Zoe Kent posts her farm life films on medial platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
As farm income has dipped over the last two decades, some farmers have built a second income by posting about their "life and times" on the farm, reports Amira McKee of The Wall Street Journal.
When the Welker family from Montana was facing some lean years, Nick Welker, his brother Scott, and their father, Bob, decided to share their ag adventures through short films and reels posted to social media.
The three men started their online careers with "viral videos in the mid-2010s, followed by the restoration of a Big Bud tractor — a hulking machine with a cult following among tractor enthusiasts," McKee writes. The three Welkers have joined "a growing class of 'aginfluencers' monetizing farm life."
For the Welker family, their "social-media business now provides a six-figure annual income stream, generating about $5 for every $1 invested in equipment, cameras, and a video editor," McKee writes.
“It blows my mind how much they eat it up," Nick Welker told the Journal. "They just really like seeing us work.”
The group has amassed over a million social media followers, and their YouTube channel produces ad revenue, as does their equipment sponsorships. McKee adds, "Tractor brands like Case IH pay handsomely to have their machinery featured on the Welkers’ channel."
Zoe Kent is another successful aginfluencer. After she took over her family's farm in 2021, she began posting online about her life as an Ohio soy and corn farmer. McKee adds, "Last year, her social-media income was five times higher than her farm profits."
The Journal reports, "Eighty-six percent of family farms earned a majority of their household income from off-farm sources in 2024, according to the most recent U.S. Agriculture Department data."
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