It is the big decision when you have a print deadline: will a story be out of date by the time readers get the paper in their hands?
You’ll notice our front-page story this week focused again on the difficult weather farmers are facing throughout the Prairies. Folks in Alberta are doing reasonably well, with sporadic rain falling recently, but Saskatchewan is pretty dry. Manitoba got a good rain, so things there are looking up.
The weather is the story of this growing year — dryness following a late frost — so it’s the issue farmers are dealing with day to day. After a good discussion with staff about our front page, we had to go with the story and the information that’s most current.
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But will your paper be soggy when you pick it up because of rain? Likely not, but rain is called for in some parts of the Prairies by Thursday.
Still, the long periods of dryness may damage crop yields, and that affects farmers’ decisions. As a result, the weather it is for our front page.
Check our website at producer.com for updates.
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On another note, farmers participated with great zeal in our #plant15 photo contest when they took to the fields to seed this spring.
We received 470 photographs this year, up from about 175 last year. This follows on the heels of our fall harvest photo contest, in which we received slightly less than 500 entries.
Our social media guru, Robin Booker, has now placed the top 100 or so #plant15 entries on a single page on our website. Congratulations to Dennis Duncan, whose photo of himself and his granddaughter, Addi, looking at the depth of their canola seed was chosen as the top photo. Dennis receives a $500 gift certificate to Don’s Photo.
Thanks to all who took part. We’ll see you again in the fall’s harvest photo contest.
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We’ve noticed that many farmers took to social media to spread the sights as they seeded their fields, so we’ve now included a sampling of those photos from Twitter hashtags, including #westcdnag, #cdnag and #farm365.
While use of social media by farmers is on the rise, not everyone uses Twitter or Facebook, or checks it regularly, so we thought we’d bring you some fun sights. This will be a regular feature in The Western Producer.
This week’s social media photos are on page 32.
