75 things you might not know about Farmers Weekly

1. 75 things you might not
know
about
Farmers Weekly

2. The first issue was published
on June 22, 1934
Farmers Weekly

3. A copy of Farmers Weekly is
seen towards the start of hit
film Four Weddings and a
Funeral.
Farmers Weekly

4. Today, through print and our
website we reach more than
250,000 people each week.
Farmers Weekly

5. FW launched a “Send a
Tonne” to Africa campaign
in 1984, raising £1m for the
famine-hit farmers of Africa
Farmers Weekly

6. 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

7. In May 2009, FWi had more
than 4.5m page views from
more than 250,000 unique
visitors.
Farmers Weekly

8. The first editor was a Canadian,
Frank James Prewett.
Farmers Weekly

9. Later editors have been
Malcolm Messer, Travers
Legge, Denis Chamberlain,
Gary Noble, Ted Fellows
and Stephen Howe.
Farmers Weekly

10. The first woman editor was
Jane King, appointed in
.
2005
Farmers Weekly

11. Billed as the “champion of
British agriculture”, it was
launched under the
proprietorship of press
barons Lord Beaverbrook
and Lord Rothermere.
Farmers Weekly

12. The registered address in
1934 was 43-44 Shoe
Lane, London EC4.
Farmers Weekly

13. 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

14. FW stands for five core
values: Independence,
authority, challenging,
forward-looking and
practical.
Farmers Weekly

15. 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

16. 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

17. We changed our strap-line to
“Working For Your Farming
Future” in 2005.
Farmers Weekly

18. By November 1934, weekly
circulation had risen sharply
to average 75,000 copies.
Farmers Weekly

19. Farmers Weekly published
7220 pages last year.
Farmers Weekly

20. 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

21. 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

22. The FWiSpace picture
galleries contain over
15,985 photos in 331
galleries.
Farmers Weekly

23. 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

24. Farmers Weekly now has
over 1100 followers on
Twitter, including presenter
Jonathan Ross.
Farmers Weekly

25. FW was named Business
Magazine of the Year in
2006 and was shortlisted for
the same award this year.
Farmers Weekly

26. The first issue contained an
article by the-then NFU
president S O Ratcliff.
Farmers Weekly

27. 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

28. ICI and Massey were among
the first advertisers in 1934.
Farmers Weekly

29. FW has always been known
as “the yellow peril” due to
the colour of its cover.
Farmers Weekly

30. Because of our high pass-on
readership, we have about
190,000 readers every
week.
Farmers Weekly

31. Our website, FWi, was
launched 12 years ago.
Farmers Weekly

32. 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

33. If you wanted to contact FW
in the early days, you could
have sent a telegram to:
Farmweekli, Lud.
Farmers Weekly

34. The type faces used in FW
are Garamond BE and
Conduit. The FW logo type
is Zine Sans.
Farmers Weekly

35. 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

36. Graham Harvey, the
agricultural story editor for
The Archers, used to work
for FW.
Farmers Weekly

37. FW’s sister magazine Crops
was the first agricultural
publication to be printed in
colour.
Farmers Weekly

38. FW is part of Reed Business
Information, which is part of
Reed Elsevier, a FTSE100
company, with over 200
locations worldwide.
Farmers Weekly

39. FW has a fan page on
Facebook with more than
3400 fans.
Farmers Weekly

40. 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

41. A farmer once called the
office asking if we could run
an obituary of his sheepdog.
Farmers Weekly

42. 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

43. 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

44. FW helped set up The Farm
Holiday Bureau in 1983,
which later became Farm
Stay UK.
Farmers Weekly

45. On average 10 new people
sign up to use the
FWiSpace forums and blogs
every single day.
Farmers Weekly

46. Radio 1 once said that FW
was the best read magazine
in the loo.
Farmers Weekly

47. There have been 61 winners
and 183 finalists in the FW
Awards since they were
launched in 2005.
Farmers Weekly

48. 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

49. Ronnie Barker was spotted
reading a copy in Porridge.
Farmers Weekly

50. Farmers Weekly once
produced a special edition
in French, which was
handed out at the Paris
Show.
Farmers Weekly

51. In the 1930s, the paper was
promoted on advertising
hoardings at Piccadilly
Circus.
Farmers Weekly

52. 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

53. Articles and exchanges of
letters in FW were one of
the driving forces behind the
establishment of the Tenant
Farmers Association.
Farmers Weekly

54. The stories of the FW Awards
winners reaches more than
10m people each year via
national and regional TV,
radio and press.
Farmers Weekly

55. 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

56. Prince Charles is a regular
reader and has written for
the title.
Farmers Weekly

57. FW Classified carries 30,000
ads a year varying from
million pound estates
through £100,000+
combines to £2 pallets.
Farmers Weekly

58. FW ran its own farms for
many years – among them
Conrick in Dumfriesshire
and Curworthy in Devon.
Farmers Weekly

59. 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

60. FW also ran Easton Lodge in
Lincolnshire. John Lambkin
became manager there in
1974, retiring in 2007.
Farmers Weekly

61. Also among the FW farms
was Vimer in Normandy,
France, which Tim and
Chrissie Green have farmed
since 1983.
Farmers Weekly

62. FW publishes a round-up of
land prices in Farmland
Market twice a year.
Farmers Weekly

63. 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

64. FW used to publish a sister
title called Big Farm Weekly.
Farmers Weekly

65. FW was based on Fleet
Street for a spell, moving to
Surrey in the mid-1970s.
Farmers Weekly

66. It appeared on the BBC
sitcom The Green Green
Grass.
Farmers Weekly

67. Articles are frequently quoted
in the House of Commons
and the House of Lords.
Farmers Weekly

68. 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

69. 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

70. When FW was launched, the
most popular tractor was a
Fordson Standard costing
just £156.
Farmers Weekly

71. One of the questions FW
journalists get asked most
is: Are you from a farming
background? Most can
answer: Yes.
Farmers Weekly

72. Readers still refer fondly to
one-time columnist, farmer-
cum-author A G Street, who
died in 1966.
Farmers Weekly

73. 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

74. 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

75. 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

76. Farmers sent us 1700
pictures last year for our
harvest highlights gallery on
the website.
Farmers Weekly