in favor of a national syndicated talk show. I felt that I would lose most of my listeners from the 12:30-1 p.m. slot, so I decided to quit. That might have been a mistake, but what is the use in doing a show with few listeners? Apparently the station felt that agriculture wasn’t that important.

Our local newspapers have very few farming articles. Our farm papers and magazines do a great job, but the average non-farm consumers never see them. I truly believe educating the public and our legislators about farming is our biggest problem. We had a hearing locally about milk pricing put on by our New York State Task Force on Agriculture and Assemblywoman Annie Rabbit. We had an excellent turnout of farmers and related business people. This was never mentioned in our local news media.

The general public is really interested in farm activities, and we somehow have to get the message out. As farmers we would not hear about Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate farm activities without your articles.

Don’t slow up on Pennsylvania farm articles either. There are so few of us that we all have to work together. Lancaster Farming (the “Farmer’s Bible”) does a great job; keep up the good work.

— Bill Johnson
Goshen, N.Y.