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- Survey Shows Trends and Diversity
of Vegetable Growers
By Matt McCallum
Publisher
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been publisher of The Vegetable Growers News for 10 years. Coming from a background of daily journalism, you’d think the pace would be slower and news not as exciting. 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 I had worked with 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 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 Vegetable Growers News, we know who our audience is and can write stories to really focus on their problems, trials and tribulations. 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 Vegetable Growers News was doing and discover readers’ interests as we attempt to better meet their needs.
We first wanted to see who is reading The Vegetable Growers News. We found that our readers are becoming more and more diverse. While more than 82% classify themselves as growers, 40% direct market their crops, 28% own a greenhouse, and 10% grow organic vegetables. That means that the “conventional” grower who sells their crop wholesale is nearly a minority now.
The size of the operations also varies greatly, with 17% growing less than 10 acres, but with 50% growing more than 50 acres of vegetables and 20% growing more than 200 acres.
The number of crops grown was also very diverse, with more than 33 crops cited. The top crops included sweet corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, squash and peppers. Vegetable growers also grow fruit, with many growing apples, strawberries, raspberries and cherries. Diversity seems to be the key for a healthy operation.
The survey also showed that technology plays an important part in farming with 87% of our readers using a computer in their daily operations. The Internet is used by 74% 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.vegetablegrowers news.com). We also offer a free e-mail news service that will automatically send you news updates so you can have information faster. To sign up, send an e-mail to news@ vegetablegrowersnews.com and put “subscribe Veg news” in the subject line.
As our readers become more diverse and technology savvy, we wanted to know what topics they were interested in.
On the production side, growers surveyed said they were interested in information on disease management (97%), new varieties (94%), weed control (90%) and new equipment (81%). Organic production is also becoming more popular with nearly 30% of our readers interested in the topic.
Marketing was also another area we wanted to know where our readers wanted more information. 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 32% on the wholesale side, while only 13% said they were interested in information on the processing side. Value-added was also very high on growers’ minds with more than half of the readers wanting more information.
On the feature story side, vegetable growers are very interested in what other growers are doing and new research results. The highest interest came in farm succession strategies and land preservation. I truly believe that most growers would rather sell the farm as a going business and are looking for way 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.
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