The legendary ‘Big O’
hangs it up
Orion Samuelson, my mentor, friend, and farm broadcaster colleague 86 years young, and a booming voice that rings out overall in a given room hangs up the microphone on December 31, 2020.
Orion finished 60 years as the farm broadcaster at WGN Chicago, where I joined him several times in person and many times by telephone and Skype. In a recent interview to commemorate his 60 years, most likely the longest time a broadcaster anywhere spent at the same radio station, we talked and shared stories and thoughts.  First off, I asked Orion what’s the most prominent three changes that come to mind.
“Number one, the technology that farmers and ranchers have adopted and have done, I think, rather quickly because, well, we milked cows by hand on our dairy farm. Today, they’re milked automatically by robots. And so for the dairy industry, you’ve got to change that technology. But when you look at the crop protection products we have and the inability yet with the technology to get away from things like African Swine Fever and bird flu.
When you look at those stories, you realize that agriculture, truly international, doesn’t recognize borders a great deal, and we’re certainly having to live with that. But at the same token, we, I think, rather quickly come up with the technology to stop the spread and to get ready for the next pandemic,” said Orion.
He said with the COVID-19 situation, he has never gone through a summer with so many postponements and cancellations of agricultural events.
“I mean, we did a virtual Farm Progress Show, and we’re going to do a virtual Commodity Classic, and we’re going to cancel the Outstanding Young Farmer Program for next year. It’s a combination of talking about what’s going on market-wise, weather-wise, and putting that with; this will be virtual. I’m getting very tired of the word virtual because it’s nothing at all like talking to people face to face, but that’s part of the situation.”
In commenting on the US election, a new president will mean a new Secretary of Agriculture. Will the US maintain Republican leadership in the Senate to counterbalancing the Democratic White House? So your job and my job never ends, thank God.
HS: Look in your crystal ball, Orion, and with everything that’s happened, where we’re at, what do you see for agriculture?
Orion: Always going to have to eat, although we’re now looking at plant-based hamburgers and that sort of thing. They come from agriculture. And cattlemen don’t agree with the origin of the plant-based Beyond Meat products, and I don’t either. I’m just old fashioned enough that I say I’m going to continue to enjoy the foods that I’ve enjoyed for my entire life. And it’s going to come from agriculture one way or another. I don’t want laboratory-based foods. I want real food is what I call it, he said.
He gets a little heat on that from consumers and city people who say, “But that’s so terrible for animals. And why should human beings have the right and the opportunity to consume animals when we can grow plants?” But it all still comes from agriculture and the agricultural community, and the families.
Orion thinks and talks about the families that get up early, work long and hard, and have to put up with government and trade regulations and with the weather and markets, and God bless them for being willing to do that.
“And I’m so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with people like you to provide what farmers and ranchers need, which is fruitful information,” he said. “What concerns me is the social media that I think gets misused so many times by people who don’t have to identify themselves and say who they are or what they are, but they can put whatever they want to on social media. So I keep an eye on that as carefully as possible because it can hurt, as we found out in the riots and other activities that we had here this year in the United States. After all, some people get on social media and say, “Meet us in downtown Chicago, and we’ll tear the storefronts down, and we’ll do this and that.” And it’s gotten to the point I have not gone to downtown Chicago since March.”
Orion: Oh, I’ll not walk away from the agricultural industry. We’ll have a new Secretary of Agriculture. Our good friend, Collin Peterson, a Democrat in Minnesota who was chairman of the House Ag Committee, did not win re-election in November. And so we’ll have a new chairman of the House Ag Committee, and it’ll be interesting to see what kind of policy we get from the new administration. But it will be different.” •