The National Farm Radio Forum
How It Worked

This is the story of a social movement with a unique Canadian flavour.

It was an experiment in adult education, national in scope but limited to farm people at a time when farmers , the male sector especially, were noted for their individualism, for attempts to launch national farm organizations had been timid and abortive. But the time was ripe for experiment. The period for its brief flare up was 1942 -1965. It was war time and the time of optimistic post war reconstruction. But essentially it was a product of the inter war years when Canada had a brief respite from colonial domination having shaken off most of the ties to the British Empire we had not yet been absorbed into the hegemony of the United States of America. We were not only beginning to fashion our own foreign policy but also create new national organizations that were not copies of institutions developed elsewhere. I am thinking of the Canadian Clubs. The United Church of Canada , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ,the Canadian Association for Adult Education among many others.. The last two mentioned along with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture figure prominently in this story for they were joint sponsors of the

National Farm Radio Forum.

Before undertaking to describe the project it might be helpful to say more about it as subject matter for it has been widely reported in studies of broadcasting policy, as an experiment in communication, as a

program in militant social action, as an example of creativity in adult education. A short bibliography listed below will demonstrate the range of interest in the project.

The name National Farm Radio Forum (NFRF) signifies its purpose and scope. It reached from sea to sea, a challenge to regionalism. Its target the farm people of Canada. Unlike most farm organizations at that time it was included both men and women and since there were few baby sitters the children came along too in many cases. The word "radio" indicates the use made of a relatively new technology to span the enormous distances that separated the listeners.

The NFRF had many unique features which it contributed to its success. It was not a copy, though in time it copied but with less success in Canada by the Citizen's Forum and the Labour Forum programs: the former sponsored jointly by the CBC and the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE), and then later with the unions. It was also copied abroad with UNESCO encouragement in India and several countries in Africa. In fact, the radio forum concept was, for a time, a Canadian export. Its uniqueness sprang from a number of factors. The CAAE, organized in 1935, represented a coalition many interest and organization, but its director E. A. Corbett believed adult education should lead to social action and reform, a view that was being powerfully promoted by leaders of the Extension Department at the University of St. Francis Xavier, as well as the left-leaning members of the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order. Then too the study group and the folk school as developed in Scandinavia had many proponents in opposition to conventional formal lectures offered by university extension departments at that time. H. H. Hannam, the

president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture who had visited Denmark was one of the proponents. All of these interests were in play when the radio listening group was first conceived. It explains why Corbett and Hannam put the prestige of their organizations behind the launching of the project, but the energy and hard work of a group of young farmers' sons in Ontario was necessary to bring it to fruition. They (and I was one of them) had launched a wildly successful New Canada Movement earlier in the 1930's which soon collapsed for lack of lands and organizational know-how.

One of this group was Orville Shugg who was appointed in 1939 as supervisor of farm broadcasts at the CBC. Once the concept of the project was conceived he was in place to develop the broadcast components. Leonard Harman was the educational secretary of the United Farmers of Ontario where he had the means and skill to organize groups in Ontario. While I was director of the Carnegie-funded adult education program at Macdonald College of McGill University, which was intended to serve the scattered anglophone communities in Quebec. I had been organizing study groups in that area since 1938 but had

experienced difficulty keeping in touch with them. I had no way of knowing if the meetings were continuing, or what new materials were needed to stimulate their discussions. I struck on the idea of leaping over the unplowed winter roads using the magic of radio. At that time it was believed this new media should serve some useful purpose and that it should have an educational potential, so I had no difficulty getting air time.

At first, my broadcast series, Community Clinic, was aimed at individuals who belonged to groups, using the usual one way communication method, but soon refinements were to follow. We urged the groups to meet to listen to the broadcast, which imposed an element of uniformity over the discussion since this enabled us to mail out in advance carefully thought out questions for discussion along with supplementary reading matter coinciding with the topic of the broadcast. We still did not know if the group had

met. We still had no inkling of the quality of their deliberations. We began to insist upon reports back from the group secretaries and to offer inducements, prizes and special mention on the next broadcast with a quote from the report, naming the group and its secretary. Radio was still a great novelty, so that the possibility of being named on a Community Clinic program provided the incentive for regular and prompt reporting.

Thus the group members were no longer passive listeners, and a two way system of communication was formed long before the concept of feedback became popular. By reporting the conclusions arrived at in the groups in the next broadcast, the members were given a collective voice, a release from the passivity of just listening and just discussing. One commentator called this a true social intervention. It reflected my own belief that what ordinary people think and want are important, but they also need to be informed. The written reports were like an informal exam. Yet these people are proud, in effect, extraordinary so we could not think of giving them marks, but by reporting back the variety of responses to the discussion questions they could compare their own responses to others.

The concept just described evolved over two or three years. Early in 1940, the CBC and the CAAE hired Neil Morrison to work with me on Community Clinic to test out different methods and report back. They even set up a small network linking small private stations in Hull and Sherbrooke with the CBC station in Montreal, an unorthodox arrangement easily worked out with a few phone calls. Those were the days!

Morrison's report was positive and it was well-received. As a consequence an eastern Canada network launched a 12 broadcast series in January 1941, linking Ontario with Quebec and the Maritimes. Efforts were made to organize groups in all five provinces. Once again the response was favorable, so that fall NFRF was launched under the formal sponsorship of the CBC, the CAAE, and CFA an unusual partnership to say the least, built on mutual trust and shared ideologies. Shugg was in the CBC, Hannam was president of the CFA, with Corbett's encouragement.

The full series of 20 broadcasts in 1941-42 set the pattern until the broadcasts were canceled in 1965. The tables displayed in the appendix report attendance numbers for the first 10 years. They report that there had been a slow decline from the best year, 1950-51, when 1,606 groups were registered. The year before, 20,769 was the largest number of participants in any one meeting. A closer examination of these figures shows that about half the groups were in Ontario, and that the groups in Ontario and Quebec were larger than elsewhere, the average for PEI being 6 per group. It was claimed NFRF was the largest adult education program in the world, a satisfying hyperbole for Canada, even if that claim was sheer guesswork.

Nonetheless a gratifying response was received which sustained a large casual audience even in cities, though I do not have exact numbers. A joke current among NFRF leaders was the claim that the program had a large audience in Ottawa consisting of politicians and civil servants. A slogan appearing on our literature--Read. Listen. Discuss. Act.-- represented an underlying assumption: people could do something about the problems that beset them. Some issues lent themselves to local solution, but others called for governmental action. In either case, education should precede action. As the war effort intensified the federal government began to institute controls on such items as prices, manpower, gasoline, and tire coupons. Many were imposed on farm operations. These became topics on our program and the feedback reviews, which were broadcast, often criticized the government. Hence, the attentive listeners in Ottawa, and hence the popularity among farm people as long as they believed Ottawa was listening...and responding.

We soon learned that in some groups important discussions were occurring after the questions for discussion we provided were answered. These turned to local issues which called for attention and lent themselves to local initiative. These came to be known as Action Projects which soon became a significant off-shoot of what began as a national program. This began to light hundreds of local "bush fires." Some of these became a coordinated campaign like the program for local forums to send radios to India where a radio forum project had been launched only to discover many villages did not have a single radio. Health services, or their lack, was another topic that set off a series of co-op medical insurance projects, usually on a county-wide basis involving several forums. This was a precursor to national health insurance. In other cases local co-ops and farm groups gained support indirectly from leadership that emerged from local forums.

Despite its popularity and spectacular growth, the registration of local forums began a slow decline after 1952, culminating in the cancellation of the broadcast in 1965. A series of explanations for both growth and decline have been offered, but no systematic study has been attempted so far. A shallow assessment is attributed to technological change. Radio was a novelty, and with the arrival of television the fickle farmers simply abandoned radio-led groups. The forums were easy to organize due to wartime anxiety, while restrictions on gasoline encouraged people to meet locally. The post-war atmosphere was too euphoric and relaxed for the serious grappling with concrete problems.

The economics of farming changed after World War II from mixed farming on a semi-subsistence basis to a more specialized, high capital investment programs. With increased mechanization and rural electrification the life style of farm people changed. These were the conventional explanations for decline.

On the other hand, those interested in group process offered other explanations. There was a limited series of topics that would appeal to a national audience, so after 10 years there was a lot of repetition. The farmers tired of threshing old straw. Furthermore, the groups were largely organized on a neighborhood basis; this limited the availability of skilled leaders, and on controversial issues members were reticent about engaging in serious debate that could sour neighbourly relationships. In some cases the action projects were so engrossing there was no energy left over for forum meetings.

In my view all of these explanations are relevant, but it does not explain why NRFR went down while Women's Institutes, Junior Farmers and 4H continued to thrive. The fact that they received substantial support from governments, and in some cases corporations, while NFRF received very little must be taken into account. There was too much dependence on the stimulus of the broadcast, so when the broadcasts were canceled, the whole project collapsed.

In my view, NFRF suffered from more profound causes though all those just named were factors. It was weakened by benign neglect in each province and nationally as well. The situation in Ontario in 1951-52 is typical.

In that year Ontario had around 800 forums representing over 12,000 participants, but its total budget was as follows

Ontario Dept. of Agriculture	$ 2,000
United Coop of Ontario	$ 2,000
Ontario Federation of Agr.	$ 3,000
Donated by Forums	$16,746
Total	$23,746

 

This amount required a substantial payment to the national office for the study guides, rent, secretary and a full-time field man. This was not a budget adequate to administer an adult education project of 800 groups.

In my view the $7,000 provided by 3 sponsoring organizations was a calculated political decision. The Farm Forums were too popular to ignore, and too dangerous to encourage with adequate support. The farmer support of around $1.25 per annum as niggardly too. This budget does not include the substantial contribution of the CBC, the broadcasts and the time of members of Shugg's Farm Broadcasting Department at headquarters and in its regional offices. Undoubtedly its astonishing early growth disguised an organizational weakness. There was also a growing fear of socialism. The supervising strength of the Soviet Union and the ambiguous promises of the Four Freedoms in the rhetoric of Churchill and Roosevelt had created expectations for a new social order among those who had suffered during the depression, and endured deprivations and loss of kin during the war. It is my recollection that the broadcasts and the study guides were subject to minute scrutiny by the tireless enemies of the CBC and spokesmen of big business. Everything had to be balanced in the discussion material and in the broadcasts. So they tended to blandness and oversimplification. Though the result was often entertaining as when J. S. McLean, the genial president of Canada Packers was pitted against the ascorbic social democrat Agnes MacPhail M.P. One amusing episode illustrates the temper of the times, the relentless scrutiny to which the program was subjected and the populist nonchalance of those who were fashioning the experiment. A translation of a Danish folk song was popular in some farm groups. It was decided the theme music would be a male quartet singing its first verse:

Men of the soil we have laboured unending

We have fed the world with the grain we have sown

Now with the dawn of a new day ascending

Giants of the earth at last we rise to claim our own.

Needless to say the critics grumbled about its musicality as well as what they claimed its incendiary message. Finally after several years a typical Canadian compromise was arrived at. The quartet was retained but only allow to hum the music. Of course most of the farm people already knew the words.

It seems to me in retrospect that NFRF received an enthusiastic initial response from farm people because it seemed to promise genuine reform and social justice. Eventually, their support fell away from what appeared to be a paper tiger. I suppose many of its members concluded that the problems were more complex than they had been led to believe and they could find little evidence of fundamental change. All the causes I have enumerated undoubtedly contributed to the demise of NFRF, but it is possible that farm people themselves lacked the will to fight their own battles, unless one chooses to believe that intractable economic forces really determined the outcome. Yet, I still believe 65 years after the collapse of the New Canadian Movement and of NFRF that the effort was worthwhile. Despite disappointment and apparent failure I agree with Wendell Berry, who has written "Its no use saying its no use."

As I look back I resonate to the lines of a West Coast native woman. Since I have forgotten her name I thank her now for expressing my own emotions as well.

Oh, my tracks are still there

where I use to walk

Oh, the trail is still nice

I almost cried when I saw my tracks.

 

APPENDIX

Membership Data NFRF

Since all Farm Forums in Canada do not meet each week, all members do not attend each meeting, and all meetings do not report, it is difficult to estimate accurately the total participating membership in the project, but these proved to be inflated by the inclusion of reports which could best be described as well-intentioned. It was therefore decided to base membership figures on the largest number of reports on any one broadcast, but this gave an unduly low figure. In recent years provincial offices have tried to avoid padding registration figures and have usually counted as active forums only those that have reported a reasonable number of times.

 

Year	PEI	NB&NS	Que.	Ont.	Man.	Sask.	Alta.	BC	Total Number of Farm Forums Registered
1941-42				430					430
1942-43	26	77	83	448	86	106	96		922
1943-44	10	70	82	646	23	137	57	26	1,051
1944-45	27	78	75	701	38	60	31	17	1,027
1945-46	43	140	98	759	90	104	55	21	1,310
1946-47	54	176	135	636	73	97	34	21	1,226
1947-48	60	157	134	726	87	130	36	21	1,351
1948-49	92	190	139	853	109	144	44	17	1,588
1949-50	83	210	135	865	116	142	40	15	1,606
1950-51	62	175	122	875	64	118	36	13	1,465
1951-52	62	126	102	793	38	107	38	9	1,275