For 90 years, the Producer has chronicled the politics, policies, advancements, crop prices, land prices, livestock prices, weather events and harvests of the Prairies’ most dominant industry. 


Agriculture was the first economic driver in these parts, and despite terrible droughts, untimely rains and early frosts, it remains a vital part of not only our financial but also our cultural lives.


In our anniversary year, we offer this final 2013 edition to look back, take stock and see the future. We trust it’s a good time, as the year rolls to a conclusion, to reflect on where prairie agriculture has been and where it is going.


You’ll see stories on grain handling and storage, livestock genetics, the history of reworking rapeseed into canola and the ups and downs of commonly used farm chemicals.


We reflect on the drivers behind farmer action: the rallies that brought producers together from across the West. 


We also look back at our own history, a history of producing the agricultural and rural news archive of Western Canada.


There is much more to come. WP reporters worked hard at covering some of the biggest stories of the last 90 years and bringing them into a modern focus. Many of them reside in this issue, but in a continuing effort to look back, look forward and inform, we will publish several more “then and now” pieces in the early editions of 2014.


This is not the WP’s history. This is your history. These stories reflect on where we have been, how things have changed and where we are going … together.


At The Western Producer, we are not even close to finishing the story. Times have changed as much in publishing newspapers as they have in agriculture. Today, we publish online and via cellphone notifications, as well as in print. 


We will continue, for many years to come.


Thank you for reading The Western Producer. You are the reason for our existence, and we will grow with you in the future, as we have in the past.


All the best.