The owners of this website and its sister farm journals are branching out their ag information offerings from paper and cyberspace into the face-to-face world.
Vancouver publishing firm Glacier Media announced Thursday it has bought Guelph-based Canada’s Outdoor Shows Ltd., operators of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show and Canada’s Outdoor Equine Expo, for an undisclosed sum.
Glacier’s holdings in farm publishing include Winnipeg-based Farm Business Communications, publishers of Country Guide, Grainews, Canadian Cattlemen, le Bulletin des Agriculteurs and the AGCanada.com network of websites, and the Saskatoon-based Western Producer.
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“In agriculture, it is important to have a ‘hands-on’ person-to-person forum to augment the written and digital transfer of knowledge and technologies,” Glacier CEO Jonathon Kennedy said in a release.
“The team at Canada’s Outdoor Shows does a stellar job of demonstrating and showcasing the agricultural technologies that we write about and feature online,” he said. “Together, we can offer a more integrated information platform to the agri-food industry.”
Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, founded in 1994 by the late ag marketing and communications guru Ginty Jocius, has evolved into what’s now Canada’s largest agricultural trade show, with 723 exhibitors and 42,600 attendees in 2011.
The event, which in 2012 will run Sept. 11 to 13 at Canada’s Outdoor Park at Woodstock, Ont., is now also considered to be the fourth largest ag trade show in North America.
Expanding offerings
The show in 2009 took on a new presenting sponsor in federal ag lender Farm Credit Canada, “because we wanted to expand past the borders of Ontario to be more national in our scope,” Canada’s Outdoor Shows president Lorie Jocius said in the same release.
“At Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show this year, we realized that the world was interested in Canadian agriculture and our commitment to showcasing new technologies and innovations. In order for us to take things to the next level, we needed to merge with an organization whose resources can help us push those boundaries even more.”
The company’s other major event, Canada’s Outdoor Equine Expo, is next scheduled for June 8-10, 2012 at Burlington, Ont. The horse expo includes indoor and outdoor trade shows, clinic, seminars and demonstrations.
Both events “will continue to operate with their current staff while seeking to expand their offerings in the future,” the company said.
Glacier Media’s holdings outside the ag publishing sector include business and trade publications, websites and community newspapers across Canada. Its most recent non-ag acquisition, announced last week, was a number of B.C. newspapers from Postmedia Network, among them the Victoria Times Colonist.
