It’s hard to believe that I’ve been publisher of The Fruit Growers News for 10 years. The changes in the fruit industry in this past decade have been incredible. The influence of international trade, the aging farmer, the consolidation of the grocery store chains, urban sprawl and a legal assault on commodity promotion groups has really changed the landscape.
It is a very tough business climate out there, but it is for any business. Even the government is finding out what belt tightening is! Fruit farming will survive because there is a core group of dedicated, highly-educated growers who are determined to make it work in a whole new way.
Coming from a background of daily journalism, you’d think I would have found the pace to be slower and the news not as exciting in the ag world. On the contrary, I find this more exciting and rewarding. In fact, this has to be the greatest job in the publishing world! We are able to interact with our readers and get feedback on how we’ve been able to give them new ideas through our stories or how they’ve found a great new product from our advertisers.
I recently visited a former editor of mine who is now a publisher of a major daily newspaper and she asked me if I missed “real” journalism. It was a strange question because this is real journalism. I wanted to be in this business so I could get relevant, timely information out to people so they could use it to improve their lives. In daily journalism, you are writing for such a diverse audience that you have to water everything down.
For a trade publication like The Fruit Growers News, we know who our audience is and can write stories to really focus on their problems, trials and tribulations as well as their successes. It’s always great to attend trade shows and talk to growers and get feedback.
This year we decided to do a readership survey to find out how The Fruit Growers News was doing and discover readers’ interests as we attempt to better meet their needs.
First we wanted to see who reads The Fruit Growers News. We found that our readers are becoming more and more diverse. While more than 90% classify themselves as growers, 37% direct market their crops and 4% grow organic fruit.
The number of fruit crops grown by each operation is also very diverse; in fact our growers who answered the survey grow 32 different crops, with many also growing vegetables. Apples were the top crop with 64% of our readers raising them, followed by peaches at 40% and cherries at 31%. The fourth most popular crop grown by fruit growers wasn’t a fruit at all – it was pumpkins, with 24% of our readers growing the crop. The other top crops included pears, blueberries, plums, grapes, raspberries and strawberries. Diversity seems to be the key for a healthy operation.
The number of years in business also varied greatly. I thought we’d find most fruit growers would have been growing fruit for decades, but nearly 15% of our readers have been in business less than 10 years. That’s great news for the industry as some older growers sell out to development. There is also a lot of fruit growing heritage in our readers with 20% in the business for more than 50 years and 5% operating centennial farms.
The survey also showed that technology plays an important part in farming with 84% of our readers using a computer in their daily operations. The Internet is used by 78% of our readers, and 73% use e-mail. To get news to our readers faster, we have offered a Web site for many years (www.fruitgrowersnews.com). We also offer a free e-mail news service that will automatically send news updates to subscribers who can then have information faster. To sign up, visit our Web site.
As our readers become more diverse and technology savvy, we wanted to know what topics interested them. On the production side, growers surveyed said they were interested in information on disease management (88%), weed control (78%), fertilization (65%), pruning (60%) and new varieties (58%). Organic production is also becoming more popular with nearly 30% of our readers interested in the topic.
We also wanted to know what worries growers. Weather was the No. 1 concern followed by scab, pest pressure, fire blight, labor, thinning and codling moth.
Marketing was also another important area. It’s obvious to us that direct marketing is exploding. Nearly 60% of our readers said they were interested in direct marketing, compared with only 40% on the wholesale side, while only 30% said they were interested in information on the processing side. Value-added also ranked very high on growers’ minds with more than half of the readers wanting more information.
On the feature story side, fruit growers are very interested in what other growers are doing and in new research results. The highest interest came in farm succession strategies and land preservation. I truly believe that most growers would like to sell the farm as a going business and are looking for ways to keep it a farm.
We’ve taken what you have said very seriously and have molded our editorial plans to meet your changing needs. The entire staff takes your business seriously. If you have a suggestion or even a criticism, please call, e-mail or fax us. We want to hear from you so that we can give you the information you need to be successful in the future.
You can e-mail Matt at email or call him at (616) 887-9008 ext. 101.
