Local Hero Awardee: Monte Belmonte

Since 2003, CISA has recognized farmers, institutions, businesses, and everyday community members whose work helps sustain local agriculture. Monte Belmonte was presented with a 2025 Local Hero Award at CISA’s annual meeting on April 9, 2025, with these remarks:

Monte has been a very visible public face (and voice) in the Valley for nearly 20 years. He was the morning host on The River from 2006-2023, and now he is the host, with Kaliis Smith, of The Fabulous 413 on NEPM. 

I asked Monte about his background and how he got into the world of radio, and because our conversation was on April 1st I am still not sure that this is all true, but here we go: as a wayward teen, Monte found a mentor in a guitar-playing Baptist youth pastor, which led him to study theology at a Christian College, through which he had the opportunity travel to Calcutta, meet Mother Teresa, and spend a semester in Jersualem, and those experiences led to a bit of a crisis of faith and a very early mid-life crisis. His now-mother-in-law said, well, you love music and you’re a good talker, so how about radio? He got an internship at a station in eastern Mass, and his apparently perfect Al Gore impression got him on the air during the dragged out 2000 election. A couple years later, his wife Melissa chose UMass for grad school, and Monte got a job at the River in Northampton, and the rest is history! 

But CISA doesn’t give Local Hero awards for unlikely origin stories. We are honoring Monte because throughout his career, he has chosen to use his platform in support of his values. For many years, he did the most unpleasant thing he could think of – camping – to raise funds for the Cancer Connection. He is still the leader of the March for Food Bank, an annual fundraiser for the Food Bank of Western Mass, where he pushes a shopping card from Springfield to Greenfield over two days, highlighting just how geographically small our Valley is, despite huge divides in food access between communities. And he has been a central part of the revitalization of the Shea Theater, bringing a hub for the arts back to Franklin County. 

With CISA, he has created space for weekly interviews with local farms and food businesses on both WRSI and NEPM. He has been such a valuable partner in helping us share farmer stories and in building that connection between local farmers and the broader community. He has further supported that effort by volunteering to emcee Field Notes, our annual storytelling event, every year since its inception.  

These examples all showcase Monte’s fixation (in a good way!) on our region – highlighting what makes it special, supporting the important work that serves our communities, building connections between people and neighborhoods and good works. This is why his show on NEPM is called “The Fabulous 413” rather than “The Monte Belmonte show.” Radio waves cover a specific radius, and he is focused on serving the region his voice reaches. 

So far I’ve talked about big visible projects, but there’s something subtle I want to highlight about Monte’s approach to his work. He doesn’t shy away from talking about complicated, wonky topics, and he approaches them with his trademark wit and deep dedication to puns. This is important because it makes these topics accessible and engaging – he has an innate understanding of how to break things down for his audience. It also wouldn’t be possible to do well if he didn’t take the time to understand those nuances himself, and he does. Ask him about HIP,  the Healthy Incentives Program, or about the challenges that local farms face – he approaches his work with a deep curiosity and dedication to understanding the truth, and then he spins that into something that helps his listeners understand the stakes of an issue, and relate to it, and care about it. 

Now, most of us don’t have a platform like Monte’s. But we do all have a voice, and Monte’s example invites us each to think about how we each want to use that voice in support of the things we value.

So for his ongoing dedication to sharing stories from and about our local food system, for communicating about complicated issues with wit and accessibility, and for consistently using his platform in support of good works, CISA is proud to present this Local Hero award to Monte Belmonte.