Crop Production Magazine (CPM): The Specialist Journal for UK Arable Farming
Crop Production Magazine, known throughout its industry simply as CPM, is the leading specialist journal for United Kingdom arable farmers and agronomists. First created in 1999 and first published in February of that year, it is based in Shrewsbury, England, in this directory's listing, and reaches its readers at cpm-magazine.co.uk as well as in print. Where general farming weeklies cover every sector from sheep to supermarkets, CPM does one thing deliberately and deeply: the science, machinery and business of growing combinable and root crops on British farms.
That focus shapes everything about the title. Its articles are mostly in-depth, analytical features that explore the issues behind a current problem or development, aiming to present new ways of thinking rather than to prescribe solutions. Its own About page sums up the philosophy in a phrase that recurs across its publishing: CPM does not seek to prescribe, but to inspire, stimulate and inform. For a readership of farm business owners making expensive decisions about seed, chemistry, machinery and soil, that distinction is the brand.
Overview
CPM is published ten times a year, with joint issues at the turn of the year, and operates on a controlled circulation model: it is available free of charge to qualifying farmers and farm managers in the UK. The qualifying criteria published by the magazine are a practical definition of its audience — growers farming at least 75 hectares of cereals, and/or 30 hectares of oilseed rape, 15 hectares of potatoes, 15 hectares of sugar beet, or 10 hectares of field beans or peas. In other words, CPM is written for commercial-scale arable units and the agronomists who advise them.
Within that controlled circulation, the readership extends well beyond the farm office. The magazine lists farm managers, agronomists, machinery dealers and other arable supply industry professionals among its readers, notes that on farm it is frequently shared among farm staff — sprayer operators, tractor drivers, store managers and office staff — and is also distributed to agricultural universities, colleges and research institutes, where it is read by leading researchers and by the next generation of crop specialists. The publisher's striking summary is that CPM reaches growers responsible for 84 per cent of all arable hectares in the UK.
History and Founding
CPM was first published in February 1999, entering an agricultural publishing market then dominated by broad-based titles. Its founding proposition — a dedicated technical journal for arable production, free to qualifying growers and funded by the supply industry that wanted to reach them — proved durable. The magazine marked its 25th anniversary in 2024 not with nostalgia but, characteristically, with a forward look: a major feature on the future of crop production towards 2050, sharing the viewpoints of those at the helm of the industry and of the next generation of experts. Contributors to that anniversary coverage included SRUC's Professor Fiona Burnett, discussing the shift from input-intensive, one-size-fits-all spray programmes toward knowledge-intensive, integrated disease management.
For most of its life CPM was an independent title, owned and managed by Angus McKirdy. That changed with its sale to Kelsey Media, the Kent-based specialist publisher whose farming portfolio also includes South East Farmer, Farm Machinery and Vineyard. The sale, advised on by The Wilkes Partnership for McKirdy, was reported as giving CPM's owner the chance to release the value built up in the business while developing it further within the Kelsey portfolio, with McKirdy continuing as commercial director at CPM. Kelsey's farming division welcomed the title as the UK's leading arable technical title, a key addition alongside its machinery and regional farming brands.
Publisher and Ownership
Under Kelsey Media, CPM sits within a portfolio of agriculture titles published from the group's Kent base — its own magazine documents carry the Kelsey Media address at The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent — while its editorial identity remains rooted in the arable heartlands, reflected in the Shrewsbury listing and in contributors based in Shropshire and other crop-growing counties. Kelsey presents the acquisition strategically: CPM brought a business-to-business arable audience to a group already strong in farm machinery publishing, and Kelsey's chief executive had previously described farming titles as a core strength when the group added South East Farmer and later Agricultural Trader to the same division.
Before the sale, the continuity figure was Angus McKirdy himself — owner/manager of CPM, the person who built its reputation for quality, independent journalism, and the commercial director who stayed on after the deal. That arrangement, an independent founder remaining inside the acquiring group, is common in specialist publishing precisely because the value of a title like CPM lies in personal trust: advertisers buy the audience relationship, and readers trust named editors and writers they have followed for years.
Editorial Content and Sections
CPM's content divides into agronomy and technical coverage, machinery, and innovation. Its technical reporting covers the core decisions of the arable year: variety choice, disease control in cereals and oilseed rape, grassweed management — a perennial autumn theme, with research and advice to bolster existing knowledge — potato and sugar beet production in its roots coverage, nutrient management including phosphate stewardship, and integrated pest management, such as new beneficial-insect attractants to combat aphid-transmitted viruses. Features are analytical and long, frequently built around researchers, consultants and farmers testing an approach on real ground.
Machinery has been a growing pillar. In 2017 the magazine reported publishing a record number of machinery pages and more editorial pages that year than any other dedicated arable trade journal, and it appointed a dedicated machinery editor to meet rising reader appetite. A new Innovation section followed for 2018, focusing on new technologies and research advances. Regular voices give the journal character: columns with names such as Smith's Soapbox, Talking Taties, Nature Natters and Machinery Murmurs appear in its web archive, alongside the Last Word closing column — evidence of a magazine that leavens heavy technical material with personality and opinion.
Audience and Circulation
CPM's audience model is controlled circulation at its most disciplined. Instead of chasing a large unverified readership, it restricts free copies to qualifying growers defined by cropped area, then layers on the professional ecosystem around them: agronomists who recommend products across many farms, machinery dealers, supply industry professionals, university and college staff and students, and research institutes. The magazine states plainly that above all it is read by UK farm business owners — decision makers — which is the audience advertisers in crop protection, seed, fertiliser and machinery most want to reach.
Pass-on readership is built into the model. Because a single copy arriving at a farm is shared among the team — the sprayer operator who will apply the chemistry, the tractor driver, the store manager who will handle the grain — the effective readership of each printed copy multiplies. The monthly newsletter has been described by the magazine as enjoying industry-leading open and click-through rates, and all website content, including web-only articles, is free with no subscription or log-in obligation, widening the funnel while print remains the controlled, qualifying core.
Print and Digital Editions
Print and digital are deliberately complementary. The print magazine appears ten times a year — media databases note joint January/February and November/December issues — and carries the long analytical features, technical sections and machinery tests that readers keep on the farm office shelf through a season. Full issues are also published digitally; the April 2025 edition, for example, is available as a complete magazine PDF through the CPM website, extending print content to the wider professional audience.
The website, cpm-magazine.co.uk, publishes daily in season, organising material into sections including agronomy, technical and machinery coverage, with articles dated and bylined and an archive that runs continuously through the farming year — harvest reports in late summer, grassweed strategy in autumn, research from European congresses such as the IIRB sugar beet congress reported for UK growers. The monthly newsletter ties the channels together for registered readers. In 2017 the then editor was already noting an increasing appetite for machinery and technical features online as well as in print, and the site has been free-access ever since — a considered choice to keep trusted information as accessible as possible.
Notable Editors and Contributors
CPM's best-known editorial figure is Tom Allen-Stevens, its overall editor in the period covered by its own announcements, who also edited the Innovation section and was responsible for sponsored and knowledge-exchange editorial. Lucy de la Pasture served as technical editor, responsible for the technical and roots sections — the agronomic heart of the magazine. In 2017 David Jones joined as machinery editor, bringing fifteen years of writing about farm machinery, from producing the NFU's county magazines through Big Farm Weekly and Farming News to in-house publications for some of the world's largest farm machinery manufacturers, and basing himself in Shropshire.
Around that core, the magazine says it is proud to represent some of the most experienced agronomic, technical and machinery journalists in the field. It works closely with the companies that support it to gather inside knowledge on technical issues affecting farmers and the wider food chain, while maintaining its non-prescriptive editorial stance. Recent web bylines include Janine Adamson, whose name appears on features from the 25th anniversary future-of-farming coverage onward, reflecting the next generation of the title's writing team.
Awards and Recognition
The magazine's own About page records that many of its journalists have received British Guild of Agricultural Journalists awards for their CPM contributions — the principal professional honours in British agricultural journalism, awarded by the guild that also reported CPM's sale to Kelsey Media as industry news. For a small team, repeated guild recognition across agronomic, technical and machinery writing is a significant credential, and CPM deploys it plainly as evidence that its in-depth approach is respected by peers as well as readers.
Market recognition reinforces the awards. CPM describes itself, and was described by its purchaser and its purchaser's advisers alike, as the UK's leading arable technical title and the leading specialist journal for UK arable farmers and agronomists. Its claim to reach growers farming 84 per cent of the UK's arable hectares is the commercial expression of the same standing. When a title's buyer, seller and professional guild all use the same description, a directory can record the consensus with confidence.
Recent Developments
The sale to Kelsey Media is the defining recent development, moving CPM from independent ownership into one of Britain's largest specialist magazine groups while keeping its commercial director and editorial model in place. Inside the Kelsey farming division, CPM now sits alongside profi International, Tractor & Machinery, South East Farmer, Farm Machinery and Vineyard, giving the group a connected offer from technical arable journalism through machinery to regional farming coverage.
Editorially, the magazine's recent agenda tracks the pressures on British crop production: fungicide resistance in septoria and potato blight, the move to integrated and regenerative practices, drought-affected harvests — with oilseed rape emerging as a star performer in CPM's reporting of a difficult season — and the economics of doing less, such as shallower cultivations that shift less soil for soil health without necessarily compromising production. Through its website's continuous publishing in September 2026 and its ten-issue print cycle, CPM continues the formula set in 1999: free to the growers who qualify, deep rather than broad, and trusted precisely because it informs decisions instead of dictating them.
