Farm Radio

In the late 1980s I did projects for a firm that sold national spot advertising on thousands of radio stations across the United States. The firm’s salespeople would call on media buyers to pitch stations they represented for campaigns for which radio was a part of the advertising plan.

Of course, radio advertising was, even then, a decreasing share of advertising campaigns. So the firm created another sales force to call on media planners, agency client account executives and even advertiser marketing directors to sell the idea that radio was a viable part of the marketing mix.

One part of this effort was farm radio. I was asked to help the national farm radio rep. “Farm radio?” I was completely clueless.

“Farm radio,” Lloyd explained in his West Texas drawl, “is what the farmer wakes up to at 4:00 a.m.. It’s what he listens to on his tractor radio at 4:30-5:00. It’s what’s playing for 15 minutes at 11:15 when he comes in for lunch and at 5:45 when he’s washing up for dinner. The programming is mostly local crop market prices and weather, but there’s an occasional news piece if a supplier has a new product or there’s a bill in the legislature that affects farmers.”

Farm radio was a part of the programming of radio stations of all formats country, rock, news talk, but it was definitely the “red-headed stepchild” department. Programming and on-air were usually given to the most junior person or the one who should have retired ten years ago.

Problem was farm radio was starting to attract big advertising dollars. Equipment makers like John Deere, big seed companies, big fertilizer companies, banks and investment firms were discovering that farmers didn’t read magazines or watch TV, but they did listen to farm radio.

Lloyd’s idea was to document farmers’ media use and to improve the quality of farm programming, with a “weekly fax newsletter” that  on-air “talent” could just read.

My engagement was to research farmer media usage  and then to help Lloyd and his tech guy Emmet, set up the infrastructure for a weekly broadcast fax.

Talking to Farmers

This was classic market research. We did some interviews and sent a survey. We built an interview and mailing list getting names and addresses from the radio stations, (yeah, snail mail – it was the 80s) and sent a survey. We did some telephone interviews, but quickly learned that getting a farmer on the telephone (pre- wide-spread adoption of cell phones) was hard. I could however make an appointment with a farmer’s wife and drive out to see him. The farmers I talked to were mostly men, but not all.

The interviews were tough to schedule. The ones we got were often because of relationships at the radio station. They were fascinating. I had one sixtyish guy take me under his wing early on.

“Ya know, a farmer isn’t a farmer. We’re all different. First a farmer is defined by his crop. A corn farmer is different from a soybean farmer, uses different equipment to plow, fertilize and pick. Cotton farmer? Man those guys have it rough. Weevils come along and completely wipe you out before you can turn around. You can pick cotton by machine now, but still the best way is by hand and that is hard work. Course most family farmers like me learned to rotate crops, have a field fallow, but the corporations don’t really do that.

Next a farmer is defined by his land. Some soil is easy, some ain’t. Sometimes wind blows your topsoil and fertilizer away, no matter what trees you plant as a windbreak. A hill farmer’s different than a valley farmer, A river bottom farmer? That guy’s a gambler. He plants in the best soil there is, but one in three years gets washed away ‘cause he farms a flood plain. The good years he has the best yield and when he’s flush you see ‘im in Vegas, Bad years he’s always optimistic. ‘Next year,’ he says.”

For anyone who grew up on a farm this information would have been old news, but this forty something year-old suburban kid drunk it in. I used it to shape survey questions.

I did interviews in Texas, Mississippi, California’s central valley, central Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana. I came to understand just what a tough business farming is. Your product is dependent on the weather avoiding insect pests and bacteria and fungi. It is hard all-consuming work and even if you do everything right there is no predicting market prices. If you had a great yield year and everyone else did too, market price is down and you barely break even.

A Farmer’s Time

One of the last interviews I did was recommended by a Chicago radio station manager. The farmer grew multiple crops and had been quite outspoken about “getting chemical ads of television.” It seems like the fertilizer and pesticide companies were running 60 second TV spots in prime time on Chicago stations hoping to reach Illinois farmers. Unfortunately the “pounds in the ground” visuals were reaching a lot of other people too and his work was being interrupted by newsmen and environment protesters. He was an advocate for using radio to reach farmers.

“No farmer I know has time to watch sitcoms, so they’re not reaching buyers and the pictures they show are from huge corporate farms with little regard for the land. So why do I have to spend time explaining that to the media and these kids who come to my farm carrying signs.”

From the point of view of our research these quotes were pure gold. I did feel a little bad for him. He had a big family farm, passed to him from his father. His brothers weren’t interested in farming. Of his kids, only his daughter was interested. They had a crew and hired seasonable labor. His wife worked on the farm too and she arranged the interview. Seemed like they worked all the time.

“Bill will only have twenty minutes to talk with you and you’ll have to break it off because once he starts talking he can’t shut himself up. He’s in the barn. Remember -twenty minutes.” I assured her I would shut down after twenty minutes.

After about fifteen minutes, a blue pickup truck with an orange “I” on the door screeched up outside the barn.

Bills said something under his breath that may have been a cussword. He didn’t look happy.

A twenty-something in a white checked short-sleeve shirt and freshly pressed chinos bounded from the truck carrying a big manilla envelope and a clipboard.

“Hope this is still a good time, Bill.” said the young man eagerly looking at me.

“Did you clear it with, Marge, Andy. I’m pretty sure I asked you to clear your visits with Marge..”

“Well. . . no. Actually you said you’d be available today and I drove up here from Urbana. We were  gonna talk about what we been working on at the Extension. We were  gonna talk about some new methods.”

“New Methods? Bill exploded. “Son, I can’t talk to you about new methods. I’m only farmin’ Half as well as I know how NOW.”

By this time Marge had arrived to shepherd the university ag. extension worker back to the house. Bill and I finished up with pleasantries and my promise to send him any of his quotes before we used them. I don’t know if Bill found time to talk to Andy that day or if Marge scheduled him for another time, but I often thought of this conversation when I worked on continuous improvement (CI) initiatives.

Time to Improve

Leaders and the consultants who sell continuous improvement  projects are often a little like Andy, fresh-faced true believers in a new and better way of doing things. These leaders and consultants often look at a long time horizon in planning change.

“By this time next year we’ll be able to take twenty percent of waste from the system.” It’ll save everyone time so we can focus on some new things.”

Further exacerbating the problem, leaders often pick their “go-to” people to start learning new methodology. These people are always the recipients of new tasks because they are hyper-conscientious and “find a way to get it done.” In organizations like these you often hear the cliché “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

As a consultant I heard reactions like Bill’s, “I don’t have time to improve,” frequently. I advised leaders to take on time saving work first. One exercise we used CI teams addressed this issue directly. Collectively they listed current workload and categorized responsibilities.

• Tasks we can stop doing – (even temporarily).
• Tasks we can reassign or delegate.
• Time-suck processes where if we took out waste it might free up time.

Some leaders resisted. They wanted to work on improving “big stuff” first. Often their “go-to people” understood and convinced them to free up time to improve.

Now if I can only apply this disciple to my own to-do list.