75 facts about farmers weekly

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.