It was just before Christmas when I reflected on how Jeremy Clarkson had a dream. Unfortunately his dream about Meghan Markle turned out to be a nightmare and captivated the British press for several days. At the time, I made the case that as one of the UK’s top farming social media influencers, Clarkson’s willingness to create a stir would do us farmers more harm than good.
It was several weeks later when I’d see a tweet from Olly Harrison that proved I wasn’t alone in thinking Clarkson had become a major contributer to farming’s image. In fact, Clarkson was head and shoulders above the rest of the farming social media influencers he was alongside.
Been sent this but don’t know where it’s from any one know ?
Looks like a magazineSecond to @JeremyClarkson Is pretty high although I prefer word content creator to influencer 🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/ulKzZjFLyw
— Olly harrison 🥛🍔🌱AccidentalYoutuber (@agricontract) March 29, 2023
The biggest farming social media influencers? Say’s who?
Farmers, apparently. Given how often I found Jeremy Clarkson would come up in conversations once non-farmers found out I was a farmer, I was convinced Clarkson was the biggest farming social media influencer of the moment. What I didn’t expect was that this perception was so strongly held amongst farmers themselves.
The list of top farming social media influencers appears to come from a farmer engagement survey by Kynetec. The survey quizzed farmers from the UK, France and Germany on a range of topics, including social media.
The average age of farmers in the UK is 59. It would make sense to assume plenty of them don’t consume any social media whatsoever and might consume more farming media through print. But more and more farmers have caught wind of social media’s importance in today’s media landscape. And from these results, it’s clear that many farmers consider Clarkson the most prominent of farming social media influencers.
Who makes the list of top farming social media influencers?
The list of 21 influencers is an interesting blend of individuals and organisations. Whilst I wasn’t initially familiar with all of them, here’s a summary of who’s made the list:
- Jeremy Clarkson – High-profile TV personality and newspaper columnist turned farmer
- Olly Harrison – Arable farmer and contractor, YouTuber
- Tom Pemberton – Dairy, cattle and sheep farming, YouTuber turned TV presenter
- Adam Henson – Countryfile presenter, farmer
- Gareth Wyn Jones – Hill farmer, TV personality
- Minette Batters – President of the NFU
- Agriland – Agricultural news outlet
- Harry’s Farm – Arable and cattle farmer, YouTuber
- Joe Seels – Arable and cattle farmer, YouTuber
- NFU – National Farmer’s Union, lobbying organisation
- AHDB – Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board
- Andrew Ward – Arable farmer, YouTuber
- Martin Kennedy – President of the NFU in Scotland
- Kaleb Cooper – Contractor, TV personality with Jeremy Clarkson
- Dove Farms – Arable, cattle and livestock farm, YouTube channel
- Farmer’s Weekly – Agricultural news outlet
- Gabe Brown – US regenerative agriculture thought leader
- Glanbia – Multinational nutritionals company
- John Pawsey – Organic Farmer
- 10th Generation Dairyman – US Dairy Farmer
- Matt Baker – TV presenter with farming background
The top 21 UK farming social media influencers, courtesy of @agricontract on Twitter
What can we learn from this list of farming social media influencers?
Without being able to pore over the report’s findings, I can only speculate about how or why these influencers place where they do. But we can still make a few observations about the landscape of farming social media influencers from this list.
Are organisations dropping the ball?
It’s probably not that shocking to think of Jeremy Clarkson as a bigger farming social media influencer than the NFU. Clarkson’s social media following is immense and if the NFU invested their resources in bettering him, we farmers would feel like they’d have wasted their time. But 10th position does feel low.
Perhaps with NFU president Minette Batters featuring higher on the list and Martin Kennedy lower down, it might be possible that the NFU would rank higher up the list if all entities connected to them were consolidated together in this list. Batters especially has made several more high profile appearances in the media, including appearing on the panel of the BBC’s Question Time.
I was more surprised to see the Farmer’s Weekly languishing in 16th. Their print magazine has been falling through our letterbox for decades. Whilst they’re probably the biggest print entity for farming news, does their lowly ranking in this list suggest they’re not making the inroads they should be in the social media landscape?
What I do find striking about this list is how individuals are overperforming on social media when compared to some of the most important organisations in UK agriculture. Perhaps this is simply proof that social media is most effective at connecting people to other people, rather than to organisations.
A wide range of farming sectors, but some absences
When considering just the farmers on this list, at first glance it feels like a decent mix. We have arable farmers, dairy farmers, sheep farmers, beef farmers. There are farmers from the uplands and farmers in the lowlands. We even have specific representation for regenerative and organic farming systems. And of course, we have contractors.
Something you start to notice as you look through the YouTube account’s on this list is that they often have something in common: gear. There’s some seriously meaty machinery on show. From crisp Claas combines to flashy Fastracs, the amount of YouTube content (plus Clarkson’s Farm) that boils town to boys-and-their-toys cannot be dismissed.
My fleet of Zetors and clapped-out classics means you probably shouldn’t expect any farming vlogs of mine to break the internet anytime soon.
With arable, cattle and sheep particularly well represented on the list, I realised their were three huge farming sectors that hadn’t appeared to make the cut; chickens, pigs and vegetable growers. I can only guess why this might be the case, but here’s some ideas;
- Vegetable farmers are often huge enterprises that partner with supermarkets to deliver high volumes of vegetables. They employ many people working intensively on tight schedules and slim profit margins over mind-bogglingly vast acreages. It’s simply not a working environment conducive to turning on some cameras and filming a farm diary
- Chicken farms, both for meat and eggs, are often fairly large, industrial looking enterprises. And by their very nature, they are highly repetitive. Raising meat birds is essentially feeding and watering for a few weeks, and then the process begins again. Large parts of an egg farm will resemble a factory-like packing facility with even more repetitive processes. Factor in the more intensive farming systems, hazmat suits and short turnaround times and you’ve got yourself a farming system that is, at best, boring. Just look at the caustic comments when Joe.co.uk tried to take a lighthearted look at a chicken farm.
- Pig farming can be extensive, but the media representation of traditional coloured breeds and grassy paddocks is pretty misleading. White breeds, high numbers, quick turnaround times and competing with Denmark gives pig farming a less wholesome aesthetic than some of the other sectors. There’s also not much for a fleet of tractors on the pig farm.
What sort of content is working for farming social media influencers?
We can speculate about what sectors may struggle for clout in the social media landscape by comparing them to the sectors that do well. It’s fair to say that if your farming system requires a combine and some big tractors tearing about the place, your content could have potential.
Cattle and sheep seem to be the most popular types of livestock from this list of influencers. All types of livestock, including pigs and chickens, give us cute baby animals to squee over. As no hatcheries made the list, there must be another reason that cattle and sheep outperform the rest of the agricultural animal kingdom.
My best guess is that we often see the sheep and cattle out in lovely green fields, in the lovely British countryside, which looks lovely. Perhaps this pastoral aesthetic is simply nicer to look at than a warm hanger-like shed full of meat birds.
If the medium is the message, then the message for social media farmers is YouTube and television. The majority of the content from these farming social media influencers, be it on YouTube or television, boils down to ‘what’s happening on the farm’.
Whilst cute pictures of baby animals and loyal working dogs no doubt go a long way, it looks like the most influential social media personalities are a little more long-form than most.
Matt Baker
The biggest shock for me was how low down on this list Matt Baker appears. It surprises me because I used to watch him on Blue Peter when I was a little kid. He used to bleat on about how he grew up on a farm. Then, as well as being on the dreaded One Show over and over again, he also became a fixture on Countryfile.
But then I realised something. Every individual on this list is an actual farmer. Matt Baker has been on TV a lot, but he’s not really a farmer to the same extent as the other personalities on the list. Even Clarkson is putting in more hours on the land than Baker.
Perhaps when surveying farmers to see who their favourite farming social media influencers are, they’re more likely to identify individuals who are actual farmers.
Conclusion: UK’s top 21 farming social media influencers
Does any of this really matter? In short, yes it does.
Not long after I first saw this list, Kaleb Cooper attended Downing Street’s ‘Farm to Fork’ Summit. At that summit, Clarkson’s Farm cast members bent the prime minister’s ear about planning restrictions that farming businesses are limited by. For those of you that haven’t seen the second season of Clarkson’s Farm, planning permission is the main series antagonist.
I’m a farmer that’s not grappling with planning. I’m most concerned about the dynamics of high welfare standards, international trade deals and the impact of the supermarket supply chain. Do you care more about food supply or planning issues? Vote now…
Rishi Sunak may have wanted to seek out the opinion of an arable farming contractor in their early twenties for the summit. He just so happened to invite the one that was the 14th most influential social media personalities in the UK.
On a slightly happier note, 2nd on the list Olly Harrisson popped up on BBC Breakfast’s absurd sofa recently. He highlighted the problems farmers are facing in what has proven to be a poor harvest season. He even brought some sample plants and grains to help demonstrate the impact of a wet harvest season.
Once again, it’s quite likely that Olly was there that morning because he features so highly on lists like these. Fortunately, he used his opportunity upon the soapbox to speak for all of us that had crops still standing in the fields throughout August. This is why it matters who our farming social media influencers are.