Gauteng Smallholder March 2017 | Page 55

It ’ s called progress

My , how things have changed in the 18 years since this magazine started ! The other day I was invited to give a presentation on the magazine and its origins to an association meeting nearby . This necessitated a bit of research on my part ~ 18 years is a long time , and at my age the memory begins to dim somewhat . But it also gave me pause for reflection upon the changes that have taken place in the environment in which we operate . Long-time readers will know of the physical changes that the magazine has undergone . Until 2008 it was printed on A4 photocopy paper , and bound down the left hand edge by two staples . We started with only a few thousand copies , distributed solely on the East Rand . Then , by adding 500 copies here and 1 000 there we began distributing in Blue Hills , then Honeydew and Muldersdrift , then Pretoria East , and Delmas , and then we made a foray south to Walkerville and De Deur . The maximum number we ever printed on our own presses was 12 500 , decided simply by this being the number of sheets of paper in five boxes , which made budgeting easy – five boxes per sheet times twelve sheets ? Go and buy 60 boxes of Typek . Originally , all the text and advertisements were in black only , and the magazine was printed on old ( 50 years old , or more ) single colour presses which printers disdainfully dismiss as “ duplicators .” A series of these machines , as well as ancillary equipment such as collators and a guillotine , were housed in my double garage . This is linked to my home which , as a result , was redolent ( aka it stank ) perpetually with the pungent , and probably toxic , odour of ink , paper and solvents . This , and the perpetual noise from the presses as we hammered away for 18 hours a day for up to three weeks of the month did nothing for either my marital or familial relations … Interestingly , there are a few advertisers from those very early days who are still selling their wares through our pages today , so while my marriage may have been in jeopardy at least the magazine was achieving what we had set out to achieve . Gradually , advertisers began demanding colour in their ads and so slowly we added , first , single spot colours , and then full colour in a few cases . This proved a technological nightmare for us on single colour presses and in time we bought a larger , A3 two-colour press . This magnificent beast was a joy to operate when it was running well but , sadly , it had been built at the time when the first little

THE BACK PAGE

bits of microchip technology were being applied to industrial machines and its microchip boards were anything but fault free . And so they were quickly bypassed and disconnected , resulting in a machine that operated with an impressive electronic control panel of flashing lights and counters , the information being displayed being absolutely meaningless . Meanwhile the various gates and sensors connected to the lights were bypassed using elastic bands , paper clips and duct tape . And collating took place around our dining room table , undertaken by a team of “ casuals ” ~ otherwise unemployed ladies from nearby plots who would spend their days walking round and round the table putting the pages together , talking loudly as they worked , and occasionally dipping into my booze cabinet for sustenance . Eventually , nearly ten years ago printing in the garage became too much for us and we graduated to the services of a commercial printer to produce the magazine you are reading today . This also enabled us to grow beyond the five boxes per sheet and our distribution area has grown concomitantly and now swallows up 19 000 copies monthly . In the 18 years great strides have been taken in the field of technology . GPS technology is now commonplace , cellphones are sophisticated devices on which one can read magazines . As a result we now have an electronic version of the magazine , which you can download to you home computer , read online or even enjoy on your smartphone . Websites such as Gumtree and OLX have just about killed the need for printed classified ads ( though we still enjoy a fair number of old-timers selling their livestock and used farming stuff through our pages ). And the word “ smallholder ” itself has taken on a new meaning , having been appropriated by the government to describe the new generation of emerging Black farmers , settling areas outside those that we identified as smallholdings in the late 1990s . And those are the readers we hope to begin serving as well .
By Pete Bower , Publisher
WRITTEN BY SMALLHOLDERS , FOR SMALLHOLDERS