Alberta Farmer journalists Alexis Kienlen and Jennifer Blair both picked up awards from the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation for their reporting in 2020.
They were among a host of Albertans who had their work recognized by the association, which represents more than 300 agricultural journalists, broadcasters and communication professionals from across Canada.
Kienlen won the silver award in the business and economic reporting category for her story Alberta’s cattle producers facing a wall of worry in May of last year. The story detailed the fallout for cattle producers following the temporary closures of packing plants due to COVID-19 infections in their work force.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
Blair took the bronze award in the technical reporting category for her story Innovative farmers ‘harvest’ water to boost production. The article looked at the practice of using swales (shallow ditching) to capture water on the Coen Farm, a permaculture operation near Ferintosh.
This paper is one of several publications in the Glacier FarmMedia group, which includes the Manitoba Co-operator, Farmtario, Country Guide, Canadian Cattlemen and the Western Producer, which collectively captured more than a dozen awards. Among those were stories by Geralyn Wichers and Allan Dawson from the Co-operator and Diana Martin from Farmtario — whose work frequently appears in Alberta Farmer.
Another big winner was GrainsWest, a quarterly publication put out by Alberta Wheat and Alberta Barley. Three of its stories captured awards and one of them, a story titled ‘Sow What?’ (on the merits of specialty fertilizer products) won story-of-the-year honours as well as the reporter-of-the-year award for Trevor Bacque. The Calgary journalist also won awards for four other stories.
