Five years ago, my colleagues and I at Glacier FarmMedia set out to change the agriculture publishing landscape in Ontario.
We didn’t know how it would go, and it was a major leap for the company, but on the occasion of this, our fifth anniversary print edition, I believe we’ve had an impact on the industry and I hope we’ve given farmers better information to help them make their business decisions.
It’s also been a very fun run for those of us who have spent a lot of time on this product, and thank you for tuning in.
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We greatly appreciate the support of the agriculture community including the increasing number of companies and organizations who are buying advertising, both online and in print, and the farmers who continue to read what we write and create.
We can’t do any of what we do without you.
We’re laser focused on reporting information that has an effect on farmers who make most of their living from farming today. That means we’ve been deliberate about what we do and do not cover and that focus has served us well.
We’ve always been digital first at Farmtario. That’s our jargon for the fact that we will publish the news as it happens on our website, in our popular daily email newsletter and on social media and not wait for the newspaper. Each of those products is different and the news you view digitally isn’t the same as what you get in the newspaper. I encourage you to try them all. We actually published online for more than a month before our first print publication hit the mail back in 2018.
We continue to work hard to find new ways to bring you content, where you need it and when you need it, and we can only do that digitally and in various forms of media including audio and video.
That said, we hear the many farmers who tell us they will continue to choose a print publication first.
There’s nothing in the digital world like what we can deliver in print — the complete product, designed beautifully, contained in a limited number of pages.
I wanted to give a shout out to our Farmtario staff who have worked hard on our Ontario project in the past five years. Energetic salesperson extraordinaire Diane Houlachan and I were the first two employees. Both of us have moved into larger roles with Glacier FarmMedia, but we both continue to keep our hands on the ‘baby’ as it continues to grow.
Lillie Ann Morris has provided her years of wisdom and exceptional sales skills to our growth and our larger advertising clients. Other major sales contributors have included Lisa Graham and Denise Bott.
Richard Haddock and Trish Lindsay have helped power forward our growing sales team, and speaking of, welcome to Kaitlin Henderson who joined our team this month.
Kristy Nudds has more than ably taken over from me as editor with her excellent eye for what is news in the agriculture community. Thanks to Jen Glenney who was our first staff reporter and whose job is now filled by Diana Martin, with her fine journalistic and photography skills.
We wouldn’t be where we are without the significant number of contributors to our publication, especially farmer/journalists Stew Slater and Matt McIntosh, who have written vast amounts of content for us since day one.
Behind the scenes are a large number of other Glacier FarmMedia staff who have been integral to our continued growth, including sales support and digital product sales, web developers, design and production staff, editors, copy editors and reporters at our sister publications and a host of others.
We’ve had unwavering support from our senior management and that’s been appreciated and shows in the consistency of the product.
As you can see, there’s a significant and growing team that helps bring the farm news into your web browser, email box, social media feeds and mailbox.
I look forward to what we and the industry can do in the next five years.
Where do you think we should go? What can we do better? Let me know at [email protected], or on Twitter @jgreig.
