It seems a quiet revolution is taking place with farmers using social media platforms to inform, entertain and make us laugh.
I’ve always said that social media has been a huge aid to my own comedy career with various sketches on Facebook. But it’s not just Facebook (apparently it’s not “in” anymore anyway according to my 16-year-old nephew). Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and more recently TikTok are all being used to show off funny farmers, clever collies and talented tractor drivers.
Promotion
And it’s not just for a laugh either – some of them are making a bob or two at it as well.
Not only that, they are doing us a great service by promoting our industry.
The first example that springs to mind is Grassmen who simply started out filming their silage harvesting in Ireland and sticking it on YouTube.
The availability of the drone has been a huge benefit and works particularly well with the silage fields as it’s very satisfying watching scattered out grass being swathed up into rows then gobbled up by the forager and carted away to the pit.
The catchy background music works well with the view of about a million quid’s worth of machinery swarming about the field.
It seems that the income generated by these videos can fairly contribute to buying some of these fancy tractors as well.
Income
In the US, one farmer called Zach Johnson has a YouTube channel called MN Millennial Farmer, and he and wife Becky have more than 50 million views.
They claim that their videos bring in five times that of their farm income, which is crazy. However, looking at my farm accounts, it wouldn’t take much to achieve that.
You would think America would be home to the biggest agricultural YouTubers but in fact that’s home here in Scotland with the Hoof GP who has a whopping 1.3m subscribers.
This is the concept of Graeme Parker, a cow foot trimmer from the West of Scotland who basically films himself trimming and repairing coos’ feet!
What’s the fascination with that, I hear you ask? Well, it turns out folk seem to be fascinated with rotten feet – and the smellier the better!
I tend to wonder what’s missing in folks’ lives when they want to watch a video of pus being squeezed out of a bull’s foot, although there’s also a TV show called Dr Pimple Popper.
Cuddly
If that’s not your thing though, and you want something a bit more warm and cuddly, then check out The Sheep Game with Ayrshire farmer Cameron Wilson who gave up his job as a policeman to follow his dream of being a sheep farmer (can’t be right?), and uses his videos and merchandise sales to help him build up his business.
Meanwhile, in Perthshire Crawford Niven is doing a fine job promoting Gloagburn Farm.
Talking of sheep, I see that there is a Ladies Who Lamb Facebook page that has over 7,000 members, proving my point that group therapy does help.
Scottish women are also leading the way on Instagram with the likes of Joyce Campbell from Armadale and Michelle Bruce from Aberdeenshire doing a fine job of promoting the way sheep are reared and eaten.
TikTok has risen up through the ranks in the last couple of years to be the platform for “tractor banter” among our younger generation.
In my father’s day, dinner time in the field would consist of the tractormen sharing a newspaper or talking about last night’s telly. Now they tend to spend their lunch hour filming tractor cock-ups, in-cab karaoke or recording hilarious monologues of which I’m quite jealous.
I haven’t scrolled them all but may I highly recommend donkey 262 on Facebook. While a lot of young bucks are filming themselves in their fancy cabs, this lad’s just sitting talking about his 35-year-old Leyland tractor in his droll Northern Irish accent.
Like the best comedy, sometimes you can’t explain why he’s so funny but he damn well is!
