It’s now just over a year since The Breakdown with INFB – Indiana Farm Bureau’s monthly podcast – made its debut, and so far, the program has to be considered a success.
The first two episodes of The Breakdown rolled out January 2023, and the podcast has offered a new episode each month ever since.
"When we first started, we thought a success would be 50 listeners. We really didn’t know how much interest there was,” said INFB staff member Heidi Gant, who with fellow staff member Garrett Kelly is the co-host of the program.
“We now have more than 120 subscribers – more than double what our goal was to begin with – and we’ve had 1,700 total downloads,” Gant said.
“We’ve had a really great response from our members,” noted Debra DeCourcy, APR, INFB executive director of marketing.
INFB began researching the idea of launching a podcast in 2021.
“Our members continued to ask for more communication channels, and several of them were asking for a podcast,” DeCourcy said. So INFB started looking into the possibility, talking to other state Farm Bureaus and other ag groups.
“Back then, only a handful were doing a podcast,” DeCourcy said.
Over the months since its debut, The Breakdown has covered a variety of topics and featured a variety of guests including American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall, Christmas tree growers, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and the dairy farmers who delivered the drink of milk to the winner of the Indianapolis 500.
“We also featured the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau on the subject of water – one of our legislative priorities for this year,” DeCourcy said.
“The content will continue to change and continue to broaden, and we hope to have some additional national guests. But we will always focus on what’s important to our members,” she added.
INFB is always looking for possible guests or topics. If you have any suggestions on guests you want to hear from or topics you’d like addressed, email INFB at thebreakdown@infb.org.