Cultivating Success

Kathleen Erickson

is a senior partner with Demeter Communications. Her expertise is focused in the areas of media management, market research, communication strategy, and effective marketing and selling of agricultural products.

She has directed and/or contributed to numerous marketing initiatives for many clients, including crop, livestock, forestry and education firms. She has co-authored more than 35 articles with Purdue University faculty. Erickson's writings have been published across the U.S. and Canada in trade journals, magazines and other print media. She has edited or been contributing editor for several texts, including "Agri-Selling" (Doane's), "Agribusiness Management" (McGraw-Hill) and "Precision Farming Profitability" (Purdue University Press).

She began her career as a farm broadcaster working at the USDA's broadcast division in Washington, D.C., a radio network in the Mid-South and some of Iowa's top farm radio stations. She worked in corporate communications and in research communications with Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., where she taught sales reps, district managers, agronomists and customers about biotech and the seed industry. Erickson also has traveled abroad to build communications programs and projects in Central and South America, Europe and the Middle East. She was an independent consultant for several years.

A 1985 graduate of Iowa State University in agricultural journalism, Erickson has language school accreditation from Centro Linguistico Conversa and has traveled abroad to 20 countries. She is a member of the National Agri-Marketing Association and the National Association of Farm Broadcasting.

Random Acts

She was proudly crowned the Muscatine County, Iowa, fair queen.
She is the only Demeter member that picks bluegrass music regularly and plays seven instruments.
The family goat herd continues to grow, as does the garden patch. It's not unusual to find her making homemade cheese and sauerkraut.

Brushes with Greatness

Sammy Hagar gave her his guitar pick after jamming together before the first Farm Aid Concert and she drank champaign with the Oak Ridge Boys in 1979.
Once fought Sam Donaldson for a multi-box plug-in at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol (and won).
A chance seating assignment next to a Hungarian ambassador during a train ride in Europe resulted in her successfully implementing a trade mission to the U.S.
After breaking a news story, she was on four national radio networks in one day.

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