Out & About by managing editor, Jane Potts
Although this is the January issue, it’s our last one before Christmas – so, on behalf of the Farmers Guide team, I wish all of our readers and advertisers a Happy Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2019.
Doug and Florence Potts in the summer of 1979, just before the launch of Farmers Guide.
U O O
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40 years
New Scottish readers Which brings me to – welcome to our new Scottish readers, many of who may not have seen the magazine before. We’re growing in your area and would like you to continued over...
The move from Orford Street in 1995. The top windows are to the office where co-director, Julie, refused to work, understandably.
Wor kin g
This month signals the start of our 40th anniversary year – the first issue was September 1979. It consisted of 48 pages, all black and white with ‘spot’ colour – usually blue or red. A double page spread in a rather fetching shade of green, along with further ads and editorial promoted the Fisons sponsored Sprayers in Action event at the East of England Showground, Peterborough. Eastern Tractors was on the front cover, MJ Storey on the back cover and Bobcat dealer Michael J Cant on the inside front cover. A small editorial reminded farmers to burn stubble and straw in strict accordance with the NFU’s Straw and Stubble Burning Code and another feature promoted a working demonstration of direct drills advising that 800,000 acres were drilled this way in 1978. The annual Power in Action demonstration to be held at Otley near Ipswich was also featured. Farm machinery news stated that one of Italy’s best known balers, the L Sgorbati range is to be marketed in the UK by Landman Machinery of Corby, Northants and Tairco Limited of Norwich, a company within the multi-national
Tradax Group, has been appointed sole UK distributor for the Danish Rational Nova 2-row beet harvester. A 3-page FarmAds section included ads from Thurlow Nunn & Sons Ltd, Ernest Doe & Sons Ltd and Eastern Counties Farmers Ltd. We bought a mailing list and out they went – about 5,000 copies to the farmers of East Anglia. A day or so later, we couldn’t get in through the front door because so many magazines had been returned! So began the task of researching the returned copies and getting them into the hands of farmers. That’s where we started, and from that the magazine has grown to the 200 plus page magazine that lands on your desk each month – all 30,000 or so of you throughout the UK, and growing.
nership with t r pa n i
Providing legally required machinery inspections on all lifting equipment.
01604 782782 | www.fandmgroup.co.uk 4
www.farmersguide.co.uk January 2019
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