NET GRAZING
Cast aside all those images of farmers as old-school souls who only read things on paper. Times have changed and it often seems like media is the one trying to keep up. A recent study by King St into farmers’ media habits showed radio, TV and print are still going strong, but the regions have taken great strides in digital media, particularly with the under 40s.
92 percent of the 759 farmers (314 dairy and 346 dry stock) surveyed had internet access and 70 percent read the news online daily.
“While the overall numbers are going to be very helpful, the real story is that anyone who is talking to farmers needs to be aware that it’s a ‘game of two halves’, so to speak,” says Williams. “The under 40s are a completely different kettle of fish to their older counterparts and will only continue to change.”
Williams says the figures around smartphone ownership were interesting, as the under 40s rate of 45 percent is higher than the overall ownership rate in New Zealand of 35 percent.
Fairfax Media is obviously paying attention, judging by the recent launch of ww.nzfarmer.co.nz, a news website that aggregates all the rural content from its regional newspapers and 16 journalists covering the rural sector.
Gareth Codd, Fairfax Media’s general manager for the Waikato region, says it’s seen an increasing thirst for online content from the rural sector and that’s proven in the numbers.
When NZ Marketing spoke to Codd, the number of unique viewers to the website had doubled compared with the week before.
“We’re seeing farmers becoming more technologically advanced and broadband penetration increasing. They are engaging online more.”
The same is true at NZX Agri, which publishes FW - The New Zealand Farmers Weekly, Country-Wide magazine and NZ Dairy Exporter, and has just employed Julian Gairdner, the former head of digital at UK Farmers Weekly, to head its digital strategy. NZX Agri’s business development manager Damian Buckley says the news and information website has proved popular this year, with the number of unique viewers doubling since December. “The next generation coming through have got a very different way of grazing and filtering information.”
NZX Agri recently won the award for the Best Trade or Professional Magazine at the 2013 Canon Media Awards for its bi-monthly title Young Country. In June it launched an e-zine version of this for the in-between months to capture more of their online viewers.
TheRural.co.nz, a blog catering to lifestyle block owners with news, advice and how-tos, was also launched in May. It is run by APN-owned display ad network Adhub and editor Juanita McConnachie believes there’s an unserved niche for rural community news and along with it untapped advertising.