“The floor is full of onions. What the heck is going on? Why do we have so many onions down there?”
Those are the questions Shay Myers of Parma, ID-based Owyhee Produce, a grower who’s been producing regular videos on the social media platform TikTok, asks viewers on one of his recent videos. (Which, at least count, had 26,000 views.)
“TikTok was a platform that was up and coming, especially in the early COVID times when people were stuck at home. The videos are a similar concept to my LinkedIn content—sometimes it crossed over, so it just made sense to post content there as well,” says Myers.
Myers found that early on in his LinkedIn posts, he would post snippets of what was happening on the farm. “It was specific to onions and about detailed problems, procedures, practices that we had in produce within the warehouse, fields, storages,” he says. “What I learned was it was going over people’s heads. They were interested but it was too much detail.”
Starting on LinkedIn
In turn, he began making his posts more generic and more snapshot-like takes of what was going on on the farm. “People that follow me on LinkedIn enjoyed learning about content like that. However, there’s obviously a wider audience outside of LinkedIn,” says Myers. “And if you want to see content like that on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you have to search for it.”
Enter the viral nature of TikTok. “If there’s something people show interest in, the algorithm figures out and shares it broadly with other people,” he says. “A lot of people saw things on Tiktok that they didn’t know they were interested in. And once they were there, you could teach them about farming.”
These days, Myers produces some four to five farming and produce-related videos a week for his 221,100 followers covering a wide variety of topics—anything from night onion harvesting to explaining what asparagus ferns are to why potatoes were thrown away or donated in the peak of the pandemic. “I do it because consumers need to understand what it takes to get food from the farm to their house,” he says. “And in general, they don’t.” He adds that due to the viral nature of the platform, it not only allows him to reach a whole different audience but also a younger one given the average age of TikTok users is 26 years old. (A year ago, it was 18 years old.)
An appreciation for produce
And are they understanding? “I get a lot of mind-blown emojis. And there’s still a lot of misunderstanding--I get comments about the scale and type of technology we’re using and that this can be done by a local farmer on a small scale,” says Myers. He also sees a potential new appreciation for produce from viewers. “I get lots and lots of comments about why produce isn’t more expensive when they see what it takes to produce, pack, sort and deliver. Thousands and thousands of comments. People are saying ‘Our food is way too cheap,” he says.
In turn, he’s seeing more and more growers come on TikTok all the time. “There is a lot more farming TikTok than produce production or packing TikTok. It’s more basic farming practices—combines and tractors and stuff on the field side and a lot more commodity type of produce i.e. soybeans or corn,” says Myers. “But when consumers see corn for example, it’s hard for them to relate that to any food that they’re actually eating. I think that’s the draw when it comes to something like onions or sweet potatoes or asparagus that I post. They’re buying that in the grocery store in the same configuration that they’re seeing it in the videos.”
For more information:
Shay Myers
Owyhee Produce
Ph: 1-541-610-0410
shay@owyheeproduce.com
www.owyheeproduce.com