Ideas for Farm Videos (with Examples!)
We hosted a video webinar about making your own farm tour videos using a smartphone. In the webinar, we touched briefly on ideas of audience and content, but we wanted to share a little more in-depth ideas and examples to set you on your way to easily composing your own shareable farm videos.
Many consumers choose to buy direct from the farm primarily because they want to support specific agricultural practices. Show them how and why you do what you do! Another motivator for consumers is that warm fuzzy feeling they get when they envision a family farm. Whether an in-person farm tour is possible or not, videos build trust and connect the customer to your farm brand in a way they can never feel connected to grocery store brand. The personal connection is a major motivator for consumers who choose to buy direct from the farm. Plus, showing the work and care that go into raising food helps your audience understand the real value of the items you sell.
Farm Video Themes
Meet the Team/Farm Jobs
This can be a single video that you share on your website, IG TV, or Drip email welcome series. It can also be broken into much shorter videos, such as one clip for each team member or group, so that you can share them one by one on social media over time. Acknowledge your crew’s hard work and share a glimpse of what they do each day. Don’t forget to include a video or clip on your herding dogs, livestock guardian dogs, or family pets.
Kids’ View of the Farm
There are so many aspects of the farm that can be exciting to kids! Some ideas include bugs, baby animals, big machinery, exciting tools like flame weeders, livestock close and personal (with kid-friendly facts).
If you have kids, you can also show the farm from their perspective, whether they make the video, are featured in it, or not. Include their favorite fun activities or spots on the farm; their favorite farm foods or recipes; and their chores.
Timelapse
If you have an iPhone, this feature is built right in. Timelapse videos can be used for fun (jumping goats or galavanting piglets); to illustrate all the work that goes in to the food you sell (packing orders or washing produce); or to reinforce the emotional connection customers have to the idea of farm life (sunrises). Just be sure to use a tripod or other device to hold the phone steady.
Seasons or Time of Day
Show what’s special each season (calving, planting, haying, winter growing structures…). Or, create a mini-tour of what happens at each time of day on the farm.
Livestock Practices
Create a mini-tour for each type of livestock you raise. Include a shot at livestock eye-level. Show how it all works — feeding, water, safety, moving to a new pasture, etc. Things that may seem a bit mundane to you may be interesting to non-farmers! Explain how and why you do things the way you do.
Growing Practices
Show your crops in the field, from the broad view to the close-up view. Explain how you prevent pests, show tools and techniques you use, and offer other insights into your practices. Or, create a special video just focused on a single crop, that follows that crop all season (seed starting, planting, any challenges, harvesting, and any other steps along the cycle of that particular crop).
Walking/Riding Tour
Take a walk. Explore equipment, structures, and areas of the farm, and give your customers a complete visual of where their food comes from. Talk about the changes you’ve made to the property over time and the challenges you’ve faced in each area (pests, weeds, fencing, enclosures…).
Brainstorming
Ultimately, your farm videos will be about what’s important to you. There’s no wrong answer when it comes to how and what you want to show. But if you find yourself struggling to pin down a topic for your next farm video, we’ve put together this list of questions to help you brainstorm:
Who do you want to watch this video? What do you want them to feel about your farm? What questions might they have? What do you want them to understand?
How is the food you produce different than what someone might find somewhere else? What aspects of your practices can you share in a video?
Why do you farm? Why do you do things the way you do?
Who works on the farm, and what are their roles? What are their favorite farm foods?
What’s interesting or important about the land you take care of?
What is that tool or implement, what is it used for, and how does it work?
What’s different about this week on the farm versus last week? How is the season changing?
Where does the food you produce go? Who eats it? Where can a person find it?
What are the parts of your farm? What are the fields and what are the buildings? (It’s ok to leave some out!) What happens in each place?
How does your work benefit your land, your animals, your soil, your community, your family, and your customers?
What might kids be most excited about on your farm? Are there chores your own kids help with, or do they have a favorite spot or fun activity on the farm?
Structuring your Farm Tour Video
A farm is a huge, complicated, interconnected thing, and it can be overwhelming to try to figure out how to demonstrate it in 3 to 5 minutes! If you’re working on creating a general tour video, consider these tips:
It doesn’t all have to fit in one video. Start with a general overview video, and then make separate videos to delve in-depth on different themes. Soon you’ll have a whole farm tour library for customers to explore.
Think about the short blurbs you write for markets, wholesale outlets, or trade brochures. You can take the same brief but informative approach to your video. Whether you only have five lines or five minutes, narrow down the most important points about your farm.
The classic “W” questions never fail: Who, What, When, Where, Why (and How)?
Examples of Farm Videos and Why They Work
Stone Folds Farm
This is the kind of video that would appeal to any audience. I like the simplicity of illustrating an everyday task like calf chores by breaking it down into five clips. No need for any audio editing or voiceover—it’s self-explanatory. And animals (especially baby ones) are always winning content. This same structure could be creatively applied to anything on a farm, like tractor maintenance, growing something quick like pea shoots, canning tomatoes, or harvesting, rinsing, and bagging greens. “Zooming in” on one aspect of a big, complicated farm can be a great approach to defining your content.
Farmer Kev’s Organic
This farmer is using Youtube as a direct line to his customers. He makes a weekly video to coincide with his CSA share delivery, and uses it as an opportunity not only to connect his customers to his farm, but to share announcements and changes, as well as pre-empting anticipated FAQs. In this video, showing the vegetables alongside footage of where and how they grow in the field makes it even more interesting to the audience. If you look at some of his other CSA videos, you’ll see that a lot of them are exactly the same and often done in one continuous shot, which means way less time editing! If you find yourself getting bogged down with editing, think about what kinds of videos you could make that are all one clip rather than many that you’ll have to piece together.
Seven Sons Farms
Blaine from Seven Sons Farms does a great job using video as a way to not only appeal to customers, but also to educate the general public about their farm values, philosophy, and practices. Even though each video is focused on a smaller detail of their operation—in this case, the pigs’ pasture—they all fit in the same bigger picture theme of promoting sustainable pasture-based agriculture. This video is a true farm tour video because it shows a location and describes how that location is used. This is also a good example of what a difference a steadicam or gimbal stabilizer can make—the motion of the camera is natural and smooth, and really helps give the audience a first-person perspective of standing in the pig pasture.
Farm Up
This farmer is using videos to reach other farmers. By focusing on sharing information about his business model and philosophy, he’s probably not going to reach many ordinary local customers, but this kind of video will certainly help build a following if your goal is education rather than reaching customers. Even though most of the video is just a shot of him talking to the camera, it works because he provides lots of great info, and he’s chosen to stand in a location that’s interesting without being too distracting. Plus, he starts the video with a list of questions the viewer may be thinking, which tells the viewer what to expect and motivates them to keep watching!
More Farm Video Resources
