The FW team has had an interesting week listening to our customers - farmers. Last Friday, a group of livestock producers spent a day in the FW office in Sutton, Surrey to tell us what they thought of our products and how we could improve what we do. As always, it was invaluable feedback, particularly in learning how we can mix and match content in the magazine with the website offering. Space in print is pretty restricted these days but we have this limitless resource with www.fwi.co.uk and the key is to use it and our time wisely on the things that farmers find most useful.
One of the main lessons for me from this meeting was the need to "keep it simple" and spell out what things mean for the ordinary farmer at grassroots. The guys told us that they want the bigger picture stuff in terms of industry news and developments but we could do more to explain how this impacts on Joe Bloggs the farmer, depending on his/her type of enterprise. I guess we already knew this but it's important to be reminded of it. So for example on the issue of the blue tongue vaccine, more detail on the likely costs and implications for a typical beef producer and not just the topline on what it costs the whole industry. Obvious really, but sometimes you get so close to the story that it's easy to miss the basics.
Yesterday we also had fantastic feedback from web users on early proposals for changes to our site. Researching audience needs before we revise the products is absolutely key. So we've conducted a series of face to face, in depth interviews with typical website users to find out their attitudes to the internet, to fwi itself and to our plans to update and improve it. We call it useability research and it included business farmers, an agronomist, a farming student and someone in an environmental role. What did we discover? Well most of these people are frequent users of fwi and other websites so they are pretty web savvy, clued up and very clear about what they want and don't want. They've given us a fantastic steer on how to move the site forward - making it easier to access, more relevant and an essential tool. I won't say any more at this stage because it's such early days and I don't want to give anything away to competitors. Suffice to say that we were pleased by the wholly positive reaction from users to the changes we are looking to make. More details later. Website traffic has hit record levels in the last couple of months so we are reassured that we're doing something right but there is always a lot of room for improvement.
My blog is about encouraging customers - farmers and advertisers - to talk to us about everything we do. So don't hesitate to get stuck in and have your say..... good and bad comments...... we need to listen and will respond. Comments please?
Out of the blue on Thursday we heard that Reed Elsevier is to sell off Reed Business Information, which amounts to all its global print and online businesses that are dependent on advertising revenues, including the Farmers Weekly Group. As you can imagine, it's been an unsettling time for us as we get to grips with what it all means. Firstly, Elsevier has decided to divest because it sees advertising led businesses as too cyclical and it wants to concentrate on other business models such as user pays and data services instead. It will sell all its magazines and websites in the UK, US and Europe.
Farmers Weekly is one of the strongest brands in the UK stable and inevitably is getting picked up in press headlines, which makes it sound a bit like we are the only titles to be sold but in truth we are one of many. Our leaders tell us that there has already been a phenomenal amount of interest in the group and is hopeful that all the products will be sold as a whole. It may be many months though before there is any definite news.
I will keep readers posted about developments as soon as I have them. Our view at Farmers Weekly is that it is business as usual and that we must focus on continuing to deliver quality information products for farmers and the industry. Without doubt that's the most helpful thing we can do for any prospective buyer interested in taking over. We're confident but not complacent.
Under Reed Elsevier's ownership Farmers Weekly has flourished and therefore there's always a sadness to leave a good parent. However, the future under a new owner could be even more exciting and open up new opportunities for the brand. That's the way I want to look at it right now.
It may come as a shock to many of you - all of a sudden farmers are flavour of the month with politicians. The Prime Minister, no less, and his secretary of state Hilary Benn have been queuing up to reassure, encourage and show they care. Both attended the NFU centenary conference in London this week.
Benn talked of an industry that had innovated, adapted and was full of entrepreneurs. Brown gushed that it was "the hard work, ingenuity, resiliance and courage of farmers in difficult circumstances that the whole country admires". Such sentiments may have something to do with the NFU celebrating its 100th birthday or, more importantly, an increasing appreciation of the strategic value farmers bring to future food, energy and environmental security.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking it. Farmers need all the support they can get, particularly from ministers and should take the praise positively not suspiciously. Working with government to find solutions has to be better than constant confrontation. But then Gordon Brown reminded us that he was treading hallowed ground. Some 50 years ago it was Winston Churchill who twice addressed the NFU annual conference and on its 75th birthday it was Margarert Thatcher who did the honours. Can you imagine Maggie with her handbag standing up in front of a vociferous group of farmers? I would love to have been a fly on the wall. If any readers/users remember this amazing spectacle do let us know.
It's easy to go stir crazy in the office, so yesterday I joined 350 odd people attending the 2008 Sentry Conference where FW was the media partner. A big pat on the back to David Richardson and his Sentry colleagues for organising another impressive event and for being courageous enough to put a global warming dissenter on the speaker platform.
We were treated to a feast of ideas and theories on the theme: matching the food, energy and environmental challenge. The highlight for me was the fiesty presentation given by Philip Stott from the University of London. Philip is a professor of biogeography - he looks at how plants and animals respond to climate change, shifting continents and humans. You may have heard him on the radio for the BBC on the Jeremy Vine show and the weekly environment programme, Home Planet. He's one of those speakers who uses no notes, speaks at a rate of knots, marches up and down the stage, waves his arms about a lot and makes alarming statements that you're stilll thinking about days later. I can't imagine anyone ever sleeping through his lectures.
Anyway, his main point yesterday was that global warming and climate change were not the same thing and that the former was invented by politicians, namely Margaret Thatcher in the eighties, to suit their own agenda. Farmers, he said, should beware of taking global warming too seriously. He also argued that whatever we do here ion climate change will have no effect whatsoever because the UK is such a small energy player and the climate has been flipping between hot and cold, dry and wet since an archetypal Nigella Lawson stirred the primordial soup 4.6 billion years ago. If climate stopped changing, it would be truly interesting.
And another inconvenient truth, according to Philip Stott, is that we cannot manage the climate predictably by fiddling at the margins. Climate, he said, is like "Glasgow on a Saturday night - a wee bit chaotic. So, when you are next exhorted to wear hemp underpants to save the planet, remember King Canute and take a wee dram of common sense."
The audience was riveted but many didn't quite know what to make of the flamboyant Professor. There was an irony in his message given that the opening speaker to the conference, Professor Robert Thompson, from Illinois University USA, had struggled to get there because he said he'd been the victim of global warming himself. Freak tornedoes had gripped many US states, killing dozens and grounding most transatlantic flights. Undaunted, the organisers pulled off a live link up with Professor Thompson's own web cam straight into the Chilford Hall conference centre in Linton, Cambs. The poor guy may have had to get up in the middle of the night to deliver his speech, but it was worth it.
His main message was:
* We will need to triple or double production to meet global food needs
* 40% of the earth's land is not suitable for agricultural production
* That we must invest in scientific and technological research to learn how to improve production and land use quickly
* World food demand could double by 2050
In conclusion, he warned it could be immoral to burn food for fuel by the middle of this century if we are struggling to improve production. If you want to hear more from Professor Thompson, look out for him at the NFU conference next week. He is definitely worth a listen.