The highs and lows of agriculture are a daily ritual for most farmers. Who knew recording those private moments, showcasing expert problem-solving skills, mixed with a touch of humour, would be so well received?
The thirst for that knowledge went far beyond first thought with a single farmer's videos reaching more than 350 000 people. The UK farmer is now one of the most famous agricultural social media influencers in his country, choosing to champion a range of causes, including inheritance tax. Farmer and entrepreneur Olly 'Blogs' Harrison is heading down under this year for the AgXchange conference on the Gold Coast.
Olly has taken the idea of diversification in agriculture and ramped things up to 14 different income streams on his property. They include renting out office space in spare stables, offering dog walking fields, commercial grain drying, and even wood chipping.
"We decided that when the beef price was low, I think it was 19 years ago now, we turned that into office space."
Perhaps the most unlikely aspect of his business is his extremely popular YouTube Channel, Olly Blogs Agricontract .
Olly says it all started during Covid when a news crew came to the farm to film a story, but they weren't allowed to get too close, so asked him to record himself in the tractor on a smart phone.
I felt like an absolute wally taking my phone out of my pocket and filming!"
He started recording more and posting to his social media. Before long, schools were asking for content to use in class. Olly decided to upload the videos to YouTube so everyone could easily access them. Now Olly's channel is monetised, and he earns enough income to satisfy his tractor obsession!
"It's like free money really."
As well as his videos being informative and funny, Olly has chosen some issues close to his heart to campaign on. One of those being, inheritance tax, an unpopular change to legislation in the UK which would see farms worth more than 1 million pounds, subject to the 20% levy.
"They're never going to be able to pay that. So, it means breaking farms up. It's just a horrendous situation and we're having a big following," he explains.
Politicians have since started taking Olly seriously and he's engaged in some meaningful talks about changes to the policy.
We actually shut down central London.
Through Olly's campaigning, an estimated 45 000 to 60 000 farmers attended a rally in Central London, one of the most iconic images being Olly's son riding a pedal tractor outside Big Ben.
Farm and fame
His now high profile has placed him in regular contact with Jeremy Clarkson, from Clarkson's Farm, who also helped draw attention to the protest.
"Jeremy's done quite a bit of good getting people to understand farming and make it cool, to the masses."
Olly is very diplomatic talking about his meetings at a policy level but says it's important to remember those writing legislation are all human.
"They make mistakes, sometimes huge mistakes and it's just from a complete lack of understanding."
"On paper, you look at a farm, and we look wealthy, don't we? But you know, no one owns a farm. You just look after it until the next generation. It doesn't matter if it's 10 pounds or 10 million, it's never going to be liquid."
"If you're worried that it's being used as a vehicle to move wealth from generation to generation and avoid tax, put a capital gain on it, if it's sold," suggests Olly.
He says his content online has helped raise awareness that the returns are certainly not always good on the land, the income entirely hinges on the weather.
"Getting people to understand that has been very important."
And with every video, he's helping to close that gap.
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