Reinvention on the farm front

It's one thing to see the writing on the wall; it's quite another to do something about it. A little over a year ago Annex Publishing and Printing Inc. of Simcoe merged two long-established magazines -- Canadian Tobacco Grower and Cash Crop Farming, into Specialty Farms. It was an acknowledgement that the tobacco-growing industry, grown fat and sassy for many years on the sandy soils of the Lake Erie plain, was quietly collapsing. Anti-smoking initiatives and health concerns were taking away their best customers and smart farmers were looking for alternatives.

Specialty Farms spotlights the fact that, while tobacco farming is still around and written about, one is as likely to find articles about wind farming or tree planting. Sure, there's a cover story with news about the Ontario Flu-Cured Tobacco Marketing Board in the March issue (shown). But there's also articles of interest to ginseng growers. In the four counties of Norfolk,Brant, Elgin and Oxford, the magazine serves up seven issues annually to about 3,500 farms involved in traditional field crops, specialty crops, tobacco and fruit and vegetables. If you want to know more, they'll send you a sample issue.

Annex specializes in publishing small circ trade and farm magazines, ranging from Canadian Pizza and Canadian Vending to Greenhouse Canada and Baker's Journal. (We last wrote about them with an item about Canadian Pizza magazine.)