Today we talk to Cormac Farrelly, MD of Agriland, the largest and fastest growing daily news publisher in the agricultural sector in Europe.
Click on the player below to play the podcast audio (download: 20:43; 12MB; MP3), or scroll down to watch the video.
Agriland serves about 300,000 users a week, Cormac explains, and is a 100% digitally native publication, serving farmers and the agri-business sector in general.
How have farmers been impacted by COVID-19? Like everyone else, the biggest impact has been social – expecially for many farmers who may be living alone or elderly, and vulnerable to isolation. The closure of marts, in particular, has been a particular blow in terms of social isolation.
Economically, he feels, farmers have been among the first to feel the impact of the crisis
“Even though an awful lot of people have being going down to the supermarket; they;ve been doing some panic-buying, and shopping more regularly, and maybe doing larger shops, that still doesn;t compensate for the closure of the food services industry. that’s much much bigger, we’ve got the hotels, the restuarants, weddings, etc have been cabncelled, so the impact on that front has been quite severe, he says.
All of this is against a background of already difficult times for farmers, highlighted by the beef price protests in 2019.
Agriland themselves have faced the challenge of remote working in response to the rules and have continued to publish online.
Also mentioned in today’s podcast:
- blacknight.careers – we’re hiring now for our tech-support team
- shopBuilder: announcing our new ecommerce tool to quickly turn any website into an online shop!
We’ve joined forces with County Carlow Chamber to present a webinar on Thursday next called: how to build an online store in 20 minutes. It’s free: register here!
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About the Author: Conn Ó Muíneacháin
