About North West Farmer

North West Farmer

Overview

The North West Farmer is an agricultural newspaper published from Mildura for the farming districts of north-western Victoria — the irrigated horticulture country of the Sunraysia around Mildura, Robinvale and Red Cliffs, and the dryland cropping country of the Mallee, from Swan Hill and Ouyen to Sea Lake, Birchip and Charlton. It is a specialist title: where a general community newspaper covers a town, the North West Farmer covers an industry, following the cropping research, ag technology, farm business and farm health questions that matter to the growers of one of Australia's most productive agricultural regions.

The paper was published for many years by the Elliott Newspaper Group of Mildura, the Lanyon family's company, alongside the Sunraysia Daily and other north-western Victorian titles. In a transaction announced in 2026, its ownership passed to SA Today Pty Ltd, trading as the Today News Group: the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Register of Eligible News Businesses now lists the North West Farmer, at northwestfarmer.com.au, among the twenty-five newspaper mastheads registered to SA Today, and the paper also appears in the Australian Press Council's current constituent publications list (September 2026) and in Country Press Australia's member listings. It remains in publication, with its current agricultural reporting tracked by media-monitoring services through the 2026 season.

History

The North West Farmer's long-term home, the Elliott Newspaper Group, grew from one of Australian regional journalism's oldest family enterprises. The Lanyon family's connection to Mildura publishing began with the 1920 merger of the Mildura Cultivator, the Mildura Telegraph and Darling and Lower Murray Advocate and the Merbein Irrigationist to form the Sunraysia Daily; James Lanyon was succeeded by his son Charles Dudley (CD) Lanyon, and then by William Russell (Bill) Lanyon, who served as executive chairman until his death in 2013. Under the family, the Elliott Newspaper Group assembled a portfolio of newspapers across the north-west — the Sunraysia Daily, the Swan Hill Guardian, the Gannawarra Times and others — and the North West Farmer was its dedicated agricultural title for the region.

No founding date for the North West Farmer itself is given in the industry records consulted for this profile, and none is asserted here; what the record shows is a paper of long standing by the 2000s. A February 2009 issue was captured in the media-monitoring collection of the National Centre for Farmer Health, which classifies the title as a monthly regional newspaper with a circulation of 12,500 at that time — figures quoted here as the historical record of that date. Its contents then already matched its present remit, including coverage of the Sustainable Farm Families program working to improve the health of farming families.

The decisive recent chapter is the end of the Lanyon era. Announcing the transfer in 2026, Elliott Newspaper Group directors Ross and Jamie Lanyon — the family's fourth generation in the business — described the family as having "always seen ourselves as custodians, not just owners" of their newspapers. The Sunraysia Daily, the Swan Hill Guardian, the Gannawarra Times, the Broken Hill Times and the North West Farmer passed to SA Today Pty Ltd, with the transaction closing on 1 September 2026. The buyer, trading as the Today News Group, is owned through entities associated with fourth-generation publisher Paul Thomas and media strategist Damian Morgan, and operates newspaper groups in Queensland as well as the Centralian Today in Alice Springs, launched in 2023.

Programming and Content

The North West Farmer's pages are organised around the working year of north-western Victorian agriculture. Cropping research leads the coverage: the paper reports the Grains Research and Development Corporation's national variety trials in the region, previewing field days run by the Birchip Cropping Group at its Mallee sites, and carries university research of direct paddock relevance, such as Monash University work on the safe storage of legumes and pulses — a significant question for a district that grows lentils, lupins and field peas at scale. Agricultural technology and farm careers feature strongly: the paper covered the Ag Tech Expo staged by the Birchip Cropping Group at Charlton, photographed for it by Di Martin, and an AgSTEM careers showcase at the Mildura SmartFarm that introduced school students to science and technology roles in agriculture during National Science Week.

Its journalist Andrew Mole's byline appears across this reporting in media-monitoring records, which track his North West Farmer stories on cropping research, ag technology and farm education into the current season. The paper also serves the irrigated side of its district — the Sunraysia's table grapes, citrus, almonds and dried fruit — and carries the service journalism a specialist rural readership expects: field-day and expo previews, machinery and input news, research findings translated for farm use, and health and wellbeing coverage in the tradition of its earlier Sustainable Farm Families reporting. In a region where the nearest metropolitan media are hours away, that combination of research, technology and community service is the paper's reason to exist.

Audience and Reach

The North West Farmer's audience is the farming population of north-western Victoria: dryland croppers across the Mallee and irrigation horticulturalists along the Murray in the Sunraysia. Its only published circulation figure in the records consulted is the historical one already noted — 12,500 copies recorded for its February 2009 issue in the National Centre for Farmer Health's monitoring data, when the paper was classified as a monthly — and no current audited figure is claimed here. Its effective reach is reinforced by its place in a regional newspaper group: it has long been listed in the North West Victoria network of regional advertising sales services, and it now sits within the Today News Group's registered portfolio alongside the Sunraysia Daily and its other former stablemates, giving advertisers a specialist agricultural channel into the district alongside the group's general newspapers.

Digital Presence

The North West Farmer publishes online at its own domain, northwestfarmer.com.au, which the ACMA's Register of Eligible News Businesses records against the title in SA Today's registration — the register entry being the authoritative public record of the paper's current publisher and web address. Its reporting is indexed by media-monitoring services such as Muck Rack, which attribute its journalists' agricultural stories to the title. Under its former owners the paper's digital presence ran in step with the Elliott Newspaper Group's other north-western titles; its ownership transfer in September 2026 places it within the Today News Group's growing stable of regional mastheads, whose Queensland and Northern Territory operations it now complements as the group's Victorian agricultural specialist.

Ownership and Organisation

The North West Farmer is owned by SA Today Pty Ltd, trading as the Today News Group, which acquired it from the Elliott Newspaper Group in the transaction that closed on 1 September 2026. SA Today's registration on the ACMA Register of Eligible News Businesses (ABN 19 644 311 937) lists twenty-five newspaper mastheads, among them the North West Farmer, the Sunraysia Daily, the Gannawarra Times, the Guardian at Swan Hill and the Broken Hill Times — the core of the former Elliott portfolio — together with the group's Queensland titles. The register names Paul Thomas, a fourth-generation publisher whose family interests stand behind the group with media strategist Damian Morgan, as the contact for the registered business. Before the sale, the paper's publisher was the Elliott Newspaper Group of Mildura, the Lanyon family company whose stewardship of north-western Victorian newspapers ran, through the Sunraysia Daily line, from 1920 to 2026.

Contact and Availability

The North West Farmer is published from Mildura, Victoria, and read across the Sunraysia and the Mallee; its website is northwestfarmer.com.au. The registered contact for its publisher SA Today Pty Ltd on the ACMA Register of Eligible News Businesses is Paul Thomas, phone 03 5945 0666, email paul.thomas@starnewsgroup.com.au. Readers and advertisers should confirm the paper's current publishing cycle and local office arrangements with the publisher, as its long-documented monthly cycle dates from its Elliott Newspaper Group era and its schedule under new ownership is a matter for the current masthead.