Tanner Winterhof

CEO & Co-Host, Farm4Profit Media

Before Tanner Winterhof was the voice coming through a few hundred thousand tractor cabs, he was the guy on the other side of the desk — the ag lender who sometimes had to say no. Fifteen years in agricultural banking, from loan officer to commercial banker managing a $60–80 million loan portfolio across central Iowa, teaches you something you can’t pick up anywhere else: what actually separates the operations that make it from the ones that don’t. It usually isn’t yield. It’s working capital, cost per acre, and whether the person sitting across the table knows their own numbers cold. That perspective is the foundation under everything Tanner has built since, and it’s the reason Farm4Profit sounds different from every other show in agriculture.

Aurelia, Iowa

Tanner was born in Storm Lake and raised on a swine and row-crop operation outside Aurelia, in the northwest corner of the state — the kind of place where the workday starts before the school bus does. He studied business administration and financial services at AIB College of Business in Des Moines, then went into agricultural lending, where the farm background turned out to be the real credential. He could read a balance sheet, but he could also walk a field and understand what the operator was up against. He never left farming. He simply added a second education on top of it: a decade and a half of watching, up close and in confidence, how hundreds of farm businesses actually worked.

The show finds its shape

Farm4Profit started in 2014, and not as a podcast. It began as the Ames Ag Summit, an in-person event built on a straightforward premise — farmers wanted business education, and almost nobody was delivering it in a form they’d actually sit through. The podcast came in June 2019. Early episodes were recorded wherever there was time and a microphone, including a truck cab. The show found its footing once Corey Hillebo, a fifth-generation farmer from Polk City, came on as co-host and pushed Tanner toward a looser, more conversational delivery. David Whitaker joined to complete the trio, and the split has held ever since — Tanner brings the business substance, Corey makes it sound like a conversation instead of a seminar. It worked. The Farm4Profit Podcast has produced more than 400 episodes, surpassed 3.5 million downloads, and built an audience of roughly 425,000 followers across platforms, including about 64,000 on YouTube — with no traditional marketing budget behind any of it.

Studio 205

Farm4Profit Media operates out of Studio 205, a custom-built recording facility in a former Casey’s General Store in Slater, Iowa, population about 1,500. It’s an unlikely address for a media company that partners with John Deere, Brandt Industries, Performance Livestock Analytics, Corteva, AgXplore, Sukup Manufacturing, Rush Hour Ag, and Beyond the Jacket — which is precisely the point. Tanner’s rule for the business is audience-first, and he applies it to sponsorships the same way he applies it to episodes: the test is whether a farmer comes away better at running a business. Partnerships that pass that test tend to last. The ones that don’t never get made in the first place.

Farms are businesses

The lane Tanner owns is farm profitability — and it’s the one he was trained for. He talks about working capital, interest expense per acre, cash flow, and succession planning in the plain language of someone who has sat on both sides of the loan table. As margins tighten across the industry, that translation work matters more, not less. Tanner doesn’t make market calls; he’s a banker, not an analyst. What he does is help operators figure out which numbers deserve their attention this month, and what to do about them.

On the road, and in the ditch

A meaningful share of Farm4Profit’s work happens away from Slater. Tanner and the team serve as media hosts and on-the-ground reporters across the ag calendar — the U.S. Custom Harvesters convention, the New York Corn & Soybean Growers, CattleCon in Nashville, the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Commodity Classic in San Antonio — bringing back interviews with equipment engineers, agronomists, and policymakers, including a sit-down with USDA Under Secretary Fordyce, always filtered through the same question: what does this mean for the operation? The audience shows up in the other direction, too. When the 2020 derecho flattened corn across Iowa, the show pivoted to coverage and recovery resources within days. When tornadoes hit Iowa and Nebraska in 2024, Farm4Profit’s listeners funded relief. A media company built on trust turns out to be useful when things go sideways.

Away from the mic

Tanner lives in Huxley, Iowa with his wife, Allie. He served on the board of the Ames Foundation, coaches youth sports, runs distances that most people would drive, and can generally be found on a golf course or working through a new bourbon. He is, unapologetically, an Iowa State Cyclones fan.