What Is A Farmer Influencer? How YouTube Is Changing The Farming Industry

Being a farmer is hard work, but being a farmer influencer is an even more challenging task. While most farmers solely focus on profiting from their land, a growing number of small-town farmers have turned to social media to increase their revenue.

In a New York Times article about the evolution of the farming industry, Morgan Gold, who typically sells poultry and eggs from his duck farm in Vermont, revealed he makes money by simply documenting his daily chores on YouTube.

With the help of a digital camera and a microphone, Gold, 40, shares some of the most entertaining moments of his day as a farmer in videos he posts to his Gold Shaw Farm account twice a week. His posts typically consist of short videos about his life as a newbie farmer and some of his fails as he explores the world of agriculture.

Thanks to his online audience, Gold rakes in between $2,500 to $4,000 a month from advertising revenue. This, noted the outlet, is about eight times what he earns from selling his farming products.

Gold admitted that he was able to discover his niche following a devastating incident on his farm. Last summer, a mink broke into his duck hutch and attacked the livestock, leaving behind a trail of blood and cracked eggs.

“It was one of the most depressing days of my life,” Gold explained. He added, “but at the same time, I’m thinking, ‘How is the audience going to react to this sort of thing?’”

By posting night-vision footage of the mink, Gold’s content helped him expand his audience to buy almost 100,000 viewers. To date, Gold has 130K subscribers to his channel and over 17.1M views.

Over time, Gold realized that his audience preferred watching how-to videos and his farming fails. “The storytelling part is what I’m good at. I’m not that good at the farming part,” he shared.

However, Gold isn’t the only one turning to YouTube to increase his income as a farmer influencer. As noted by the New York Times report, other farmers also share live streams of their livestock, while some depend on product endorsement deals to stay afloat in the competitive industry.