Communicator of Achievement

The Communicator of Achievement Award (COA) is the highest honor bestowed on members who have distinguished themselves within and beyond their profession.

Nominations are solicited from NPW members, with selection made by past COA winners who are current members. NPW may then enter its winner into national competition. Criteria include exceptional professional achievement, community service, and service to NPW and NFPW, with overall impact being a major consideration.

Barb Bierman Batie, Lexington

Through her 40-plus years working for news organizations across the state, she gained a reputation as knowledgeable, dependable and accurate, both as a reporter of news specializing in agriculture and as a news source interviewed by others.

Barb grew up on a small dairy farm near Battle Creek, Neb., graduated in 1976 from high school and in 1980 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she majored in home economics and journalism.

Her first journalism job was in Cozad, Neb., and because she was the only staff member with a farm background, she was asked to put together the Cattlemen’s Special, a tabloid insert for the annual Dawson County Cattlemen’s Tour. At the first interview, during her first week on the job, she met her future husband because the feedlot he and his father operated were the first stop on the tour.

In 1985, at the height of the farm crisis, husband and wife Barb and Don Batie started farming together. They’re a team. That’s why you might find Barb driving a grain truck during harvest or Don helping with registration at an NPW conference. And that’s why Barb and Don were both selected as members of the Nebraska Hall of Agricultural Achievement.

They’re everywhere that a Nebraska ag producer should be, but Barb is also there as a journalist. Her dual role helped her carve out a niche unique in the state, and perhaps the nation. Rarely would a woman journalist be invited on a governor’s trade mission, but Barb accompanied Gov. Pete Ricketts to Germany in 2019, where they pitched their products. Having lived in Germany as a Farm Youth Exchange student and being able to speak German may have helped, but none of that was needed for the Governor to appoint her to the Nebraska Sesquicentennial Commission, which organized the Nebraska 150 celebration in 2017.

Although Barb is a board member of state and national organizations, she does just as much locally, helping at the schools, her church, the Dawson County Museum, the local theater staffed by volunteers, and 4-H in which she and Don are co-club leaders.

Barb and Don have hosted eight International Farm Youth Exchange students plus numerous other individuals and groups, including the 2011 NFPW Pre-Conference “Coffee in the Cornfield” at which participants were treated to homemade cinnamon rolls and opportunities to sit in the cab of a tractor and a combine. A member from North Carolina even got to start the combine – with Don in the jump seat.

Whether Barb Batie is hosting groups, attending meetings, writing news stories or on CNBC with her husband talking about “Tough Times in the Heartland” (2017), she’s using her journalistic skills to help others understand the importance and needs of agriculture to help feed the world.