Farm-To-Airways: Harvest Public Media Is Telling the Heartland’s Stories

Powered by a new grant and Kansas City’s KCUR, this multi-state newsroom expands essential coverage of the Midwest’s vital food and farming issues.

Maria Altman always reminds people about one thing: “Everybody eats.”

The Managing Editor of Harvest Public Media likes to start conversations about what she does with that simple truth. It hints at why Harvest’s reporting resonates with so many people in the Midwest and beyond.

Whether it’s understanding why egg prices are climbing or how wildfires are affecting farmland, the Kansas City-based collaboration knows that food and agriculture touch every life, every day.

Founded in 2010 at KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri, Harvest Public Media offers coverage of our food system from the heart of the country, rich in detail and regional perspective. With 22 partner stations spread across 10 states, Harvest delves into agriculture, environment, and rural life — topics that often go overlooked as small-town newspapers disappear.

“It was one of the first public media regional journalism collaborations,” says C.J. Janovy, Director of Content, Journalism at KCUR. “It was kind of a model and a flagship, and I think it has served really well in those roles in addition to just all the years of great content.”

Altman sees it uniquely valuable, given where they’re reporting from. “We definitely see a need for rural coverage,” she says. “Especially as newspapers and small newspapers in towns disappear, I think people really need a news source that’s covering rural issues.”

Harvest’s strength lies in its collaborative model, featuring reporters stationed across the Midwest. They collaborate on stories that shape everyday life, whether it’s a small-town business struggling with supply chain woes or a new approach to tackling drought in farm country.

“We did a story about state climatologists and how they faced pushback about talking about climate change,” Altman recalls. “We talked with weather experts in seven states and found out that this was an issue for a lot of them — something you only discover when you collaborate broadly.”

Another hallmark of Harvest’s work is its celebration of Midwestern culture. “Anytime a Harvest story is about a particular food with a particular culture associated with it, people love it,” says Janovy. “We had a beautiful story about collard greens and the efforts to preserve different varieties. We also did a piece on how most of the canned pumpkin around Thanksgiving time comes from a specific town in Illinois.”

Harvest is just one of several journalism collaborations that KCUR leads or participates in — others include the Kansas News Service and the NPR Midwest Newsroom, building on a nature of impactful, cross-team storytelling. “KCUR has done such a great job fostering it,” says Altman.

Recently, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) awarded Harvest a million dollar grant to help expand its coverage and reach. Since Harvest was originally started with a CPB grant, Altman sees it as both an opportunity and a further vote of confidence. “It’s really a validation of the work we’ve been doing since 2010,” she says.

The grant will allow Harvest to hire an audience impact editor, launch a newsletter, and ramp up its social media presence. “Reporters are out in the field doing cool things that a lot of people don’t get to see,” Altman explains. “We have some opportunities to have fun with video and other ways of telling our stories.”

Looking ahead, the Harvest team plans to add partners in more states, planning to further extend its footprint to 15 total states. “We’re really focused on the central U.S.,” Altman says, “but it’s a model that’s proved sustainable, and it’s worked well. Ideas are a renewable resource.”

For Janovy, the expansion of Harvest signals broader support for in-depth reporting across the region. “All of this regional expertise in these different focus areas — it’s just really strong and complex in a good way,” she says. “We can tell stories with nuance. And the fact that CPB is stepping in to fund the next iteration is such a validation of what we’ve accomplished.”

Even before the CPB support, Altman has seen this collaborative model support rural news, which can often go under-covered, and build on itself and the hard work of the journalists behind it. “There is this sort of cross-collaboration between collaborations that’s always happening and I think the more that people sort of see the benefits, they’re more enthusiastic and willing to do it.”

Harvest Public Media — anchored by KCUR — is determined to show how reporting on something as universal as eating provides a way to connect us all to stories from the Heartland.