Bounty apparent in so many ways - Editorial Notebook

Brittany Goossen was leaning in a fruit stand window in Mt. Lehman, B.C., to buy apples. Steve Sheffield was working the night shift at the Agricore United elevator in Indus, Alta. Garth Sander was cleaning a combine air filter in a field near Indian Head, Sask. Keith Burch was examining an oats sample near Portage la Prairie, Man.

What do all these people have in common? They were all involved this fall in the tremendous task that we call harvest.

And they are all subjects of photos in our annual harvest photo feature that begins on page 26 and runs for six bountiful pages.

Read Also

Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

Regular readers know we’ve undertaken this autumn project for the past four years, so we plan ahead. This year we decided on a title back in August, when most prairie crops looked plentiful and healthy, a marked contrast to previous droughty years.

As you see from the illustration at the top of this column, “Bounty” was our chosen theme.

Then came cool weather conditions, hard frost in August, followed by excess rain and snow in late September. The early promise of bounty looked doubtful.

But when our reporters fanned out from Vancouver to Charlottetown, and freelance photographers marshalled their formidable skills as well, a wealth of photos poured in and surprise! They showed the bounty of this harvest in many different ways.

We decided to keep our chosen title. Even if quality didn’t meet expectations in many areas, the quantity of crop, diversity of produce and most of all the bountiful strength and resilience of the human spirit, proved to be part of harvest 2004.

We hope you enjoy this celebration of harvest. We shot more photos than we could squeeze into this issue, so visit our website at www.producer.com to see more.

Bounty also proved to be a theme for the Producer in terms of the 2004 Canadian Farm Writers Federation annual writing and photography awards. Results were announced Oct. 2 in Windsor, Ont.

Reporters Ian Bell of Brandon and Ed White of Winnipeg won the covetted first place gold award in the weekly news reporting category for a multi-story examination of fusarium, which ran in our Dec. 4, 2003 issue.

Camrose reporter Mary MacArthur won silver in this category for a story about Marwyn Peaster, the man who owned the cow that launched the BSE crisis.

MacArthur also won silver in the press feature category for a story about how the town of Picture Butte, Alta., in the heart of feedlot alley, has coped with the fallout from BSE. And Michael Raine won bronze in this category for a feature on the rendering industry.

Farm management editor D’Arce McMillan won gold in the press editorial category and website editor Paul Yanko won silver in the website competition.

To round out our nine-award total, Raine took gold in both the news photo and feature photo categories, while Bell won bronze for feature photo.