SASKATOON — The Western Producer turns 100 this week, and we’re spilling a bit of ink in this issue to mark the occasion.
The intention is to carry the commemoration throughout the next year, and to look ahead as well as behind. However, this issue is dedicated very much to looking at where we’ve come from and to examining the agricultural history of the Prairies over the last 100 years.
And what a century it has been, not only for The Western Producer but for the region, the industry and the country.
The early decades of the 20th century, when The Western Producer was founded, were a time of tremendous growth and change. For example, the number of acres under cultivation in Saskatchewan increased to 44 million acres in 1921 from 28.6 million acres in 1911. That was an astounding increase, but it jumped again to 56 million by 1931.
Of course, looming over the horizon were the 1930s with their terrible drought and heart-breaking economic depression, as well as the horror of the Second World War.
But farmers survived, and the post-war history is one of technological advancement, massive increases in productivity and decline in rural populations as fewer people were needed to manage much larger farms.
The Western Producer has been there through it all, chronicling developments big and small and providing information farmers need to cope with all this change.
For most of its existence, the newspaper was owned by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, which sometimes opened it to criticism that it was simply a propaganda tool for the grain co-operative. However, the prairie grain co-operatives had a strategic reason for being in the publishing business.
The way co-ops were structured, at least in the early days, gave full democratic control to individual farm owners. The only way they could succeed as businesses was to have a farm community that was well-informed about world issues that affected their markets and knowledgeable about business challenges that affected the grain sector.
This newspaper, combined with a robust local delegate structure and annual meetings where resolutions were vigorously debated in a mostly open forum, contributed to a highly informed farm community. The farmer delegates who attended these meetings were astute individuals, well-informed and briefed on the big issues of the times.
The speakers were high-level grain trade and political and business leaders. The farmers who read The Western Producer may have disagreed on the solutions, but they well understood the problems.
Sask Pool eventually abandoned the farmer-owned co-operative model and sold The Western Producer to private interests, but the newspaper’s focus on keeping farmers informed has remained.
New forms of communication have given farmers additional ways to keep in touch with national and international events, but we believe there is still a place for a platform that provides practical information on how to farm smarter in yet another era of massive change.
Our online presence will continue to grow as the world becomes increasingly digital, but The Western Producer is committed to remaining a vibrant presence in the prairie agricultural community.
We look forward to another 100 years of service to prairie farmers and their families.
Karen Briere, Bruce Dyck, Barb Glen, Michael Robin, Robin Booker, Laura Rance and Mike Raine collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
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