Many thanks for the feedback to my last blog about serious versus frothy and fun content. One of the issues to come up was women. We certainly do take women in agriculture seriously whether it's as a husband and wife farming team or women supporting rural families in many other ways.
In the last week, we've been out and about judging the FW Awards and visiting the 2008 finalists on farms. The involvement of women in all aspects of these businesses is impressive, particularly in giving the men in their lives the courage to develop and grow the enterprise. Sorry guys, but it's often the women who are willing to take the risks, change the approach and who give their partners the confidence and ideas to move forward. In farming, we are good at analysing our navels but sometimes you do have to bite the bullet and give something new a go. And women in agriculture are really making a difference here not just with diversifcation but also with mainstream farming.
There are well over 600,000 businesses owned by women in the UK, generating something like £80bn a year for the UK economy and rural women are at the forefront of this trend. The NFU tell us that its female membership has grown substantially as has female representation on NFU councils and boards. The gender balance is also moving in favour of women on many agricultural and related courses and thank goodness for that. I have a feeling it was only in 1979 that women were admitted to the Royal Agricultural College - a sign of just how sexist the industry was.
Nowadays, the big opportunities for women right across the food chain as producers, retailers, processers and marketeers mean we're no longer invisible in rural business. Think of the leadership that groups like the WI has shown in driving initiatives like the Great Milk Debate. It was the WI women who forced Justin King of Sainsburys and others to wake up to the plight of dairy farmers. They used their collective power as consumers who care about agriculture to have their say and boy did all those ladies frighten the big cheeses in the supermarkets.
This older female audience has also been pretty vociferous with FW. Many of them have grown up with the magazine on the farm for generations and a few have been uncomfortable with the changes we have made. As you would expect, FW magazine has to appeal to a broad church and so different people have different views about the purpose of our popular Farmlife section. It really is intended to provide something lighter from the technical content for the whole family, which is why we cover rural matters, sport, leisure, children, students and wider family issues. It is true that some of our older female readers assume that Farmlife is entirely prepared for them because for years it had a long tradition of providing recipes and was very involved in the former Farm Womens Club. I've had some complaints from older female readers that we don't provide the same volume of content for them like we used to and I'm afraid that is correct. Nowadays Farmlife should be appealing to an eclectic group of readers with its mix of views, features, pictures and interactivity. For example, Farmlife regular agony uncle Farmer Frank is probably appreciated more by blokes because the jokes are so smutty but then I could be wrong. What do the ladies think of Farmer Frank?
It will be interesting to see who (male or female) is driving most of the traffic activity on our new online dating service Muddy Matches. I will keep you posted on that if we can get some stats.... and we've agreed to have a massive celebration for the first couple to get engaged after meeting through the service.
Entertainment value is becoming more important to business brands like Farmers Weekly but we have to get the balance right between the serious and the fun. On that note, have a good time this weekend.