40 years of reporting on poultry and pigs
Happy birthday to Poultry World and Pig Progress! Both titles celebrate their 40th birthday this month. Time to look back to when it all began – and how the titles have changed and adapted in an ever-changing world of poultry and pig production.
In 1984, the world looked at Los Angeles for the Summer Olympics; Band Aid got together to compose the song ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’, and India made world headlines when its prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated.
In that year, in the town of Doetinchem in the Netherlands, a group of ambitious agricultural journalists had completely different things on their minds. They were planning to work on doing something entirely new: to start global titles in English related to the world of international poultry and pig production.
It was an adventurous and pioneering journey, recalls Wiebe van der Sluis, at the time editor for the Dutch publishing house Misset and involved with various agricultural titles targeting the market in the Netherlands. He says, “Our company was thinking about making a title in English aimed at the international world of floraculture – and that is when we said, why not investigate if there are other titles for which we can do this as well? How about pigs and poultry, for instance?”
The hunch proved to be a good one, especially since globally-oriented titles based in Europe didn’t really exist at that time. “The only titles available in the market were produced in the United States. We knew we had to aim high in terms of knowledge, and share good, relevant content, for example, from Rabobank or Wageningen University & Research, with the rest of the world.”
The initiative materialised and in October 1984, the first editions of Poultry and Pigs saw the light of day. Large magazines, almost broadsheet size, lumbacked (glued bindings) and full of adverts – some for companies that still exist, others for companies that have long since disappeared.
Breeding and VIV Europe 1985
The first magazines included articles on how to do a better job when breeding, black and white pictures, and articles that looked ahead to VIV Europe 1985. Articles were often translated from original Dutch content or had at times been written by experts from the Dutch poultry and pig industries. The magazines contained a lot of text and also included marketing invitations inviting readers to subscribe.
Van der Sluis comments: “From the start it had been the intention to make more than one edition. It wasn’t an initiative to make pilot editions and then test the results. We had done some proper market research and realised there was a decent demand from an international perspective for good, useful information.”
That didn’t mean, however, that making the first editions was a walk in the park. After a few years in the business with 4 relatively voluminous editions per year, there was a deficit of millions of guilders (the currency at the time in the Netherlands). A bottom-line decision had to be taken for the still young titles Poultry and Pigs, but for the international market, in the 1980s, a subscription model wasn’t ideal. Instead, the titles went for a distribution system with controlled circulation. Basically, anybody in the industry could subscribe, but they would only get an issue once every so often.
Secondly, something needed to be done to the presentation of the titles, he says. “We realised that we needed to upgrade the frequency considerably to make sure that we would make a lasting impression in the market. In addition, instead of lumbacking, we opted for staples, which is a considerably more affordable method of making magazines.”
The last fundamental change was the editorial dedication. Van der Sluis admits that in the first 18 months, making English editions had been something that had been done as an extra part-time job, i.e., they coincided with regular editorial duties for Dutch agricultural titles. As publishing in English also required professional English-speaking sub-editors, it became clear pretty soon that going ahead internationally couldn’t be done with an improvised ad hoc editorial team but would require a more permanent team. The international department within Misset had been born.
Changes over the years
Over the years, this international department saw many things come and go. The publisher’s name changed to Elsevier, Reed Elsevier, Reed Business Information, and eventually back to Misset. The editorial desk was moved between different buildings within Doetinchem, where the titles are produced – and even within the current headquarters the team occupied every floor. After acquiring an international title focused on the British Commonwealth, Poultry became World Poultry – and not much later Pigs was transformed into Pig Progress. Early in 2017, World Poultry merged with its then British sister title Poultry World and ever since, that has been the flagship’s name.
The titles were printed in full colour, animal health lexicons were made and even editions in Chinese and Spanish were included in the portfolio. The family of international titles grew as well – for instance on (poultry) meat production, flower production, feed production, fruit and vegetable production, dairy production and advanced arable production. (Unfortunately, some titles also disappeared, for instance in 2009 when a major economic crisis caused the publisher to halve the department.)
Diversification in channels
The titles on the global poultry and pig industries continued to prosper, however. With the emergence of the Internet, the Misset titles followed suit with outlets online for both the poultry and pig titles. Over the years, social media channels followed, including hosting webinars and seminars at trade shows. The magazines stood strong – with on average of 10 editions per year, and in total about 400 editions of each title have been published.
Has the world of agriculture changed a lot since 1984? Van der Sluis recalls that even in 1984 the agricultural world was pretty international. “Wherever we went, we noticed that Dutch companies were active. I went to Riyad very shortly after we began, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that many companies had already established good trading contacts. Yet the difference is that today, many more companies from many other places in the world have made similar steps.”
And where will the world of agriculture be in 40 years from now? Van der Sluis smiles but declines to give an answer, as it is impossible to predict how things will develop. “After all, who would’ve thought back then that I would be sitting here, in 2024, reflecting on 40 years of Poultry and Pigs? Who would’ve thought we would now be talking more about welfare or hatching eggs at 24 days instead of 21?”
In October 2024, both Pigs and Poultry will have existed for 40 years – no small feat for titles that started in the autumn of 1984. The Summer Olympics were held in Paris, Beyoncé attracted full audiences with her music, and it is to be hoped that wars will soon become a thing of the past.
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