TikTok and Australian agriculture: How to inspire a new generation of farmers
TikTok has unlocked an unexpected audience for ag – curious young people from the city. And the sheer number of them wanting to know how to get a farm job will shock you.
THE ability to reach tens of millions of people across the world without stepping out the farm gate fell into Australian farmer Peter Vallance’s hands unexpectedly.
Eighteen months ago the humble farmer from country Victoria never expected posting short videos of his daily life on social networking app TikTok would see him gain more than half a million followers wanting to see more.
Appearances in newspapers, national news websites and on prime time television made him one of Australia’s most famous farmers overnight – along with his mischievous Alpaca Patrick, who won the hearts of social media users across the globe.
And that’s the power of TikTok – a platform that was able to grow its userbase by more than 50 per cent during the first half of 2020 to easily become the fastest growing social media company in Australia last year.
The video-sharing platform, dominated by Generation Alpha (born 2006-today) and Generation Z (born 1991-2005), is used by 2.5 million Australians, according to the latest Roy Morgan data from October.
That’s more than one-in-10 Australians aged 6 years and older – who it turns out, have a hunger to see and learn more about Australian agriculture.
Mr Vallance, who farms in Victoria’s Mallee region, has been contacted by hundreds of young people on the platform asking how they can get a job like him, raising the question of whether the agriculture industry’s struggle to get more young people into farming has found the opportunity it so desperately needs.
“One young person a day wants to know what they should do to get into agriculture,” said the 30-year-old, who knows all too well the impact of an ageing farming community.
“In our part of the world here, people were leaving when they finished high school and just weren’t coming back, family farms were being sold … To have those young people come and go ‘I really like look of your life. How do I get to do that?’ has been amazing.”
And Mr Vallance isn’t the only farmer who has seen first-hand how TikTok has unlocked a new wave of interest in the industry.
Farmhand Zoe Carter, who works on stations in Western Australia, has been overwhelmed by the interest from users in what she does as a job.
“The amount of people I’ve had message me or comment ‘Where can I do this?’, ‘How can I get started?’, ‘Where do I apply?’, ‘What’s the best steps?’ – it’s just massive,” she said.
The 22-year-old agriculture advocate, with a focus on encouraging young people to get into farming, has been in the social media game for years, but said her foray into TikTok made her content “blow up” in a way she had never experienced on other platforms.
Victorian farmer Zayne Hall, 21, says he has also had hundreds of messages from curious TikTok users asking questions about farming, from lamb marking and shearing to fencing.
The three farmers combined gained more than one million followers on the platform within 18 months – their sense of humour appearing to be the intital attraction for most users.
You only have to look globally to see the potential farmers have for popularity on the app. One dairy farmer in the US – reportedly TikTok’s largest market outside founding country China – has 1.7 million followers. That’s more than celebrities like Rebel Wilson, Coldplay and David Beckham.
But the key to farmers’ success on the platform is not in the followers.
HOW TIKTOK UNLOCKED AN AUDIENCE FOR AG
START scrolling through the app today without following a single account and you’ll still have an endless stream of content.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram, TikTok users don’t need to actively seek out content and follow accounts they’re interested in to see those posts in their feed.
“That’s one of the magical things about the algorithm,” said Mr Vallance.
“People who aren’t necessarily looking for agriculture – it falls into their laps.
“The cross section of people I talk to is unbelievable.”
The #farm hashtag on TikTok has 3.8 billion views and #farming has 2.8 billion views.
Ms Carter said the reason she thought farmers had been so successful on the app was that they were able to reach an audience that were not otherwise exposed to agriculture-related content.
“A lot of people don’t know where their food comes from so as soon as they see it they tend to find it quite interesting,” she said.
Both farmers want to see Australia’s industry groups and government departments – charged with promoting agriculture – take advantage of the app’s ability to speak to an audience the industry had for so long struggled to reach.
“If they want to keep thinking Twitter and Facebook is going to get it done for them they’re going to be sadly left in the dark,” Mr Vallance said.
“We need to explore every avenue available to us to promote agriculture in the best light we can, not only to get young people in the industry but for the industry to tell the industry story about the things we’re doing and how we’re doing them.
“If TikTok is going to get us to the people that have the thirst for the knowledge then that’s the source we’ll use.”
As Ms Carter put it – “agriculture is the lifeblood of the world – if we don’t have food, that’s it.”
And with the average age of an Australian farmer being 58, there’s no wonder these young farmers are worried there won’t be enough of them to feed the mouths of the nation in the future.
HOW AG CAN CAPITALISE ON TIKTOK SUCCESS
UNIVERSITY of Queensland associate professor Dr Stan Karanasios, who is an expert in how organisations use and adapt new digital technologies and how they impact society, said TikTok was a “gold mine of engagement” and farmers made ideal social media influencers.
“Agriculture bodies, lobby groups or government agencies can potentially have access to hundreds of millions of daily users on TikTok,” he said.
And the time to capitalise on the success of the platform was now, as there was no guarantee a social media platform, even as successful as TikTok, would maintain its popularity in years to come.
But it isn’t a matter of the National Farmers’ Federation just creating an account, he explains, as it would be difficult for an organisation to replicate the genuineness, authenticity and comedic aspect that have gained farmers their viral success on the platform.
Instead, collaboration would be key – industry organisations working with influencers to ensure the mechanisms are in place to capitalise on the growing interest in farming.
The number of young users expressing interest in farming as a career is really promising, Dr Karanasios said. But, “influencers can only do so much with their content.”
“It’s not really their job to open doors and create pathways and make it easy for people to get into farming,” he said.
“Influencers are more about making farming more accessible, making people understand what it involves and the life of farming but they need these established bodies and agencies to help people with that transition.
“It would we a shame for the influencers to generate so much interest in farming only for the blockage to be with the institutional side of things when it comes to making those steps.”
Ms Carter shared these concerns, saying from her own experience and watching friends try to get into the industry that there wasn’t enough being done to translate interest into real change.
“There needs to be a massive change in the opportunities young people from inner cities or even rural areas that don’t have access to farming have,” she said.
“Even short courses that give young people the opportunity to go learn the basic skills of animal handling.
“Kids don’t have the skills they need and there’s no where you can get them except working on a farm, and generally they won’t hire you if you don’t have those skills.”
Dr Karanasios noted that there was an interesting discourse taking place on TikTok around food waste, vegan diets, organic farming and climate change, and it was an important platform for two-way discussion between young critical consumers and the agriculture industry.
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