 | |
| Editor | Len Richardson |
|---|---|
| Categories | agricultural |
| Frequency | twice a month (except: monthly in July, August, and December) |
| Circulation | approx. 55,000 (peak) |
| Publisher | Jack T. Pickett |
| Founded | 1854 |
| Final issue | April 2013 |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Based in | San Francisco |
| Language | English |
California Farmer (1854-2013) was the state of California's leading farm magazine for more than a century.
California Farmer was founded in 1854 [1] by Col. James LaFayette Warren, a British-born nurseryman and merchant who had come to California from Massachusetts in 1849 at the age of 44. Before turning publisher, he tried his hand at gold mining and took note of the scurvy that afflicted miners because of their bad diet. He set up a seed business in Sacramento and began taking an interest in the broader development of agriculture in his adopted state. This in turn led to the launch of California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences (as it was originally titled), the first agricultural journal on the west coast. [2] Working with his son and business partner John Quincy Adams Warren, who was the magazine's editor, Warren aimed at a literate middle-class readership of farmers, some of whom had taken up farming after succeeding in other kinds of business elsewhere. Together the Warrens turned California Farmer into a magazine that ranked with such respected contemporary publications as American Agriculturist and Country Gentleman . [2]
California Farmer outlasted many rival agricultural journals, several of which eventually merged with it, including The Rural Californian, Golden State Farmer, Livestock and Dairy Journal, Pacific Rural Press, and California Cultivator. [3]
Pacific Rural Press and California Cultivator were both long-running publications in their own right. Pacific Rural Press and California Fruit Bulletin was founded in 1871 by a pair of transplanted Massachusetts printers, Alfred T. Dewey and Warren B. Ewer, in order to promote California farming. [4] Initially a weekly magazine (later a biweekly), it absorbed California Granger and several other magazines between 1875 and 1889. In 1875, the agronomist Edward J. Wickson (later dean of the University of California's College of Agriculture) became the magazine's editor, a position he held for 48 years. The magazine changed its name to Pacific Rural Press, then to Southern Pacific Rural Press (1937), and was folded into California Farmer in 1940.[ citation needed ]
One of the Pacific Rural Press's editors was John Pickett, whose son Jack T. Pickett was California Farmer's publisher for 34 years. [5] After he died in 1988, the Jack T. Pickett Agricultural Scholarship was established in his name to support University of California, Davis, students interested in careers in agriculture.[ citation needed ]
California Cultivator, which began publication in 1889 as Poultry in California, became California Cultivator and Poultry Keeper (1892), and finally California Cultivator (1900). It subsequently merged with Rural Californian (1914), itself formerly known as Semi-Tropic California and Southern California Horticulturist (for just three issues in 1880) and before that as the Southern California Horticulturist (founded 1877). [6] It ended publication in 1948 and merged with California Farmer.[ citation needed ]
By the 1980s, California Farmer was both the oldest and largest of the state's agricultural magazines, with a circulation in the mid 50,000s. [7] It covered the entire range of subjects that affect agriculture, from plant and livestock breeding, integrated pest management and organic farming to water rights, urban expansion, and migrant workers. It reflected the interests of its readership of both large and small farmers, leading it to be perceived outside of agriculture as both traditional and conservative [8] and its publisher, Jack T. Pickett, as a cheerleader for the agrichemical industry. [9] [10] Given the large scale of agriculture in California (a $42 billion industry as of 2012) [11] and the long history of tensions between small farmers, agribusiness, and urbanites, its stories occasionally stirred controversy both within and outside its own readership. In the 1960s, the magazine came out against farm workers' efforts to establish a union under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, with Pickett vilifying the union organizers as "cold, hard, and brutal" men preaching "hate against the farmers". [12]
In the 1980s, under the leadership of editor Len Richardson and managing editor Richard Smoley, the magazine became more moderate. [7] It wrote about the harm done by the financial crisis to small farmers, and it ran a cover story on marijuana, already by then the state's unofficial number one cash crop (though not officially recognized as such until some years later). In the fall of 1988, the magazine published "The Big Fix" [13] in which journalist and historian Richard Steven Street reported that some table grape growers were illegally using a growth-enhancing chemical known as 4-CPA on their vines, alongside an "unusually critical" editorial opposing the practice. The combination drew strong pushback from agribusiness, and in the wake of the uproar, managing editor Smoley resigned his post. [14]
In 1996, the cover story "An Urban Central Valley?" by urban planner Rudy Platzek drew wide attention to the possibility that by the end of the 21st century the Central Valley might not even be able to feed its own rapidly expanding population (due to loss of acreage to new development), let alone the rest of the country. [15]
California Farmer was published twice a month except in July, August, and December, when publication was monthly. Headquartered in San Francisco for most of its existence, the magazine went through a number of owners in its final decades, including Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (which acquired it in 1988) and Penton Media, California Farmer's publisher at the time of its demise. It published its final issue in April 2013, with Penton Media stating that the magazine wasn't as profitable as its other publications. [16] It has been merged into Penton Media's Western Farm Press.[ citation needed ]
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner (landowner), while employees of the farm are known as farm workers. However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals by labor and attention.
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit while satisfying the needs of consumers for products related to natural resources such as biotechnology, farms, food, forestry, fisheries, fuel, and fiber.
Henry Cantwell Wallace was an American farmer, journalist, and political activist who served as the secretary of agriculture from 1921 to 1924 under Republican presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He was the father of Henry A. Wallace, who would follow in his father's footsteps as secretary of agriculture and later became vice president under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was an editor of Wallaces' Farmer from 1916 to 1921.
The Imperial Valley Press is a daily newspaper printed outside of the Imperial Valley, California. It was owned by Schurz Communications of South Bend, Indiana from 1965 to 2015. It is owned by Imperial Valley Media; shareholders include Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers.
Penton was an information services and marketing company. The company's three largest revenue streams came from events, digital and marketing services. Although Penton had a long history as a trade publisher, in 2015 it reported that 35 percent of its EBITDA derived from digital products, 54 percent from events, and 11 percent from print. The main industry segments served by Penton include agriculture, transportation, natural products/food, infrastructure, and design and manufacturing.
Farm Progress is the publisher of 22 farming and ranching magazines. The company's oldest publication began in 1819. Farm Progress Companies is owned by Informa.
The Country Gentleman (1852–1955) was an American agricultural magazine founded in 1852 in Albany, New York, by Luther Tucker.
Southern Progress Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is a publisher of lifestyle magazines and books owned by IAC's Dotdash Meredith.
Richard Steven Street is an American photographer, historian and journalist of American farmworkers and agricultural issues. He is well known for his multi-volume history of California farmworkers and photo essays.
Wallaces Farmer is an agricultural newspaper based in Des Moines, Iowa. It is owned by media company Informa and operates as part of the company's Farm Progress division.
Edward James Wickson was an American agronomist and journalist who was a leader in agricultural education in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Edward was the son of George Guest and Kitty Ray Wickson, the grandson of James and Jane Tuesman Wickson, immigrants to Canada in 1834.
The Southern Cultivator is a defunct agrarian publication that was published in the Southern United States.
Frank Newman Turner, NDA, NDD, FNIMH, was a British pioneering organic farmer, writer and broadcaster, who, based on his experience of natural treatment of animals, later became a consulting medical herbalist and naturopath. His books Fertility Farming, Fertility Pastures, and Herdsmanship are regarded as classics of practical organic husbandry.
Jesse Buel was an American newspaper publisher, politician, and agricultural reformer.
The Nebraska Farmer was the first agricultural publication in the state and is, at present, one of the oldest run journals in Nebraska. This publication is still highly influential in the making of agricultural policies and procedures in Nebraska and surrounding Great Plains states. It is owned by media company Penton.
Charles Howard Shinn (1852–1924) was a horticulturalist, author, inspector of California Experiment Stations, and forest ranger in California.
Gerald "Gerry" Daly is an Irish Horticulturist, garden designer and media personality and editor of The Irish Garden magazine. He has featured, over a period of nearly 40 years, on multiple radio and television programmes on RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland channels, and has contributed, as he still does, regular columns for Irish newspapers and magazines, over more than 30 years, including the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Farmers Journal.
The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste was a monthly magazine on "horticulture, landscape gardening, rural architecture, embellishments, pomology, floriculture, and all subjects of rural life, literature, art, and taste".
Luther Tucker was a publisher of farm journals in Rochester and Albany, New York.