Farming PR 101
Younger farmers are showing how to break agriculture's communication impasse.
It would not be overstatement to say many farmers don’t feel heard or noticed. For most city dwellers, food magically appears on the shelf in the grocery store and there is nary a passing thought to the effort and risk taken to produce it.
This communication disconnect has become worse as the smart phone has become ubiquitous. The sweet irony is that a communications device has played such a large role in disconnecting consumers from food production.
The problem, in part, is the astounding speed with which we have moved from an analog world where we put more value on physical experiences to a digital world where we are experiencing work and play almost exclusively on screens and have become separated from the real world. Used to be, if we wanted to learn a skill such as tractor maintenance, we would attend in-person classes. Now, we learn new skills by watching YouTube videos.
Older farmers - say anyone over 55 - have had to make the difficult choice of trying to keep up with the rapidly changing communications technology or simply ignore it and hope they can still run the farm until they retire and/or die. The smarter ones have leaned on their sons and daughters to manage anything that smells like technology. But that takes an enormous amount of trust and has undoubtedly led to increased friction in what are already fractious farm succession plans. In fact, philosophical differences on technology adoption on farms are probably the most divisive issues in farm families.
And yet, there is hope. You need to look no further than young Minnesota crop and turkey farmer Zach Johnson. He grew up on a farm that had been in his family for six generations, starting all the way back in 1868. A century farm and then some.
Like many multi-generation farm kids, Zach had good intentions of keeping the cycle going, staying on the farm and managing it wisely so that he could pass it on to his own kids one day. But he also became increasingly aware of the threat to farming viability from negative, mis-informed portrayals of farmers in the mainstream media.
He decided to take the fight to them on YouTube. Simple stuff at first. Showing city folk what life was like on a farm. Taking them through a typical growing season. Dealing with all the risks and unexpected events. Explaining modern farming practices. A window into his world.
It worked. His first videos garnered a few hundred views. That grew to 7,000 YouTube subscribers on his Millennial Farmer channel and kept growing. It got enough big enough to get the attention of YouTube corporate and they did a promo video on him around a year ago. Today, he has almost 900,000 subscribers and his videos regularly get over 2 million views. And - get this - he is making more money from his YouTube channel than he is making from the farm.
The video productions have become more professional, but Zach hasn’t allowed the video success to go to his head. The messaging is still down-to-earth, earnest, and transparent. This is the best kind of PR that agriculture can get. Better than any slick production from Madison Avenue. Straight from the heart of the practitioner.
Agriculture needs more Zach Johnsons if it is to win the food PR war. Farming will continue to become more expensive and less viable for smaller producers if the industry doesn’t control at least some of the messaging to consumers.
It also must bring the truth of traditional food production to the Silicon Valley investment funds putting inordinate amounts of money into alternative food start-ups. Many of these misguided investments are being made without a full understanding of the real market size of these alternatives. There will be a transition to plant-based proteins, to be sure, but not nearly as much as many of the plant-based start-up business plans would suggest.
Briefly
One side effect of the pandemic has been the accelerated shift of used machinery sales from in-person to online. Kenny Roelofsen with Abilene Machine, one of the largest ag replacement parts companies in the country, told Successful Farming that COVID-19 “propelled online purchases of equipment parts to 70% and more of our total sales.” Tim Meyer of the Steffes Group told the farm magazine that except for “life experience” auctions such as retirement or estate sales all other used equipment is selling online. “We now see guys living no more than 10 or so miles away from a live sale bidding online rather than attending the auction,” he said.
Rail congestion in the US is disrupting operations for farmers and ag suppliers, potentially contributing to long-term food price inflation. According to the Wall Street Journal, delayed trains and scarce railcars are impeding grain haulage this spring, causing grain storage facilities to fill up, backing up fertilizer shipments and temporarily shutting down production at ethanol producing plants. Railroad companies attribute the service problems to worker shortages and high demand.
With the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, concerns are growing about the short-term and long-term impact on global grain trade. The Russian blockade of Black Sea ports is making it very difficult for Ukraine to export any of its current stored grain. The Wall Street Journal reported that governments all over the world are moving quickly on contingency plans to fill a void in Black Sea region grain supply which could total as much as tens of millions of tons of grain. They are paying farmers to sow more crops and are enlisting railcars and additional containers to move wheat. Large grain traders such as Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland are exploring alternate routes to move crops out of Ukraine.
Deals
Australian agtech startup Carbon Count has raised $US50 million ($A67.3 million) in a Series B funding round to finance its expansion. The company, which makes it easier for farmers to claim and manage carbon credits, is looking to go global.
Indian-based Tractor Junction, an online marketplace for tractors and other farm vehicles, has raised a $5.7 million seed round co-led by Indian firms Info Edge Ventures — the VC arm of internet giant Info Edge, which was an early backer of food delivery app Zomato — and Omnivore. Other investors included Rockstart AgriFood Fund and AgFunder. Tractor Junction graduated from the AgFunder-backed GROW Impact Accelerator in 2019.
Brazil- and US-based farm management startup Solinftec has raised an additional $60 million to expand its precision agriculture platform. The round was led by Lightsmith Group and included existing investors Unbox Capital and Circularis Partners. The company manages more than 27 million acres in the US, Brazil and other parts of Latin America, focusing on sugarcane, soy, corn and cotton.
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