American Farmer was a public affairs radio program featuring farm news and information of value to listeners in rural America.

It was heard on the ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 radio network from 1945 to 1963, airing on Saturdays and heard in a variety of timeslots on different ABC affiliates throughout the day. One of the contributors was Layne R. Beaty, as noted in his obituary by Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb in the Washington Post (May 28, 2007):

Layne R. Beaty, a pioneer in farm reporting who oversaw the U.S. Agriculture Department's radio and television broadcasts for more than 25 years, died May 11 at Collington Episcopal Life Care Community in Mitchellville. He had cutaneous lymphoma, complicated by congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 93. Mr. Beaty, who broadcast his first radio farm program in Oklahoma in the late 1930s, was chief of radio and television for the USDA from 1955 to 1980. He also edited a USDA newsletter distributed to farm broadcasters across the country; broadcast a live weekly report for five years on The National Farm and Home Hour

The National Farm and Home Hour

The National Farm and Home Hour was a variety show which was broadcast in various formats from 1928 to 1958. Aimed at listeners in rural America, it was known as "the farmer's bulletin board" and was produced by the United States Department of Agriculture with contributions from, and the...

on NBC radio when its Washington studios were in the old Sheraton Park Hotel; and was a regular contributor to ABC's American Farmer and CBS's Columbia's Country Journal...

Mr. Beaty played a key role in expanding the use of the media to reach farmers and others in rural areas. In their book, "The Broadcast Century and Beyond" (2005), authors Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith highlighted Mr. Beaty's early work in radio:

"It may be coincidence that the first use of 'broadcast' was agricultural, referring to the sowing of seeds," Mr. Beaty wrote in a first-person account in the book. "It is nonetheless fitting because in the early days of radio when rural people lived in varying degrees of isolation, radio became a link to the outside world and a live-in companion for farmers and their families."

A typical American Farmer program was described in the Portsmouth Times of Portsmouth, Ohio

Portsmouth, Ohio

Portsmouth is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Scioto County. The municipality is located on the northern banks of the Ohio River and east of the Scioto River in Southern Ohio. The population was 20,226 at the 2010 census.-Foundation:...

when it covered Saturday programming in its Friday "Tuning in the Airwaves" highlights for July 13, 1947. The column noted that "government experts will report on the status of the nation's corn crop" during the next day's broadcast of American Farmer.

External links

• The Papers of Layne R. Beaty