(NASHVILLE, TN) — First off, I just want to say how honored and excited I am to take over the host chair for Agriculture of America. It is an opportunity that I, quite frankly, didn’t think I’d ever end up with when I started in farm broadcasting. Growing up around farming and ranching in a town of 100 or so people, I knew a fair amount about agriculture. However, my first year or two as a farm broadcaster came with many growing pains.

My first day on the air, I remember reading the livestock markets and I confidently read the abbreviations CWT as “counterweight” and not “hundredweight”. As soon as I signed off I got a polite call from a farmer down the road who explained my error to me. So much for thinking I had a perfect first day……HA!

But, over the years, I recovered from early snafu’s like that and learned so much more about this industry than I every dreamed I could. And I learned to love telling the story of America’s farmers and ranchers so much that I’ve stuck with it some ten years later.

This is an important time for agriculture in my opinion.

We have a new five year Farm Bill being written as we speak in Washington D.C. along with discussions surrounding checkoff programs, a re-write of WOTUS, on-going talk around the RFS and SAF, the challenges globally with the Russia/Ukraine war, Prop 12 implementation, dairy market reforms; the list goes on and on as to the many issues we are facing and talking about across agriculture.

It is my job to have those discussions on AOA and do my best to keep you, our farmers and ranchers, informed. I also hope that I can keep the general public informed about all of the good that farmers and ranchers do across the country. When that microphone turns on each weekday, I promise to do my best to keep the great tradition of this program alive.

A big thank you to both Mike Adams and Mike Pearson; two excellent farm broadcasters and two men who have become my friends over the years. They have laid the groundwork for this program along with Lance Kundson, Breck Von Bank and the team at the American Ag Radio Network. I’m thankful for the opportunity to keep telling the story of agriculture.

We’ll keep that conversation going starting on Monday morning. -JA