EDMONTON – For 50 years, Alberta farmers have sat down at the kitchen table, turned on their radios and eaten their lunch to Call of the Land.
Listening to the noon farm show has become as much a part of farm life as rain and wheat fields.
Host Jack Howell’s smooth voice has delivered the latest agriculture information for the past 33 years.
“I never thought when I got this job I’d stay in it, but it’s proved to be very satisfying,” said Howell from his radio room in the J.G. O’Donoghue Building, Alberta Agriculture’s office building.
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“I always had a love for radio,” said Howell who grew up on a farm at Dunblane, Sask.
While training in Ponoka, Alta., as an assistant district agriculturist, he saw an advertisement for the job while opening the mail for a vacationing secretary.
He got the job and became the 10th host in the program’s history.
Everett McCrimmon, the first Call of the Land host, said the program began in 1953 at the direction of then-agriculture minister David Ure.
McCrimmon said the story he was told about the program’s origin was that Ure “took a bit of heat” from farmers during a meeting because of the lack of communication from the department.
Ure decided if farmers weren’t getting the agricultural information they needed, the department would put together a program to deliver it.
The department pays radio stations to broadcast the farm show. The 10-minute segment is now a part of larger farm shows on many radio stations.
With little equipment, McCrimmon and a co-host crossed the province interviewing farmers, research station scientists and agriculture department staff on everything from fur farming to junior activities to livestock.
In a studio he described as not much bigger than a “good sized walk-in closet,” McCrimmon edited the interview recordings with scissors and tape. Two days worth of programs were put on a tape and flown around the province by Air Canada to the radio stations.
The program was first carried by six stations – CHAT Medicine Hat, CKRD Red Deer, CKUA Edmonton, CFCN Calgary, CFRN Edmonton and CFGP Grande Prairie.
The program has expanded to 20 stations in Alberta and two in British Columbia, at Dawson Creek and Fort St. John.
In an annual report of the radio and information branch in 1953, the program already showed signs of having a good rapport with its audience.
“While it is still relatively soon to obtain a good indication of listener response, there are definite indications that the program is being well received. Following one program, 12 letters were received by the person interviewed requesting further information,” said the report.
Much has changed over the years, even since Howell began as host. The program is no longer recorded on tape, but on computer. Broadcast News, the radio branch of the Canadian Press news service, delivers it by internet and satellite.
However, some of the topics remain the same, including transportation and farm income.
At one of Howell’s first meetings, he went to Lloydminster after Otto Lang, then federal minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, announced the LIFT program. The Lower Inventory For Tomorrow program paid farmers to take land out of production and was designed to add income to the farm.
In the past 10 years there has been a significant shift from production stories to value-added technology and information.
Howell remembers one story that lasted for years. He interviewed a fellow who said the government would pay farmers if they gave this fellow tires to turn into fences. He said the government was in the process of changing the legislation to allow the tire fences to qualify as recycling, but it didn’t.
A second interview was done with the tire recyclers correcting the story, but no one seemed to hear the second interview. Howell said people phoned for years after that, wanting to know the name of the guy with the tires.
Even though Alberta Agriculture pays for the program, Howell has freedom about who he interviews.
“I have a great degree of independence to do the stories we do. No one has ever told me, ‘don’t talk to this person or that person.’ “
The key may be that Howell doesn’t inject his opinion in the story.
“I pass on the opinions of other people.”
The value of the program to Alberta Agriculture was proven in 1994, the year of massive cuts to the province’s budget.
While entire parts of the department were eliminated, the farm show remained. As a concession, two 30-second breaks were added so the stations could sell commercial time and the department paid the stations less.
“There was never any communication to me during the cuts, when a lot of things were on the table, that this program was ever on the table,” Howell said. “I think it’s a pretty high priority for Alberta Agriculture.”
