Both of his parents were teachers. While at UT, Johnson worked as sports editor at The Daily Beacon. He played football, baseball and basketball as a youth and said he had always thought he would end up a sports writer. Instead, agricultural writing has taken him to New Zealand to write about sheep farming and Egypt and Australia to write about cotton. He has been to almost every state in the U.S., too, telling the stories of farmers, their crops and their fears for the future of farming.
None are about agriculture.
It had the largest circulation for an agricultural magazine at that time, and Johnson said it probably still does. He left there recently, opting to become a freelance writer working out of his home in rural Townsend. He and wife Patti, who he met while working in Minneapolis, have a daughter, Ellen, 17. She is a student at Alcoa High School. And while it would seem Johnson has a full plate, he said there was something else he felt like he needed to do.