View from the Cab: Ch-ch-ch-changes

By Kent Casson

Cue the song “Changes” by David Bowie.

I have observed quite a few changes in recent years not only in agriculture itself, but in the world of ag broadcasting and journalism too.

Apparently, we will no longer receive the weekly crop progress and weather reports for a specific state such as Illinois. I have come to count on the weekly crop report issued each Monday afternoon, not only from a farmer standpoint, but from a broadcaster’s perspective as well. I would share the weekly crop progress information each Thursday on my ag radio show. Now I’ll need to come up with a new feature to run on that day.

This report provided valuable weekly information on planting progress in the spring, wheat conditions during winter, corn and soybean progress during the heart of the growing season and fall harvest numbers from September through November.

The National Ag Statistics Service issued a special note recently that stated:

“Beginning on May 30, 2025, NASS will no longer generate publications tailored specifically to individual states or regions. There is no impact on state-level data as it will continue to be available in the national releases and through NASS’s public online database, Quick Stats. All NASS reports are available to the public at nass.usda.gov.”

Early in the growing season is a rather strange time to pull the plug on state and regional crop information, but sometimes things don’t make sense.

Add this to a number of changes at the state level. I used to count on the weekly weather summary from the State Climatologist’s office issued every Friday afternoon on the state’s CMS Radio News Service, formerly known as the Illinois Information Service. This audio feature would run on my ag show the following Monday but it was

discontinued a couple of years back.

The state news service through the Illinois government would occasionally release audio clips and news interviews from the state – especially when lawmakers were in session. But once the news anchor who recorded these features retired, the service was not updated. I had to look elsewhere for some of these services.

My how things have changed over the years in journalism and ag. It makes me wonder what may be coming next. Maybe we don’t want to know.