What job is as fun as a vacation? Larry Steckline had it, but now it’s gone.

For more than 60 years, broadcaster Larry Steckline truly savored his time doing agriculture reports for Kansans across the state and beyond.

“I tell you, that was about much fun as having a vacation,” Steckline said.

He’s actually done the reports, much of which were through his Mid-America Ag Network, for 64 years, but the last couple haven’t been so great. So now Steckline is off the airways for the first time in more than six decades.

“This thing has gotten so crazy,” he said of the state of the world. “Today, I’m afraid to say anything derogatory about anything. It’s a different ballgame, so consequently, it’s not as much fun.”

To understand why speaking his mind was so important to Steckline, you need to know a little about his background.

The farm boy from Ogallah in northwest Kansas grew up milking cows by hand on his family’s farm to then sell the cream.

“I just swore there had to be another way to make a livin’,” he said.

His parents couldn’t afford to send him to college, so when a salesman for a Wichita business school showed up, they accepted on the condition that the school would help Steckline get a bookkeeping job. His plan was to then go to college and become a CPA.

Instead, he sacked potatoes at Dillons until his mother called the school’s president to chide him that her son was working as a stock boy.

So the school hooked him up with a bookkeeping job at a company based at the Wichita Union Stockyards. Steckline decided to take the pay cut from $1.35 at Dillons to $1 an hour at the stockyards since it was in the field he wanted to be in.

“Best decision I ever made.”

In what turned out to be 15 years there, Steckline moved up fast.

“I was making a dollar and a half an hour within six months.”

Still, Steckline hadn’t gone to K-State like so many others at the stockyards, so he wasn’t confident of his footing there.

That’s why when Conlee Smith Jr., president of the stockyards at the time, called him into his office one Monday, Steckline said, “I thought sure that was to fire me.”

Instead, Smith explained how the stockyards employee who did the ag report on KWCH had unexpectedly quit that Friday with no notice.

Smith said the show must go on, and Steckline agreed, asking what Smith recommended.

It wasn’t so much a recommendation as an order: Steckline had to get to Channel 12 by noon to start doing the reports.

“I was hoping I’d have a car wreck on the way out.”

Practice makes perfect

For six months, Steckline said, he was that nervous.

“I practiced and practiced and practiced, and lo and behold, the farmers . . . kind of liked what I said.”

Steckline said he owes his career to those farmers. He became one himself, farming wheat and cattle. He still does today.

Someone then offered Steckline a job doing the reports on a new farm radio station, too.

Through the years, Steckline has been on all three major local television stations and countless radio stations across the state. He became a radio station owner, too, at one point having 23.

At one time, Steckline was doing reports across four states and had as many as 11 live reports a day in the morning and at noon.

“You can’t do markets taped,” he said.

Often, as station management changed, that led to changes for Steckline.

For instance, Steckline said, the manager of KSN “came out to the wheat field to get me when he heard (KWCH) had fired me.”

Steckline said he believes what people liked about his reports is that he told the truth. He said he kept an eye on local and national politicians and told farmers how they could talk to them to get what they wanted. He said everything he did was about sharing news to help farmers make an extra dollar.

Whatever it was, he said, “I was going to talk about it.”

‘Changed Terrible’

Steckline’s reports, which he produced and sold, made him a lot more a lot more money than farming ever has, Steckline said.

However, he said that “politics has changed terrible.”

“I can’t agree with 25% of what’s going on there.”

In the past, he said, he could speak his mind even if it upset someone.

“Yes, I might get a call from them.”

That’s not the case now, Steckline said.

“You really can’t say what you want to say today.”

Steckline, who turned 84 last week, said he still runs a tractor and combine, but he doesn’t have any more radio stations, and now he doesn’t have the ag reports.

Steckline previously sold his ag network to his son, Greg.

Steckline said he’s not sure when he might give up farming.

“Well, I gotta tell ya, age is not always real kind to you healthwise.”

Steckline said he has back issues and some trouble walking, but mostly he said it’s little irksome things — and he’s not complaining.

“Thank the Lord, they’re not big things.”

Steckline says he actually feels “pretty good” about stopping his reports.

“I will miss it tremendously, but . . . I have an inner feeling that it’s the right time.”

This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 10:28 AM.