75 facts about farmers weekly
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75 things you might not know about Farmers WeeklyTRANSCRIPT
75 things you might not know
about
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly
The first issue was published on June 22, 1934
Farmers Weekly
A copy of Farmers Weekly is seen towards the start of hit film Four Weddings and a
Funeral.
Farmers Weekly
Today, through print and our website we reach more than 250,000 people each week.
Farmers Weekly
FW launched a “Send a Tonne” to Africa campaign in 1984, raising £1m for the famine-hit farmers of Africa
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly collated “recipes from country housewives” in its popular Farmhouse Fare book. This first came out in 1935 and was re-published many times,
selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
Farmers Weekly
In May 2009, FWi had more than 4.5m page views from more than 250,000 unique
visitors.
Farmers Weekly
The first editor was a Canadian, Frank James Prewett.
Farmers Weekly
Later editors have been Malcolm Messer, Travers
Legge, Denis Chamberlain, Gary Noble, Ted Fellows
and Stephen Howe.
Farmers Weekly
.
The first woman editor was Jane King, appointed in
2005
Farmers Weekly
Billed as the “champion of British agriculture”, it was
launched under the proprietorship of press
barons Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere.
Farmers Weekly
The registered address in 1934 was 43-44 Shoe
Lane, London EC4.
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly Awards night is one of the biggest nights in the
farming calendar – the audience attending has grown from 400 to 1200 people in five
years.
Farmers Weekly
FW stands for five core values: Independence, authority, challenging, forward-looking and
practical.
Farmers Weekly
FW Classified department were once interrupted taking a
personal ad over the phone from a farmer by the
undertakers coming to collect his deceased wife.
Farmers Weekly
Colour pictures crept into the mag for the first time in the
early 1950s – but only in some adverts. The magazine
became full colour throughout in the 1990s.
Farmers Weekly
We changed our strap-line to “Working For Your Farming
Future” in 2005.
Farmers Weekly
By November 1934, weekly circulation had risen sharply to average 75,000 copies.
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly published 7220 pages last year.
Farmers Weekly
FW has a sister title called Poultry World, which was
originally established as The Fancier’s Gazette in 1874, adopting its present title in
1908.
Farmers Weekly
Poultry World has appeared on Have I Got News For You as a
guest publication. One headline used was, “Bigger
birds lay better”.
Farmers Weekly
The FWiSpace picture galleries contain over 15,985 photos in 331
galleries.
Farmers Weekly
FW has the highest circulation of any UK agricultural journal
at 68,897 copies a week (meaning we sell a million
more copies a year than our nearest competitor).
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly now has over 1100 followers on
Twitter, including presenter Jonathan Ross.
Farmers Weekly
FW was named Business Magazine of the Year in
2006 and was shortlisted for the same award this year.
Farmers Weekly
The first issue contained an article by the-then NFU president S O Ratcliff.
Farmers Weekly
S O Ratcliff was the great grandfather’s brother of the
current Machinery Editor, David Cousins (who, having been with FW for more than 25 years is the longest serving full-time member
of the team).
Farmers Weekly
ICI and Massey were among the first advertisers in 1934.
Farmers Weekly
FW has always been known as “the yellow peril” due to
the colour of its cover.
Farmers Weekly
Because of our high pass-on readership, we have about
190,000 readers every week.
Farmers Weekly
Our website, FWi, was launched 12 years ago.
Farmers Weekly
We once had a reader who was buried with a pile of
FWs under his head so that he’d have something to read
in the afterlife.
Farmers Weekly
If you wanted to contact FW in the early days, you could
have sent a telegram to: Farmweekli, Lud.
Farmers Weekly
The type faces used in FW are Garamond BE and
Conduit. The FW logo type is Zine Sans.
Farmers Weekly
In the livestock prices reported in the first issue, first quality finished cattle
were making 39.0 s per cwt liveweight at Ashford
market.
Farmers Weekly
Graham Harvey, the agricultural story editor for The Archers, used to work
for FW.
Farmers Weekly
FW’s sister magazine Crops was the first agricultural
publication to be printed in colour.
Farmers Weekly
FW is part of Reed Business Information, which is part of Reed Elsevier, a FTSE100
company, with over 200 locations worldwide.
Farmers Weekly
FW has a fan page on Facebook with more than
3400 fans.
Farmers Weekly
The first issue of FW to have a picture, rather than an advert, on the front cover was produced on 2 Oct
1992
Farmers Weekly
A farmer once called the office asking if we could run an obituary of his sheepdog.
Farmers Weekly
Kate Humble, Fiona Bruce, Jon Culshaw, Clare Balding, John
Torode, Jimmy Doherty, Sophie Wessex and the cast of The Archers are just some of the celebrity guests who have attended the FW Awards.
Farmers Weekly
David Richardson has been writing a column since 1992. Prior to that
he wrote a column in Big Farm Weekly (1976-1992) and had a
monthly column in Big Farm Management from 1968 to 1976.
Farmers Weekly
FW helped set up The Farm Holiday Bureau in 1983, which later became Farm
Stay UK.
Farmers Weekly
On average 10 new people sign up to use the
FWiSpace forums and blogs every single day.
Farmers Weekly
Radio 1 once said that FW was the best read magazine
in the loo.
Farmers Weekly
There have been 61 winners and 183 finalists in the FW
Awards since they were launched in 2005.
Farmers Weekly
In 1984, when FW was celebrating its 50th anniversary, the UK feed wheat price for the week ending June 28 was £132.90/t ex-farm, while feed barley was changing
hands for £121.70/t.
Farmers Weekly
Ronnie Barker was spotted reading a copy in Porridge.
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly once produced a special edition
in French, which was handed out at the Paris
Show.
Farmers Weekly
In the 1930s, the paper was promoted on advertising hoardings at Piccadilly
Circus.
Farmers Weekly
Farmers Weekly’s staff photographer Jonathan Page has
clocked up more than three-quarters of a million miles on the road visiting farms during his 20-
year stint in the job.
Farmers Weekly
Articles and exchanges of letters in FW were one of
the driving forces behind the establishment of the Tenant
Farmers Association.
Farmers Weekly
The stories of the FW Awards winners reaches more than 10m people each year via national and regional TV,
radio and press.
Farmers Weekly
Robert Davies, FW’s Wales correspondent, has been
contributing for more than 43 years – his first day was at the Smithfield Show in December
1965.
Farmers Weekly
Prince Charles is a regular reader and has written for
the title.
Farmers Weekly
FW Classified carries 30,000 ads a year varying from million pound estates through £100,000+
combines to £2 pallets.
Farmers Weekly
FW ran its own farms for many years – among them Conrick in Dumfriesshire and Curworthy in Devon.
Farmers Weekly
One-time FW journalist Barry Spikings went on to become
an Oscar-winning film producer, working on The
Deer Hunter starring Robert De Niro.
Farmers Weekly
FW also ran Easton Lodge in Lincolnshire. John Lambkin became manager there in
1974, retiring in 2007.
Farmers Weekly
Also among the FW farms was Vimer in Normandy, France, which Tim and
Chrissie Green have farmed since 1983.
Farmers Weekly
FW publishes a round-up of land prices in Farmland
Market twice a year.
Farmers Weekly
One of FW’s most popular competitions ever was “Spot the
Dog”, where a sheepdog was airbrushed out of a photo and
readers had to guess where its nose would have been.
Farmers Weekly
FW used to publish a sister title called Big Farm Weekly.
Farmers Weekly
FW was based on Fleet Street for a spell, moving to
Surrey in the mid-1970s.
Farmers Weekly
It appeared on the BBC sitcom The Green Green
Grass.
Farmers Weekly
Articles are frequently quoted in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Farmers Weekly
A year’s subscription in 1934 was 13 shillings delivered by post – at the time FW described itself as “the newspaper of the soil”.
Farmers Weekly
There has traditionally been a saying in agriculture that the three
most influential figures in the industry are the Minister of
Agriculture, the president of the NFU and the editor of FW.
Farmers Weekly
When FW was launched, the most popular tractor was a Fordson Standard costing
just £156.
Farmers Weekly
One of the questions FW journalists get asked most is: Are you from a farming
background? Most can answer: Yes.
Farmers Weekly
Readers still refer fondly to one-time columnist, farmer-cum-author A G Street, who
died in 1966.
Farmers Weekly
Video footage from key industry events is available on FWi –
we’ve made short films of everything from Cereals and the Royal Show to farmers
doing a Full Monty-style strip.
Farmers Weekly
In 1984 the circulation of FW was more than 120,000, but our
penetration of farmer-readers is now higher than it was then, a
reflection on the fall in the numbers involved in agriculture
and the size of holdings.
Farmers Weekly
FW is read around the world, including, to name just a few of
the places you may not expect, The Falkland Islands, Iceland, Guyane, Barbados
and Trinidad & Tobago.
Farmers Weekly
Farmers sent us 1700 pictures last year for our
harvest highlights gallery on the website.