Episode: 36
Owen Roberts
In this week’s episode, hosts Toban Dyck and Jay Whetter discuss the intersection of agricultural journalism and extension with Owen Roberts, senior advisor of strategic communications at Grain Farmers of Ontario. The conversation explores how strategic communications can be leveraged to modernize and strengthen Canada’s agricultural knowledge networks.
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Transcript
Toban Dyck 00:03
This is The Extensionists. Conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck and I’m Jay winner.
Jay Whetter 00:14
Hey, Toban.
Toban Dyck 00:15
Hey, Jay. Did you want to sit in there for a second?
Jay Whetter 00:17
Did you want to say hey this time? Because I know sometimes you wish that I wouldn’t say, hey first all the time.
Toban Dyck 00:27
Thank you for hearing me, Jay. I’m good, I’m good, I’m good. Well, maybe next time.
Toban Dyck 00:33
Maybe next time.
Jay Whetter 00:34
Are you? Oh, you have I’m the treasurer of the Manitoba farm, writers and Broadcasters Association. You haven’t paid your 2026 dues yet. And while
Jay Whetter 00:42
This is a great time to bring it up,
Jay Whetter 00:44
I’m bringing it up because our next guest is a real kingpin in Farm Writers.
Jay Whetter 00:50
You I think you’re bringing it up so that you know burr forest groups project manager will hear it and make sure that it’s an Asana task for me to complete.
Toban Dyck 01:01
And while you’re paying for your something Ashley would really appreciate, actually, go ahead, while you’re paying for your membership, you’re also paying for Abby. I mean, and if I’m paying for Abby’s and I should be paying for like, you know,
Jay Whetter 01:13
well, you could pay for Ashley, except Ashley already paid for her.
Toban Dyck 01:16
That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess Michelle McMullen could do the Alberta Farm writers.
Jay Whetter 01:21
But I’m on the Manitoba one side. You don’t really care about
Toban Dyck 01:25
Good points.
Jay Whetter 01:27
Anyway. Owen Roberts, who is going to be our guest today. I first met him, probably very early in my career when I used to go to Farm Writers’ events, because he was involved with Ontario and Canada and international. He’s been, I mean, we’re not going to talk about farm writers all the time on this call, but Owen is, he’s been a big part of Farm Writers in Canada and internationally for a long, long time. You’ve met him a number of times.
Toban Dyck 01:53
I have, for sure, for sure. I’m trying to think the first time I met him, it’s, yeah, it’s going back a number of years, but certainly remember him from the farm. Yeah, the farm murders events and and playing with bass or guitar GMO,
Jay Whetter 02:06
He’s lead guitar and singer, yeah, now with GMO, but he right. He was a bass player. Yeah. Was he with? Okay, well, no, but this is what he when he was in university, he thought he’d just be bass player in some band, yeah, yeah. And then this job fell in his lap and I did it.
Toban Dyck 02:23
So there’s for people who can’t see, there’s a guitar just to just off screen. I actually thought about, should we have the guitar sitting here between us on the couch? Like, it should be like, like, like, like, cool dudes. Yeah, that’s what cool dudes would do.
Jay Whetter 02:38
Ohman. I think just the fact that we’re having that conversation would
Toban Dyck 02:45
Really puts us in the mix.
02:48
Cool dude. Mix
Toban Dyck 02:52
Really sells it.
Jay Whetter 02:55
Well, those guys are really cool. Well, should we set that up? Then should do it? Let’s do it. Okay, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna get on with the conversation with Owen. And before Owen shows up, which will be in a minute, you’re gonna get out your guitar and put it between, yeah, maybe I have enough time to also play my dues. Do you
Jay Whetter 03:10
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Toban Dyck 03:29
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Jay Whetter 03:42
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Toban Dyck 03:50
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Toban Dyck 04:11
So we’re hoping you notice a guitar here.
Toban Dyck 04:13
Yeah, let’s just, let’s the elephant in the room.
Toban Dyck 04:17
That’s right. Abby told us not to. I said, I’m going to put my guitar up here. And Abby’s like, as your producer, I’m going to vote no. You shouldn’t put it on you shouldn’t put it on the couch.
Owen Roberts 04:26
But that’s a pretty slick looking guitar. You sure you want people to know that, like, You’re that accomplished a guitar player, this whole extent extension thing might just go by the wayside, and you’re going to be on the road with that thing.
Toban Dyck 04:41
He says, dripping with sarcasm.
Owen Roberts 04:41
I’ve never heard you play yet, so that’s I’m gonna give you the benefit of the day. You can’t see the dust on it, so that’salso good.
Jay Whetter 04:45
All right, we will get into music shortly, but I just have to do a quick intro. So, our guest today is Owen Roberts, and so I’m kind of surprised by this title. Little one, but you’ve had a lot of jobs in your life, but this is the latest one, Senior Advisor of strategic communications for grain farmers of Ontario, which checks a lot of boxes for you, because senior advisor in communication, sounds about perfect. You’ve had a big, long career in agriculture communications, but which we will get to, but I think we need to go right back to the music. Because when you were in university, I think you thought you might be a bass player in a country band. You didn’t think you’re going to be have a 40 year career as an ag communicator. So, why did you want to be a musician in a country band?
Owen Roberts 05:39
Because it paid really well.
Toban Dyck 05:42
Is that right?
Owen Roberts 05:42
Well, university, I mean, anything pays well, I suppose in university at least, at least back then, but yeah, you know, bars, country bands were playing in bars, and bars were hiring musicians, hiring bands, three nights a week. So I’d be playing Thursday, Friday and Saturday often, and, you know, I’d get, like, I’d have 50 bucks at the end of the weekend.
Jay Whetter 06:07
Yeah, so it did pay. Well, well, well, I
Owen Roberts 06:12
Little bit more than that. But anyway, I was music. I was always kind of my avocation, and this was where I was raised, down near, down near Chatham in Ontario. Very, very active music scene, very active bar scene. And so there was all kinds of places to play. And that was, that was one of the that was how I got through university. Actually, was playing, playing bass in bands. So that it went from, went from a country band to a disco band.
Owen Roberts 06:41
Oh, nice. You can understand why. I’m sure.
Jay Whetter 06:44
Were you dressed appropriately? I want to see the pictures of you and your white unit not unitard.
Toban Dyck 06:51
Are you thinking like, like a BeeGees, yeah. BeeGees kind of look.
Owen Roberts 06:54
He’s kind of like, yeah, you guys are so out of touch. We had leisure suits.
Toban Dyck 06:59
Oh yes, I definitely want to see the photos now.
Owen Roberts 07:03
Yeah, I think they’re all destroyed.
Jay Whetter 07:05
Did you have was it adorned in any way with some sequins or stitching?
Owen Roberts 07:11
No match, matching leisure suits and shirts, you know? But, but we had two sets like what, you know, we were we were classy. We had two sets of leisure suits.
Jay Whetter 07:19
So, and did you change it at the intermission? Or did like he came out with the second set with a full,
Owen Roberts 07:24
Oh no, that was for different gigs. You know, you didn’t want to show up, you know, say different bars of the same leisure suit.
Jay Whetter 07:33
We’re a high class here. We have various leisure suits. Amen.
Toban Dyck 07:36
Our producer is telling me to pull the guitar away. So I’m going to pull the guitar away and not play it, but out of shot.
Jay Whetter 07:42
But we could, okay, we could use music as a tool for extension. I’m sure we’ll segue back to that eventually.
Owen Roberts 07:48
Well, a lot of, a lot of music stars do now, right? Like, if you consider extension, the dissemination of information, and what they consider to be information, which is usually a political position, that’s, you know, they’re using extension now for music, as musicians are using.
Jay Whetter 08:04
We just need to, we just need to figure out how to do agriculture extension.
Toban Dyck 08:08
Well, we talked, like dilge, from one of our guests, talked about songwriting or comedy is extension. So we’ve, we, should we? Should
Jay Whetter 08:17
Have you ever written a song about agriculture extension?
Toban Dyck 08:20
Oh, yeah, I feel like you’d be great at that. Owen.
Owen Roberts 08:23
Thanks very much. We, so, my band, the GMOs. We wrote, we were in a song writing competition for I think the 25th anniversary of the Outdoor Farm Show might have been the 20th, and the Outdoor Farm Show in Ontario held a song writing competition, and we came in second.
Jay Whetter 08:45
Right on.
Owen Roberts 08:45
Yeah
Jay Whetter 08:46
Can you sing us a line. So like, Do you remember any of it?
Owen Roberts 08:50
It was called over 30 million served, and it was about the way farmers provide food for the country for at that time. That tells you how old it was, because that’s when the population of Canada was 30 million, right, right? And that’s what it was all about. And yeah, we were pretty we played, we played that song a lot during the during that particular era,
Toban Dyck 09:14
I was gonna ask if you, if you played it, yeah, that’s awesome.
Jay Whetter 09:17
Did you record it? Can we find it on Spotify?
Owen Roberts 09:21
Yes, I think you can. It was also recorded the GMOs, recorded under our drummer’s name, Len Kahn. And we recorded a album called Friends of Len. And it was, it was serious topic, you guys.
Toban Dyck 09:39
Sorry, I know Len so that’s why I’m laughing.
Owen Roberts 09:42
Yeah, I know. I know. Anyway, if you ever see the it’s on Spotify, and it’s not all GMOs material, but there are certainly some GMOs CDs out there, and therefore some music electronically available.
Jay Whetter 09:58
Okay, right on, yeah. Well. We will be looking for that, for sure, Mitchells Bay. I had to look up what where that was, because I’d never heard of it before.
Toban Dyck 10:05
Why are you bringing it? Mitchell’s Bay?
Jay Whetter 10:07
Because that’s where Owen is from. Okay, yeah, yeah, it’s tiny, Yeah, but you’re not far from Windsor, which is where you ended up going to university, which is kind of like me I grew up. I went to Brandon University, which was basically the university in my own backyard, which is sort of, sort of what Windsor was like for you, so but, but, tell me about Mitchell’s Bay being so, so small,
Owen Roberts 10:08
Yeah, well, Mitchell’s Bay is really in it’s, it’s one of those communities, small rural communities in Kent County, which is agricultural hotspot, as you, you probably know, in Ontario and southwestern Ontario. And my dad was a Conservation Officer, and my mother was a nurse, and so we weren’t we weren’t farmers, but there was farms all around us, and I worked on farms, mostly, mostly crop farms, mostly hoeing beans and hoeing sugar beets at the time, and just kind of doing general farm labour in my before I got this job in the country band and and so Mitchell’s Bay was a real, it was a, it’s, it’s a hot spot John Wayne and Ted Nugent and all kinds of people used to come up there hunting and fishing. Yeah. It’s a really, it’s a real hot spot for outdoors people. So, my so, my dad was very active there as a Conservation Officer.
Jay Whetter 10:13
Oh, yeah. Wouldn’t it be great if he gave John Wayne or ticket or at his noodge bow?
Owen Roberts 10:13
Yeah, yeah, no, he kind of stayed away from those guys, I think.
Toban Dyck 10:13
But smart.
Owen Roberts 11:00
But yeah, anyway, it’s, it’s a real it’s such a great mix there of agriculture and recreation being right on Lake St. Clair. Mitchell’s Bay is on Lake St. Clair. And you know, Lake St Clair, in Lake Erie, all that area in there. It’s just such a, such a great, great area for the soil is fantastic, and the weather is nice and the water is great. It was, it was a great place to grow up. Then I went to high school in Wallaceburg. Actually, I don’t know if you know where Wallaceburg is, but, but anyway, it’s about 10 miles away, about 10 miles away. Yeah, kilometers 1513, kilometers away.
Jay Whetter 12:19
And so the closest, you know, I’ve never been to Kent Essex for all the amazing agriculture going on down there, including all the greenhouses, the closest I’ve been is Peter Gradix farm at St. Thomas area.
Jay Whetter 12:32
Okay, so Peter, lucky you. Lucky you. The Canadian Farm Writers, our Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation is having its annual meeting this year in London. Now that’s, that’s, that’s still about a couple of hours away from Mitchell’s Bay, but it’s the perimeters of Kent County would be not too far away from London, maybe, maybe half hour or so. So there’s your big chance to visit my chance, right? And guess and guess who’s playing that night at the closing.
Owen Roberts 13:11
Let me finish.
Toban Dyck 13:16
So excited, so excited.
Jay Whetter 13:18
I think I can guess who is playing.
Toban Dyck 13:20
Yeah, yeah.
Owen Roberts 13:21
The GMOs are playing for the for the closing night of the conference. So there you go. There’s all kinds of reasons, besides the great extension that’s going to be happening at the Farm Writers’ Conference, it’s all kinds of reasons to come there.
Toban Dyck 13:34
So who’s in the GMOs right now? Who’s the current
Owen Roberts 13:37
So, the GMOs so, so Len and I have been in the GMOs since kind of day one. This is our 26th anniversary. By the way, 26th year anniversary, one of my former students, Joey Joey sablish, is our bass player, and we have a harmonica player, keyboard player. His name is Matt GaNS. Some people in agriculture may know him. He’s he’s been in ag chemical sales for long time, and that’s our current lineup.
Toban Dyck 14:11
I didn’t know Len still played. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Owen Roberts 14:13
Len still plays and and we think it’s so cool. And actually, Joey works for Len now. And we think it’s so cool that one of our Joey used to be at our roadie. We needed a guy with a strong back, and Joey was the guy because he was one of my students at the time. And so he became our roadie. And then it turns out he’s also a fantastic musician. So he is, he’s been, he’s been a GMO now for, oh boy, probably over 10 years.
Toban Dyck 14:40
Oh, that’s awesome, yeah.
Jay Whetter 14:41
So the mean, oh, and I’ve known you for 20 some years, maybe since, maybe 26 years. Maybe I saw your first ever concert. But because, because you’ve been playing,
Owen Roberts 14:53
Was that you there? There was someone there, yeah, maybe it was you
Jay Whetter 14:58
the guy dancing by himself. Two stepping by himself right two feet in front of the stage, and I stumbled a couple of times. But okay, I reckon I enjoyed it. No, but you’ve been, you’ve been playing at Farm writers events for a lot of years, and so I would see you almost on an annual basis at those events.
Owen Roberts 15:18
Well, the really neat thing about there’s something about musicians and journalism, and maybe extension that there are so many good musicians in journalism capacities across Canada. And the whole idea about playing at Farm writers events was we, mostly people still call us the GMOs, but we weren’t. It was me and maybe one other GMO, but we would also, we would all always put together, often put together a band from various musicians and in the different provinces. Yeah, and it was, it was a pretty it’s a pretty neat experience. You know, there’s about 40, 5060, songs that every band knows and every musician knows. So you can come together and agree on a key, and away you go, and you can pretty well put together a night, a night of music.
Toban Dyck 16:09
Did you? Did you grow up with music? What was, what did that look like for you?
Owen Roberts 16:13
Yeah, I did. I’m from that Beatles era, as you can maybe tell. I’m from that era, and I was bitten like everybody else and and kind of started out playing, but a good friend in high school who really inspired me, he was, he was a keyboard player, and he said, I guess we’re in grade seven. He said, you know, all the cool people are in a band, so we have to get a band together. And I said, Well, I really can’t play anything. He says, we’ll find you something to play. So, I started out playing bass guitar because it only had four strings instead of six, yeah. And stuck with it. And, that’s, that’s kind of where it began for me.
Toban Dyck 16:54
Oh, that’s amazing. I mean, we want to go to communications, and I think there’s an easy segue from from music. I mean, I and the question is, like, you’re, you’re playing with GMOs, you are coordinating people from different provinces, musicians. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re you’re being you’re in front of an audience, or engaging an audience. I’m guessing that the two aren’t totally mutually exclusive, right? Like they have you, have you found kind of a connection between, between that performance and music and communications? Extension?
Toban Dyck 17:29
Yeah, there’s nothing for a musician. There’s nothing like playing in a band, because there’s all kinds of nonverbal communication cues that go on in a band, and there’s that, I’ll give a nod to my friend Rob Hannam, who was also a GMO for a while. There’s that synthesis of yeah, of activity that goes on, and like I said, so much of it is unspoken, but there’s, there’s a kind of a magic and I know that’s hack a Hackney term, but there really is, when you’re playing with other musicians, everybody’s doing their thing, and yet it all comes together in a song. And it’s it, it’s really, it’s really something that, you know, I when I lived out in Western Canada, I played as a single for a lot of years, and that’s very gratifying, too, because you get a very close relationship with the audience. And that’s a real communication initiative there, speaking to people in a bar who are in there listening to you pretty, pretty closely, but what you’re playing so, yeah, there’s definitely a communication connection there. I think the connection in, I don’t know if it’s really an extension connection, but it’s certainly a communication connection between ag, journalists across Canada and ag communicators. You know, Canada has one of the strongest ag, ag, journalism and communication networks of any country.
Toban Dyck 18:57
Is that true?
Owen Roberts 18:57
Yeah, it is true. And it’s, it’s one that people in some other countries have kind of emulated, as far as our conference goes, like the way we set up the annual conference. But it’s also, it’s also one that really requires a lot of effort to maintain, and people obviously think it’s worthwhile, when you look at the size of our country compared to a lot of other countries that are part of the International Federation of ag journalists, of which Canada is is a member. You know, now it’s a lot easier with social media and electronic communications and such. But back in the day when the whole Federation, and the whole Canadian Federation was was founded, which is what 70ish years ago. It wasn’t that easy, and it was it really took determination, but people obviously thought it was worthwhile to to launch and to maintain
Jay Whetter 19:56
So you mean you referenced international or Canada being an example to the international world of agriculture communications. And I know you’ve been involved with Canadian farm writers, but also heavily involved in international now forum for agricultural journalists. So, what I mean, what the international experience? And maybe to build on your your comment about Canada, like, what is the what is the key communication lesson you’ve learned from the international experience when it comes to communicating agriculture ideas,
Owen Roberts 20:29
I think maintaining activity is a key. And this whole idea of a federation of agricultural journalists who can learn from each other, share ideas. Share just be, be,have a connection. Because, given the particular country, one reason I joined the farm writers and on to the International Federation was because Canada is such a export intensive country, and I figured my stories will really benefit if I have sources in a country that we’re exporting to, where we want to export to, and I can say, you know, here’s, here’s what’s, here’s what’s coming down the pipe. What you know, who can I talk to in your country who will bean industry that might be processing some of the commodities that are being shipped from Canada or vice versa, if you’re shipping something to us Country X, tell us about, you know, tell us about your production practices. Tell us about your export initiatives tell us something that readers, listeners and viewers would benefit from, from your country, which, which may be a given to them, but you know, would be news to us. And so I’ve always thought that was an important reason why journalists in an exporting or an importing country, I guess we’re both should, should be connected globally.
Toban Dyck 22:04
You spent some time in the in the States, as you know, recently, and you you have international experience anyway. Like, what does that extension landscape look like? Kind of a global to a Canadian perspective? Yeah, you don’t mind?
Owen Roberts 22:22
Yeah, well, I would say it’s different in the US than pretty well anywhere. And the US has had the it was fortunate way back when to have a have a vision for how Extension should be. Should come out of universities should be at a higher should be at a high level. And this was a result of creating what we’re called land grant universities. And Land Grant Universities, there’s a dozen or so of them in the US, maybe a little bit little bit more, but anyway, they have a certain mandate to provide agricultural education, communications, leadership in their particular state. And so extension evolved from this and is very much entrenched at universities, at certain universities, land grant universities in the US and and not not an extension, very broadly, extension involving rural communities, food and regular commodities, as well regular as in traditional commodities, I guess. But, but these, these universities, have departments of extension. And when I was at the University of Illinois, my office was, was in the the extension unit of that university.
Jay Whetter 24:00
Were there, were there things that they were doing extension wise, that you found different or recognized as particularly effective, like, what? What did you learn in that Illinois experience that we should be using more of?
Owen Roberts 24:18
Well, I learned that. I guess it was reinforced that small group communication is still really where it’s at. The Illinois Extension folks spend a lot of time connecting with their communities, not necessarily on one to one basis, but they do all kinds of workshops, and they will, they’ll be in the communities that they’re responsible for, and they’ve got it very well segmented the communities they’re responsible for, and go in there with a list of topics that, you know, they plan throughout the year, but very well orchestrated and a lot of communication to. To people, they consider their stakeholders, which are not not just farmers, but also rural people, but also urban people. Illinois has a lot of just like Canada has a big rural population, that is in small towns as well, and they’ll make a concerted effort. They, as in the extension departments, will make a concerted effort to be into those small towns or be part of those small towns, be active in the media in those towns, to make sure that the residents in that area, in those areas, know that there are events that they would be helpful if they came out to.
Jay Whetter 25:42
So, you said that they planned in advance, kind of what they wanted to talk about for the year. So what was that like as a sort of step one for extension for the year? What was that planning session like? You remember,
Owen Roberts 25:56
I honestly didn’t take part in any of them. I saw the outcomes of them, and the outcomes would be, you know, they would take the pulse of the community, what are you interested in, or what are the priorities? But they would also be forecasting, given their own knowledge about what’s hot, what what is topical, what people should know about, as well as what they want to know about. And put together workshops like the like those, they would also do, I’m just mentioning workshops because it’s one element of what they do. But they would, they would also do, you know, kind of the traditional newsletters and media outreach that that we know extension to, to be a foundation of.
Jay Whetter 26:38
But I like the that you mentioned, of the small groups and getting out into the countryside, because I think we look at social media and even like print media and radio, they’re they’re somewhat distant and maybe less effective. I mean, it’s not practical for an extension person to talk with every farmer, but, but this, these small group community events, I think we maybe we forget how effective those are. Do you feel like we’ve gone away from that and we need to get back to it?
Owen Roberts 27:08
Well, I look at the popularity of events, and it seems like events, when social media, you know, covid days, events kind of had their it almost seemed like events had their day. But I look at something like the now, I’ll mention this because I am part of grain farmers of Ontario. Now, the March classic, it’s it, and that’s very much a an extension event that the grain farmers of Ontario puts on annually. And it it had near record attendance this year in Niagara Falls. People like to get together.
Toban Dyck 27:49
They do. I agree with you.
Owen Roberts 27:50
And you know, of course, it depends on your location and your quality of your program, but if you have a good program and you’re in the right spot, people seem to come together. They’re looking for quality, right? And they’re looking for, you know, economy and such. But if you offer that up, I agree with you. There’s, there’s value in coming together. That is one thing that AI cannot do.
Toban Dyck 28:17
That’s right,
Owen Roberts 28:18
AI cannot come together.
Toban Dyck 28:19
Yeah, right.
Owen Roberts 28:20
And that’s what so we can still do as humans and communicate in a very traditional way, I guess, which is what we’re what we’re doing now, yeah, but this is also like, let’s not kick dirt on on and I know you’re not doing that. Let’s not kick dirt on electronic communications, because we couldn’t do this. We couldn’t be talking about extension if we didn’t have this this forum here right now, or we could, but in a different way. So, I mean this to me, is a wonderful time to be involved in communications, both electronic and traditional, because there’s just so many avenues that are open, and there’s so many opportunities to get messages into the hands of people who can use them and to get feedback from those folks.
Toban Dyck 29:06
Yeah, so that university system that you were talking about, like the the land grant universities and the and their extension initiatives activities, do you think that’s something we could do more of here? Is that, is that, are we? Are we set up for that?
Owen Roberts 29:23
I think it would take a commitment, but I do think, I do think there’s an opportunity. I think what? And one of those opportunities that I found when I worked at the University of Guelph for 33 years was to look outside traditional ways of doing things, but not, you know, maybe not radically different. One of the things we did was involve students in extension. We would be,we would be teaching students how to communicate like journalists would communicate with with stories and such. It was mostly stories then that we were writing, and then through partnerships with the media, we would have those stories printed or or read or broadcast or something along those lines. This, to me, was an example of bringing new people in, in a new kind of way, but also using existing or partnering with existing media to to help extend information from and it’s a classic case, you know what? What does the university do? Well, it extends information from a source, like a researcher, to a user, which could be the public, could be practitioners. It could be farmers, of course, but that’s a natural a natural extension chain is from from a knowledge source. You probably talk about this all the time, in your in your podcast, in your session here, that classic channel of communication, which is really the where extension fits in, that’s what a university does. So I think about Illinois doing that. I think about University of Guelph doing that and and I’ll just talk about the I could talk about Alberta government too, from the old days, my old days there, but also Ontario, now that I’m familiar with there are really, really talented communication folks who are in positions that might not be called extension or communication, but I think about people like weed specialist and the cereal specialist, who were coincidentally, ag communication students back in the day. They’re not actually called communication communication. They have a communication role, but they’re not, they’re not professional communicators, they’re specialists, and they’re doing extension, but they’re not actually called extensions either, at least not job title wise. So there’s, is there opportunity? Yeah, there’s all kinds of opportunity. And it’s, it’s going on now it’s going on because there’s a lot of ag communication going on, a lot of extension going on. Is it in a neat bucket? No, is it in a but there’s a way to, I think, kind of capture that modern bucket of extension and help it flourish. What kind of skills do those folks need? They need communication skills, and are we? Are we teaching those? Is there some opportunity, either in higher education or outside, using extension, current extension opportunities to teach communication?
Jay Whetter 32:56
What do you think are the most important communication skills, Owen?
Owen Roberts 33:00
Spelling. It’s an important one for credit, for credibility,
Jay Whetter 33:07
Not rrelying on auto correct, because you never know what you’re going to end up with.
Owen Roberts 33:11
Well, right? And you know, in defense of those who struggle with spelling, has there ever been anyone to teach them? You know, it’s and I’m not trying to sound like a fundamentalist or anything like that, but there are some foundational skills that are that are required. I still think writing is important, because, as you know, if you’re right, if you’re if you’re a broadcaster, and you have to put together a script, you have to, you are likely going to have to write it. So it’s not it’s not confined. Writing skills aren’t confined to traditional, traditional print certainly important there. But if you’re writing a blog that you want people to read, or if you’re writing an email you want people to read, you have to have some writing skills. So I’m, I’m a fan of those. Maybe, maybe that’s to be expected, but I still, I still think it’s extremely relevant to have writing skills and speaking skills, particularly with the way communications has evolved. I mean, look at what you folks are doing now. Couldn’t have been done and couldn’t have been done in the past, because there were, there wasn’t the ways and the means. But now there has to be your hopefully your guests have speaking skills as well as writing skills, to be able to write down their thoughts beforehand and talk to you about them. So I think in video skills, you know, we did a, can I talk about a some of the research that we did about what skills are really desired. Yeah, that’s great. Okay, in in Illinois, we were working on something called a certificate, a global certificate in agricultural communications. We had also talked about that at Guelph years ago, but it was, you know, a little bit hard to it wasn’t as easy. To deliver as it is now. So, we thought, okay, in our due diligence, we better ask folks what they would like to see in some type of a certificate. And this would be a certificate much like you would get if you attended some type of a workshop for a period of time and you picked up a skill so this so we asked these folks, and we so the International Federation has more than 60 member countries now, and more than 6,000 members. It’s, it’s a very significant organization. It’s the only one in the world dedicated solely to agricultural, journalism and communications. So, if you’re asking these, asking members of the International Federation, what they think ag communicators should be talking about, you’re asking the right group. And we ask these folks, you know, what, what skills? What would you like to see? What would be the top three or four things you’d like to see in a agricultural communications certificate that could be delivered online asynchronously, meaning there wouldn’t be a live instructor talking to you, but there would be there would be instructors who would be recorded and their lessons or teachings or whatever would be there, and you would respond to them, you would write some type of tests that would show that you had earned this certificate. The things they came up with were multimedia, multimedia presentations, so multi and multimedia learning, multimedia reporting. So, this would include in this is why I thought of it, because we’re talking about all these new opportunities there are. It would include not only being able to write, but also being able to do a do a podcast, perhaps, take a take some video. Take something for broadcast, take photos, all part of the whole multimedia experience for a journalist, they also wanted data journalism training interesting so being able to write stories not particularly led by a human, but led by the data that the humans had created. Maybe now not wouldn’t be solely humans that had created, but using that as a foundation for a story, and then going out and getting sources who could validate or expand on it. And then the third one was leadership. And I thought that was great that that journalists from and ag, communicators from around the world thought leadership skills were among the most important skills they they should have.
Toban Dyck 37:57
Yeah, and when they say, when they say, leadership, what do you think they’re What do you think they’re after?
Owen Roberts 38:02
Well, these would be, these would be people who would be involved in their guilds, just like the Canadian farm writers Federation is, is,if we were in Europe, we’d be called a guild, rather than, probably rather than a federation. That would be what our association, or organization would be called. These are people who are actively involved in their in their associations, and so they want the leadership skills to be able to take a position of authority or leadership within those within those particular guilds. And how, how wonderful for the future of ag journalism that people are asking for, they recognize that they should have leadership skills and are actively seeking out opportunities to get them.
Jay Whetter 38:51
Yeah, so what, what do you think are the leadership skills? Or, if you created this module for the for the global module, what were the leadership skills that you were trying to convey.
Owen Roberts 39:03
Well, there’s, there’s, it wasn’t created yet. By the time I left, it was, it was, it was in place, and they’re actually developing it now. But the I imagine what they will be including is this, this sounds this sounds archaic, but it’s still very applicable. How to give a speech?
Toban Dyck 39:25
Sure, yeah.
Owen Roberts 39:26
You know, we kind of laugh at it, like, Oh, yeah. That’s for, you know, that’s old school. That’s something you see at the at Farm shows, or whatever. You know, students up there giving speeches. But that’s very valid form of communication again, when you can reach so many more people now electronically, you have to know how to give a speech. In order to give a speech, you have to know how to speak. In order to write a speech, you have to know how to write so those would be the type of things you know when you start to kind of peel away the layers of the onion. What are the what are the components of leadership? Well, you have to be able to speak to people. And then what are the elements of speaking to people? You know, eye contact and all that kind of good stuff that we known for a long time that we kind of thought, oh, that’s old school. But it is not old school. It’s, it’s very pertinent. So those would be among the leadership. But also, you know, how do you, how do you motivate people to do things that would be like motivation. There would be several lessons on motivating people, how to involve people as a leader, you know, and what? What skills do leaders have? Like, here’s one you’ll be interested in, listening skills. Should journalists have listening skills? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Should leaders have listening skills to hear what people are saying that might be important to them? And then how do you respond to those as listening skills, you know? How do you respond those would be the type of things that they would be they would be getting towards how to motivate a community, not, you know, not just, not just people within your area of interest, but how to motivate a community to to receive messages that you might think are important, like the importance of agriculture to a community, importance of the agri agri food sector to a country, influencing stakeholders in that way, so they understand what it is that is important. And this is all extension, right?
Jay Whetter 41:27
Well, the leadership thing is really interesting, and so you had multimedia, data, management, leadership skills. I was at a leadership event recently, and they’re talking about the six skills of a leader, and the number one one was participation, or participatory leadership, which is inviting everyone you’re trying to lead into the conversation about, what are our objectives, and how do we get those objectives?
Toban Dyck 41:56
Facilitation, yeah, almost, yeah.
Jay Whetter 41:57
It wasn’t just like you’re going to do this, and that’s in fact, that can be effective in the short term, apparently, but does not make a good, effective long term leader. It’s like,sort of the team building exercise of have having people participate. Just wondered if that was something that, like, do you get into that kind of weeds? I don’t know. You weren’t there and you wrote the modules for this particular one, but yeah,
Owen Roberts 42:19
I have to be honest. I wasn’t. That wasn’t. There’s a whole department of leadership at the University of Illinois, and those folks are expert in it. So this is what would happen for the development of this module, is that you would bring in experts in this area and have them, have them deliver the lectures and receive the feedback from the from the participants about that area. What is the it is interesting, though, which would you say about the about this, the participatory aspect of leadership? Yeah, you certainly do want to bring others, bring others in, and have have leadership through consensus. Usually, you’re put forward as a leader because you’ve already done that. Like there are people who say, you know you should, you should run for this, or you should be our leader in this, because we all think. We all think, and you get elected because most people believe that you are going to reflect, you know, positively their views, or important views, or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, it’s a and that’s another, something else that would be peeled back is, how do you become a leader? Yeah, are you a born leader? Are you do you develop as a leader? It’s like being a writer. Are you a born writer? Speaker? Are you a born speaker? Well, are you a boring leader? Maybe, maybe, maybe you have some elements of that in your personality, but there’s certainly some leadership skills to be to be learned and practiced.
Toban Dyck 43:50
Yeah, well, I mean, that’s an interesting point. I’d like to get your perspective on it. Oh, and like, you know, we, Jay and I, we, we talked to people about presentation skills, and, you know, all this kind of stuff in our on our workshop, but there’s always a bit, there’s always a subtext to it where it’s like, you could have the you could have the worst slideshow possible if you’re giving out, giving a presentation, an extension presentation, but you’re a super charismatic person, and everyone’s going to love your presentation, and they’re going to associate this crappy slide deck with a great presentation, because you’re so delivery was so awesome. So you teach, you know, one teaches these elements, or you talk about these elements just divorced from each other, but really, what you can’t, what I’ve had trouble teaching or articulating, is like, you just, you really just got to sell it. You got to be almost just a, just be a good, charismatic, interesting person, you know, like, that’s, that’s the course, right? But you, you, you find ways to talk around it and veil it and in in, I mean, you, you, you kind of, you try to boil it down to its to its parts, but, but. At the end of the day, there is still that element, that Je ne sais quoi, that that, that you either, you know, yeah, I don’t know.
Owen Roberts 45:08
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve been to some presentations where there was no presentation, there was no visual presentation. The speaker spoke, yeah. And this at one the speaker said, you’ll probably be surprised that I don’t have a PowerPoint deck to go along with my presentation today. And everybody went, Yeah,because it’s such a given now. So, therefore you also need, and this was part of this multimedia thing that the that the international people said, you know, you have to have some visual not just, not just abilities to take photos and and such, but you have to be able to put together a good deck, to be able to, you know, maybe explain yourself, but you, but do you? It’s a really good question, because, I mean, what are people doing when you’re up there speaking, they’re looking at the deck. Yeah, you know, they’re not, they’re not focused on you. And if you’re trying to get a point across in because you’ve taken some type of speech lessons that tell you to pause, tell you then to carry on, you know, to do some of those, not tricks, but techniques that speakers use to emphasize a point. There you are. You know, you’re busting your rump to get your point across, and everybody’s looking at the PowerPoint that may say, hopefully not, but you’ve seen this too, sure the PowerPoint says exactly what you’re saying. So why do you have a PowerPoint that says what you’re saying? Hopefully that question doesn’t come up, but it might.
Jay Whetter 46:42
I was, I was listening to Nick Nate bergazzi. He was a comedian, and I was just watching a Netflix special. But I just mean your point about pausing or, I mean he, has surprisingly few words in an hour, but he’s like, he’s very funny, though he’s very funny, and he’s just like, long pauses. And while he’s thinking, like, it seems like he’s thinking, obviously he’s rehearsed this thing. But I just it can be so effective, and I don’t think we realize that we don’t have to fill every second up with words
Owen Roberts 47:22
Absolutely And wouldn’t that be a great training in a online certificate, a way to bring people in to help them understand that the communication skill they’re learning and giving a speech is universal, and in giving A speech, pausing and using different voice inflections and such like a comedian does, can work. So I bands, take a break, right? We’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have a little gonna have a little break now so you can, you can think about, or you can order another drink so there’s a pause
Toban Dyck 48:03
I have to think like, you know, even, even just say, Jay and I and we do a podcast that I’ve often thought, like, do we, you know, do we? Do we? Do we get training on, like, how to talk on a podcast? Or, you know, like, you know, I think I sometimes I’m guilty of assuming that I know right, or I’ve spoken in enough venues, or to enough in front of enough audiences that I know how to I know how to give a speech. But do I like would I benefit from a Toastmasters Course? I probably would. You know,
Jay Whetter 48:37
I remember after our after our presentation in Brandon, afterwards, Dez Daniels projected really well, but you and I didn’t, and I think we get used to having these kind of conversations, right? But we’re not used to talking a bit in front of a big audience, yeah. So, so I think you’re right. We probably could benefit from skills and public speaking and projection. Owen, and have you ever had any skill public speaking training on how to project.
Owen Roberts 49:04
Yes, I was at a I was at, so I’ve, I’ve looked online a little bit because projecting when you sing, which is what I do in the GMOs, is very similar to what you do in if you’re standing at a podium. And you know, I’ve had the, I’ve had the luxury of having students be, be the recipient of some of the things I’ve said over the last 40 years. And I’ve learned, I’ve learned, you know, that whole pausing technique, but also looking at people, you know, we think about eye contact and some of the other, you know, the gesturing that we’re, you know, we’re trying not to do that now, but the gesturing that comes along with with addressing a crowd, yeah, really important. Would we all benefit from a Toastmasters? Course, absolutely. When and I would have in my communications courses that I’ve taught, I would almost always have someone come in to speak about speaking. It’s not but this is also a luxury of having a small class, when you have like 100 students in a class really difficult, and that’s where an institution really has to stand up and say, Okay, we’re going to because this is not the way universities are going. And fortunately, for funding purposes and everything else going towards larger classes, it really, it really, you have to admire an institution that will support a small program right now and like an ag communication program. We don’t, we don’t have an ag communication program per se, in Canada, at a university, at a college. There are some that are trying to put together, you know, very making very noble efforts, and I hope we will, and then maybe a couple of years. But it does take a commitment by the institution to say we think this is important. Because we’ve heard from the ag community that this is important to them, because where else are, where will the next generate? You know, where’s the next Toban? Where’s the next Jay going to come from? Through the ranks. That’s how you learned your speaking skills and your communication skills to a significant degree for a public speaking that’s 4h public speak, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Very important. So you know is there, is there a way to coordinate all
Toban Dyck 51:37
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Whetter 51:39
So when we’ve we talked about your University of Illinois, brief stint there. Well, a few years you’re now Grain Farmers Ontario, but we haven’t really dug into the 33 or whatever years it was you’re teaching at the University of Guelph. So, but I think I want to this all connects, because you talked about the value of, you know, actual in person presentations. And how to deliver a speech, and how to just how to get a message across to people. So in all of your years of teaching like those classes where you thought, yes, that worked like, I really got through to my students today. Can you remember what what worked like, what was it? What made an effective class presentation or class discussion where you felt like, Yes, this is, this is sinking in.
Owen Roberts 52:31
I would say most broadly, it was classes in which the students got to apply what they learned. And this is one of these experiential education situations where, okay, you know, I’m I’m going to talk, I’m going to show you some of the material I’ve written. I’m going to talk to you about some of the addresses I’ve given your turn and those that’s when people really learn. If you think about your younger days back in the newsroom or wherever, where you had to do your first stories, those were real learning. To me, that was a real learning experience. You know, the first plowing match, my first story was a plowing match, and Whoa, it was to see your byline on a plowing match like to me, it gives you, you know what a byline gives you, it gives you that sense of pride that really sticks with you and is really infectious, I think. So, that’s that’s what I thought would be really good for my students. And I believe that was the case. I tried to get them, give them opportunities to get bylines in commercial publications in Ontario, we worked with major, I would say, most of the of the farm media to have bylined stories in From almost always about research at the University of Guelph in the publications, same in Illinois, I had a connection with Farm Progress chain there, and they ran some of the students stories that were not as much research based from The University, but research based from their home farms,and those are very effective, and got all kinds of pickup,
Jay Whetter 54:26
so like telling stories, like personal experiences, kind of stuff
Owen Roberts 54:30
That’s right, like, you know, we’ve so, you know, our on our farm, we’ve cover cropped for the last 15 years. And, you know, here are the results that we’re seeing now, you know, that type of thing, or, you know, here’s how we here’s how we prevented erosion, or here’s how we maximized our yields, that type of thing.
Jay Whetter 54:51
You started as an ag journalist in Alberta. You mentioned that earlier in the conversation, but we didn’t dig into it, and it was with Alberta report. Which I think was the Byfields. And if I recall them, they were very opinionated. But so did you, what did you learn from that experience, about about writing, was, were there takeaway tips from that, from that early experience that you’ve kept all of these years, because they worked so well.
Owen Roberts 55:20
Yeah, absolutely. The the Byfields were, were very supportive of writers who could identify an audience and write to that audience. So there would be people from all, all stripes, all political stripes, in the newsroom. But, it didn’t, it didn’t matter, as long as you were able to write for Albertans, what mattered to Albertans and have an Alberta angle on it. And you know, some people were critical that it was, you know, too far or whatever, but writing for your audience was, was a key thing that I learned from from the by fields. I also learned from them how important they thought agriculture was. It was, it was one of the, you know, I had so for people who may not remember, Alberta report was a weekly news magazine based in Edmonton. It covered the entire province and pretty well like, like, no other, no other publication, because it was Alberta at the time, was so one party oriented that you pretty well knew who your audience was, and you could write to that audience in ways that would help them put things in perspective, provincially, nationally, and the Byfields understood how important agriculture was to Alberta. And within Alberta report, there were sections just like Time Magazine, for the arts, for entertainment, etc, etc. But my section was called the land, and the land was their way of saying agriculture. And I had multiple, I was there for, for three years. I was in northern Alberta for four years before that. And I had, I had multiple cover stories that were, that were agriculture. And, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t say, you know, agriculture is for, is for, just for rural audiences or just for farmers. They said, agriculture is for everybody, and it’s important for our economy. And they were, they were way ahead on this way ahead so. And they gave me all kinds of, all kinds of opportunities to write stories that, and a lot of them came to me. A lot of these stories came to me because people in agriculture knew that the importance and the influence of Alberta report. So writing for an audience, I’d say, was, was the key thing. What does your audience not want to hear? Yes, to some extent, want to hear, but need to hear. And that’s the that’s the beauty of a weekly news magazine. You have a little bit of time, not a lot, because you have a cycle, but you’ll have some time to put things in perspective. And so this is a while ago, even before I came to Guelph. So this is going back to 4040, years ago. One of the things about electronic communication now is that even though it’s very fast, we do, again, have the opportunity to put things in perspective, because we’re not as limited by a physical size of a publication. So it’s kind of come around in that way. And I think I read a little bit of research on this, but I’ve read that it’s very popular the publications, or whatever the whatever the tool may be, that long form writing has become pretty popular for people who want to learn more about a topic. Short stuff, you know, tweets, etc, will have their place to get people interested, and then having somewhere where you can read it really sink your teeth into a feature, which may it’s very popular, which may also lead to more journalistic training. Because how do you write a feature that holds together, that has transition, that has that isn’t just a bunch of quotes, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a talent, and that’s, that’s really what I’m what I’m looking forward to, is whatever, ag communication, education, inevitability comes along, and I do think it’s inevitable that it’s going to be it’s going to be focused on training people for modern realities, but some of which have very strong foundations in. I’ve always thought communications, ag communications, has a strong, strong foundation in journalism. And I think that’s where it can that’s where it can go again,
Toban Dyck 1:00:11
Yeah. I mean, I would agree. I think, I think there’s, like, the case for talking about ag comms and really anchoring it on, on writing, I think is, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re with the right audience here, of course, but I mean, I’ve always, I’ve always thought, even just personally, like, the clearer I write is, the clearer I think. And so, like, there is a really strong case for writing to be foundational to to to to effective communications. I am with you on that one.
Owen Roberts 1:00:45
Can I ask you guys a question? You can when you write a story, and I’m thinking about a long feature here, because they’re coming popular again, do you put together an outline beforehand, like a formal outline?
Jay Whetter 1:00:59
Not really a formal outline, but I do want to to think about what I want to say, so I know what I want to say, and I know I kind of have an idea what the thread is going to be. But what do you do an outline?
Toban Dyck 1:01:11
No, no. I’ve always, I’ve always, it’s always been one of those things that I wish I could, or I wish I would, because I feel like it’s one of those things that I should do like, you know, but I, I don’t, I’ll, yeah, it’ll go my typical response over my typical approach I haven’t done in a long time would be to write it out, and it would be kind of as a first draft all over the place. But then I visually, or I used to do those, I would print it or and then, and then move like, move like, physically move graphs around until it till it was in a place where I’m like, Oh, this, this is good flow. This makes sense. And then that’s, that’s how I would, that’s how I would.
Jay Whetter 1:01:50
I took literary journalism this two week residency at Banff a number of years ago, three or four years ago, and they, they, I mean, I did. I had time that I’ve never had time to write. It was two weeks to work on one article and and these are, this is literary journalism, like this long form, format you’re talking about. And they said, so plot it out, A to B to C to D to E, and E is your conclusion, and then take D and put it at the front. So I just thought that was kind of, so you start kind of near the end, and then you work back and just say, Okay, this is how we got here. And then you have your conclusion. And I but I’ve never done that since.
Owen Roberts 1:02:34
We see and that’s a great perspective, and that’s what I think students should be exposed to, you know, young, young writers, to be able to get our budding writers, to be able to get this kind of feedback, like you don’t need to do an outline. I don’t do them. I worked beside an editor who did and he swore by them. But I’m like, you, I’ve got it in my head, and I know where I want this to go. You know, my biggest challenge is to find the anecdote at the start of the story.
Jay Whetter 1:02:59
So important, isn’t it? Oh yeah, that’s critical. Yeah. Are you still writing? Oh, what do you have time to write? Or what’s
Owen Roberts 1:03:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just I finished it. It was actually a sponsored series with the Toronto Star in November, I guess about regenerative agriculture.
Toban Dyck 1:03:16
Oh yeah, I think I saw that. That’s right, yeah,
Owen Roberts 1:03:18
Yeah, yeah. So that was my, my biggest thing. I do some, and I still have a column. This is going on. This is going on 30 years now, with the grower, the growers on fruit and vegetable publication, and the editor there, Karen Davidson, is the one who got me into the Canadian farm writers Federation, decades go to are still, we’re still still focused on an ag communication, which is in, you know, I don’t think that’s it’s kind of unusual that amount of time. But, I mean, you look at our connection, ag communicate. Ag communicators and ag, journalists just have a great connection in pleasure.
Jay Whetter 1:04:03
But my, my first boss was John Morris, and I still see John on a fairly regular basis.
Owen Roberts 1:04:08
Yeah, he’s iconic. He’s, you know, he set the stage. Ironically, he was, he was the spokesperson for the wheat pool when I was a reporter at Alberta report. And of course, Alberta report used to rip the wheat pool, just go at it, go at their throats. And he, and he was the most patient guy with me. He would just explain things, and he wouldn’t, you know, he wouldn’t blow a fuse. Of course, you know, I’m voracious, trying to get, you know, I got to get the wheat pool, and I didn’t have to, but that’s what people wanted. Yeah. Anyway, I have a lot of respect for him.
Jay Whetter 1:04:50
So, just your the recent regenerative agriculture articles you wrote for the star. Can you think of your one of your opening anecdotes, given how important they are? Can you remember? I’m putting on a spot here. I’m sorry.
Owen Roberts 1:05:02
Yeah, sure. Well, almost so I did. I did five stories, and almost every one of them started with a farmer’s experience about what he or she used to do and what he or she does. Now, you know, conflict is such a conflict of any type, is such a foundational part of journalism. And it really, it really makes the world go around. Same with research, same with research. Here’s the way it was, but we’re doing this now, or we want to do this now, to change things and and those were really, that was really the approach I took. And I find it helps that helps a lot with writing a story as well, because if you can, if you can explain briefly the problem, then focus on the solution. It It’s honest with the reader or the listener or the viewer, to admit that here’s a situation that we’re trying to fix, and then go on to explain the potential solution, or the solution or the way it is now that that’s a good, I think that’s a good approach.
Jay Whetter 1:06:11
I think that’s a good approach also to a live like to a speech or a presentation, is just begin with some sort of anecdote, get get the audience, warm up the audience with a with a real kind of experience,
Toban Dyck 1:06:23
For sure.
Owen Roberts 1:06:23
Yes, yeah, a people experience, because I find people still like to read about people. And I mean, when you think about what we’ve talked about today, these are people, people talking right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay Whetter 1:06:38
Do you have a last thought?
Toban Dyck 1:06:39
Well, we were going to, you know, we when you’ve, you’ve, you’ve taught a lot of people, you’ve encountered a lot of people in ag comms, you’re still connected to a lot of people. Just definitely want to give you the opportunity in this podcast, we’re coming to a close here, but like to to kind of pass on some some words to to, like, the new generation of people in ag extension and ag comms, given your breadth of experience,
Owen Roberts 1:07:07
Yeah, well, I appreciate the challenge they may have they probably are having now in in finding opportunities. I think a big opportunity is both inside ag, I think inside agriculture there are opportunities. I think outside agriculture there are significant opportunities to explain to non agricultural audiences what is going on in farming. It’s, there’s, there’s great science stories, there’s great environmental sustainability stories that I believe. And this, this was my experience with the Star non-agricultural people really want to hear. And I think we’ve, we’ve thought this through the years. When I first started working at Guelph and I was writing my I went there on a one year contract to see if there was any interest in the public, in public media, in running ag research stories. So I mean, I applied some some good journalism techniques to that, like the one we just talked about, trying to find the problem, then finding the solution. And that, to me, given the problems in that we’re looking at right now, and young journalists, if they’re looking to write stories, you know, what is the problem that the story you’re you want to write can help address? Doesn’t have to be a solution, but it can be a small step, maybe, in the in the towards the answer. I think people are looking for some answers to some some of the questions that are out there right now, and that I would encourage young journalists to not lose heart, to look for professional development opportunities like those that exist with the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation and with each of the associations like the Manitoba farm, writers and broadcasters, I know there are professional development opportunities that come up, and maybe more so now that there isn’t really any formal ag communication training going on, at least not not in a not broadly. Maybe that’s what the individual associations should be looking at, is offering these kinds of opportunities, professional more professional development opportunities, specifically for young journalists or for those who are entering the profession, maybe for the first time, it could also be for people who are already involved in extension but haven’t had the skills before, haven’t had access to the skills that are that are needed for effective communications,
Owen Roberts 1:09:53
right? Yeah, that’s awesome, yeah. Well, thanks Owen. It’s been great to see you again. And.
Jay Whetter 1:10:00
And maybe see you in London in September, who knows?
Owen Roberts 1:10:03
But I hope you’re going to step on stage with us there, Toban, with your with your rock star guitar,.
Jay Whetter 1:10:11
Better get practicing.
Toban Dyck 1:10:13
You’re gonna wipe off the dust, learn how to play. There we go.
Owen Roberts 1:10:18
Jay, you’d be a good front man. I mean, you’re I can blow the cowbell. Well, no, you crack people up when you get up there and you start speaking. I always, I you always have a joke. And there’s another good public speaking technique. Maybe, maybe you do it on purpose. Or maybe you just, I know you’re kind of that guy’s line. Yeah, you got a sense of humor. And there. So you can, you can introduce the band, Jay, yeah, okay,
Toban Dyck 1:10:39
There we go. I like it.
Owen Roberts 1:10:41
And then get off the stage, right?
Toban Dyck 1:10:45
I love it. Yeah, thanks everyone.
Toban Dyck 1:10:46
It’s great to catch up.
Owen Roberts 1:10:48
It’s great talking to you guys. Thanks very much for the opportunity.
Toban Dyck 1:10:51
Anytime.
Jay Whetter 1:10:51
Our pleasure.
Jay Whetter 1:10:57
Hey there, listeners, if you’re enjoying the conversations here on the extensionist, you will probably love to get our newsletter.
Toban Dyck 1:11:02
Yeah, it’s the best way to stay connected with us, with Jay and myself. Yours truly, I’ve excited about the newsletter to be honest with you, because I think, well, so many of our guests have sorry.
Jay Whetter 1:11:15
Why are you excited about it?
Toban Dyck 1:11:16
Say that differently, Jay, so many of our guests are. They say so many things of interest, right? And I feel like the newsletter would be a great will be a great way to share that with our listeners.
Jay Whetter 1:11:29
Quick take homes,
Toban Dyck 1:11:30
yeah,
Jay Whetter 1:11:30
summaries,
Toban Dyck 1:11:31
Yeah, absolutely,
Jay Whetter 1:11:32
one liners,
Toban Dyck 1:11:33
Absolutely, absolutely, I think about each each guest, we could probably write a whole bunch of articles from each of our guests, right? So to give our our newsletter subscribers, like summaries of, you know, the key takeaways of these things, plus, plus information on upcoming guests. All they got to do, all listeners have to do is go to the extensions calm and follow the prompts to sign up for the newsletter. I think it’ll be, I think it’d be great.You
Jay Whetter 1:12:07
Oh, guitar and strumming, slap at the bass. Oh, there’s a Nate Bri gods, okay. We can all. We can save this for the I guess we are in outro land right now, troland.
Jay Whetter 1:12:10
I want to keep this so we’re gonna, we’re rolling you.
Toban Dyck 1:12:30
Oh, so you got it wrong. See, it’s been so long. Here we go.
Toban Dyck 1:12:37
I know everybody I’m playing. Come as you are by Nirvana, and Jay’s got his eyes closed a note. He’s really into it, hasn’t missed a note, and my guitar is definitely in tune. So we should get the GMOs. We should commission them to to do our intro song. You think, yeah, yeah. That would be, that would be, I also do want to look up that one song that they got second place.
Jay Whetter 1:13:00
Yeah, 30 million boy people fed or through
Toban Dyck 1:13:04
Something that’ll be that’ll get you there as other Friends of Len or the GMOs at that point, I’m not sure, but,
Jay Whetter 1:13:11
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I love that. Let’s first season three. We’ll have the GMOs do our theme song.
Toban Dyck 1:13:15
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. That’s those. That was a good conversation,
Jay Whetter 1:13:19
I was, and I really liked it that the end, we were just kind of getting warmed up, because I really liked his his tip about leading off an article or even a presentation with a story or an anecdote. And in this case, we’re not in our in our world. It’s, you know, a farmer did something change their mind, and this was the result. And I love that style of intro. But like Owen said it’s about the people, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Toban Dyck 1:13:43
I do like that. I do like that as well. That was and I really liked his commitment to like writing as a fundamental skill, and speaking, and then listening, listening as well, I think, yeah,
Jay Whetter 1:13:59
And spelling, but yeah, so writing, writing and speeches, writing and public speaking, core skills.
Toban Dyck 1:14:06
Are you a good are you a good speller?
Jay Whetter 1:14:08
No, not really, no,
Toban Dyck 1:14:11
Jamie, like, my wife’s a very good speller.
Jay Whetter 1:14:14
Oh yeah,
Toban Dyck 1:14:15
You’re not a good typer. Like, are you one hand?
Jay Whetter 1:14:18
I’m not, no, I’m like this, but I’m also lots of the backspace.
Toban Dyck 1:14:24
Maybe don’t do that.
Jay Whetter 1:14:26
What this?
Toban Dyck 1:14:27
Yeah, that’s nice. That’s a nice, nice flow to it. So Nate, you brought up. Nate bragase,
Jay Whetter 1:14:35
Yeah.
Toban Dyck 1:14:35
There’s definitely a clip I want to show you if I can find. It’s always, it’s always, it’s always a difficult one to find. And I think it’s because, like, maybe I find it funnier than most people. Because if it was one that everybody found funny, there would be like, ample clips.
Toban Dyck 1:14:52
No same so the the Nate Bergatsi gas. See clip I want to find is, is one where he’s at a hotel, like, whatever, Best Western or something, and he’s getting pancakes, like he’s doing the whole pancake things, where people make their own, yeah, and it’s all about somebody in front of them doing, like, using the syrup, and I don’t want to give it away, because I don’t want, I mean, a I’m not going to be able to land it. It’s funny because it Nate’s all about the delivery, right? So there’s no way I’d be able to do it. But it is just like, it is so funny. It is so funny him recounting this story of watching this person make pancakes at this like, run at the mill hotel and like a cotton middle breakfast. So, yeah, definitely, definitely want to do that.
Jay Whetter 1:14:59
Is it the one where he is? Like, the talks about meeting the people from the future?
Jay Whetter 1:15:05
Yeah, yeah, I did. I ate all six pancakes, but I didn’t really want to eat that many, because I wanted to eat some eggs and bacon and fruit
Toban Dyck 1:15:22
Abby’s told us to talk about the guests, but we can’t. We’re having trouble. Segue all day. Can think of what is Nate bragati and pancakes I wanted.
Toban Dyck 1:15:35
It’s like a mini donut, kind of a machine?
Jay Whetter 1:16:08
So I was at a hotel near the airport in Toronto just a few weeks ago, and they and I made, you know, those little the automatic pancake maker thing, which it seems like an elaborate tool to make some rather simple pancakes, but I wasn’t sure if the button was working. Turns out it was working. And I made six pancakes. They just kept coming out, like, holy cow,
Toban Dyck 1:16:40
Just filling up with pancakes.
Jay Whetter 1:16:44
Well, that was a great conversation with Owen. I learned a ton, and he’s always a good guy to talk to. And music can mean you got your guitar out now for this outro, which was really fun, and listening to the come as you are from Nirvana
Toban Dyck 1:16:57
Over and over again, and it’s not even the whole song, it’s just the first thing is the opening bars ofthe song. But no, i iYeah, like, Owen’s just, kind of, he is kind of like a John Morris, like, you know, character, and that is just, I think of ag communications. And I think of, yeah, Owen, Owen’s right up there for sure. Yeah, done some interesting things. I could only imagine his experience, his time in in the in the US must have been. It must have been. We probably could have filled the whole hour or two on just that,
Jay Whetter 1:17:31
With the, yeah, with the extension program there at the US university is quite different from Canada. Anyway, yeah, that’s and we should, at some point, we should get an extension person from from a US university as a guest?
Toban Dyck 1:17:42
Yeah, I agree. I agree. It’d be interesting to learn more about that system.
Jay Whetter 1:17:47
Anyway, this has been The Extensionists. I’m Jay Whetter.
Jay Whetter 1:17:51
And I’m Toban Dyck,
Jay Whetter 1:17:51
Till next time.
Jay Whetter 1:17:55
This has been a Burr Forest Group production,
Toban Dyck 1:17:56
Jay, did you know that the podcast couldn’t happen with the hard work of the people behind the scenes. And I’ve got their names right here. They are, Abby Wall, producer and editor, Ashley Robinson, researcher and Michelle McMullen, marketer.