Former Country Guide editor Don Baron passes away

Don Baron, longtime author, editor and farm journalist and former editor of venerable farm publication Country Guide magazine, has died at the age of 82.

D.B. Scott notes on his blog, Canadian Magazines, that Baron was an “an outspoken critic of regulation in the grain industry of western Canada.”

After Country Guide, Baron worked as head of agriculture and resources at CBC Television. Scott quote’s Regina’s Leader-Post , which writes that Baron “lost no time in airing a documentary based on the best-selling book Merchants of Grain, which gave Canadians an inside look at the little-known families, companies and government agencies that dominated the international grain trade. Another documentary, What Breadbasket?, attracted much controversy for aggressively arguing the “orderly marketing” of Prairie grain through the monopoly Canadian Wheat Board was bad for the Prairies’ development and farmers, in particular.”

Baron has written four books, including a study of Prairie grain politics (Canada’s Great Grain Robbery) and Jailhouse Justice, a story about farmers jailed for protesting the Canada Wheat Board’s Prairie wheat and barley export monopoly.