California Farmer facts for kids
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| Editor | Len Richardson |
|---|---|
| Categories | agricultural |
| Frequency | twice a month (except: monthly in July, August, and December) |
| Circulation | approx. 55,000 (peak) |
| Publisher | Jack T. Pickett |
| Founded | 1854 |
| Final issue | April 2013 |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Based in | San Francisco |
| Language | English |
California Farmer (1854-2013) was the state of California's leading farm magazine for more than a century.
History
California Farmer was founded in 1854 by Col. James LaFayette Warren, a British-born nurseryman and merchant who had come to California from Massachusetts in 1849 at the age of 44. Before turning publisher, he tried his hand at gold mining and took note of the scurvy that afflicted miners because of their bad diet. He set up a seed business in Sacramento and began taking an interest in the broader development of agriculture in his adopted state. This in turn led to the launch of California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences (as it was originally titled), the first agricultural journal on the west coast. Working with his son and business partner John Quincy Adams Warren, who was the magazine's editor, Warren aimed at a literate middle-class readership of farmers, some of whom had taken up farming after succeeding in other kinds of business elsewhere. Together the Warrens turned California Farmer into a magazine that ranked with such respected contemporary publications as American Agriculturist and Country Gentleman.
California Farmer outlasted many rival agricultural journals, several of which eventually merged with it, including The Rural Californian, Golden State Farmer, Livestock and Dairy Journal, Pacific Rural Press, and California Cultivator.
Pacific Rural Press
Pacific Rural Press and California Cultivator were both long-running publications in their own right. Pacific Rural Press and California Fruit Bulletin was founded in 1871 by a pair of transplanted Massachusetts printers, Alfred T. Dewey and Warren B. Ewer, in order to promote California farming. Initially a weekly magazine (later a biweekly), it absorbed California Granger and several other magazines between 1875 and 1889. In 1875, the agronomist Edward J. Wickson (later dean of the University of California's College of Agriculture) became the magazine's editor, a position he held for 48 years. The magazine changed its name to Pacific Rural Press, then to Southern Pacific Rural Press (1937), and was folded into California Farmer in 1940.
One of the Pacific Rural Press's editors was John Pickett, whose son Jack T. Pickett was California Farmer's publisher for 34 years. After he died in 1988, the Jack T. Pickett Agricultural Scholarship was established in his name to support University of California, Davis, students interested in careers in agriculture.
California Cultivator
California Cultivator, which began publication in 1889 as Poultry in California, became California Cultivator and Poultry Keeper (1892), and finally California Cultivator (1900). It subsequently merged with Rural Californian (1914), itself formerly known as Semi-Tropic California and Southern California Horticulturist (for just three issues in 1880) and before that as the Southern California Horticulturist (founded 1877). It ended publication in 1948 and merged with California Farmer.
