I honestly think social media is the worst thing you can do as a young farmer

Seems to create nothing but grief - overhyping them on their achievements and then leading to vicious and unhealthy cycles of elevation and then hatred/criticism

Social media isn’t real life

It becomes a game of energetic self projection

And it is deliberately addictive because it preys on our need for affirmation - have seen loads of good people damaged by it

And farming respect isn’t earned on it - that comes from old fashioned achievements

Just tried to explain this to a young man that asked me how he could use social media in his farming career

I told him to not do it

Or wait until he was way down the road and had a lot of solid farming achievements under his belt

Sure he won’t listen :-)

None of my farming heroes are on social media

The heavyweights don’t bother with it / they are focused on their sheep/cows/land/crops and usually think they personally are of no account

I love that kind of farmer / so modest they would be surprised to be admired at all

And when it goes wrong it is savage and mean

I’m just an old codger now, but it’s not a healthy thing for youngsters / unless they are very robust, steady and sorted in themselves

It will all seem like a game until someone takes their life like Caroline Flack or gets hurt by someone else

I can sense something bad coming

So if you are young and it is affecting you, turn it off and go become a great farmer focused on the stuff that matters

Of course not everyone will agree / and the young will go their own way

Good luck to them

But I have a very bad feeling about this and have said my piece - good people will get broken by it

I’m not telling anyone else what to think... but I was brought up that farming was a community of craft

Something like being a master thatcher or watchmaker or silversmith - and you worked your whole life to try and be a master at even a tiny element of it

And yes you were meant to be very busy earning your respect through work for the first three decades or so

And would never draw attention to yourself for anything other than your growing craftsmanship - that’s very old fashioned, and not for everyone, but...

I suspect a lot of traditional livestock farmers believe something similar

I meet amazing accomplished stockmen and women in their sixties and they talk like they are amateurs / it is part of the culture of what we do

They’d run a mile from any celebration of them

Life doesn’t have to be like that, and other folk can do what they like, because it’s 2021, but that modesty is part of the culture of stockmanship of here

That’s why I tweeted for the first few years anonymously and asked for my first book to be published anonymously - I was very aware of that culture and I respect it

Think they call it Jantelagen in the scandi countries

It’s the opposite of celebrity culture - with its focus on the individual

It’s a more communitarian mindset - you matter collectively as the community of craft

It’s noticeable that many of the most confident spokespeople for agriculture are from outside its modesty culture - new entrants etc rather than farming born and bred

Perhaps for better and for worse, they are more comfortable with it being about them