The Western Producer has gained a few nicknames over its 86 years of operation. Many people shorten our name to simply The Producer. It’s quicker and it fits our readers.

I’m not sure how we earned the Seducer nickname, other than word similarity. Perhaps the paper seduces prospective farmers with news of the industry? Or is it all those stories about livestock breeding? Or maybe it relates to our history of connecting people through the Classified section. Many couples have met and married via contacts made through the Producer. In fact, we received word just last week from a woman who will soon marry a Saskatchewan farmer whom she met through our newspaper in 2003. You can read about it in our Sept. 24 issue and on www.producer.com.

As for the Depressor monicker, well, agricultural news is not always good and not always pretty. We don’t skirt those issues. But we also report the success stories and the ongoing progress of various projects and ag-related industries. We can talk more about that later.

For now, let this serve as a bit of an introduction to this blog, which is intended to provide you with agricultural comment and news of interest, and also information on what we’re doing for you here at Western Canada’s largest agricultural weekly newspaper. Please let me know what you think of it, and of anything else involving agricultural news and/or The Western Producer. I’m looking forward to our dialogue.