Agriculture Doesn't Have a Storytelling Problem. It Has a Discovery Problem.

For years, one of the most common pieces of marketing advice given to farmers has been simple: tell your story. Show people who you are. Explain how their food is grown. Introduce them to the people behind the farm. Help consumers understand what goes into producing the food they eat.

It's good advice. I've given it myself in workshops across the Southeast. But after spending the last several years visiting farms, working with farmers and talking to consumers, I've started to think we're only solving half of the problem.

Farmers can become incredible storytellers. But if consumers aren't discovering those farms in the first place, who are they telling the story to?

Agriculture doesn't just have a storytelling challenge. We have a discovery challenge.

The Way People Find Farms Has Changed

Think about the last time you were looking for somewhere to eat, something to do on a Saturday afternoon or a place to take friends visiting from out of town. Maybe you opened Google. But increasingly, particularly among younger consumers, that search might begin on Instagram or TikTok. Maybe you saw a Reel someone shared, a local tourism organization featured a business, a creator posted about an experience or a friend tagged you in something and said, "We should do this."

That shift matters for agriculture because the customer journey often begins long before someone ever arrives at the farm.

A potential customer may never search for "agritourism experiences near me." They're more likely to be looking for something to do with their kids, a date-night idea, where to pick strawberries, the best apple cider donuts, a weekend trip or somewhere interesting to take visiting family.

A farm may be the perfect answer to every one of those searches. But only if the customer can find it.

This is where I think agriculture sometimes makes marketing unnecessarily difficult. We tend to define people by the transaction we want them to make: CSA customer, farmers market shopper, farm-store customer, agritourism visitor.

But that's not how people actually live.

The woman buying tomatoes at your farm stand may also be a parent looking for something to do with her children this weekend. She may work for a company looking for somewhere to hold an employee event. She may have friends visiting next month or be planning a girls' night. She may know a restaurant owner looking for a new supplier. Six months from now, she may be searching Instagram for a fall festival.

She's still the same person.

When farms market themselves only as places to buy agricultural products, we dramatically underestimate all of the reasons someone might want to build a relationship with them.

Discoverability Doesn't Mean Becoming an Influencer

Whenever I talk about digital marketing with farmers and small business owners, I hear some version of the same concern: "I don't have time to make content all day."

That's fair. Farmers already have enough jobs. Depending on the day, they may be business owners, employers, mechanics, meteorologists, marketers and scientists before lunch. I'm certainly not suggesting they add full-time content creator to the list.

But I think small businesses often dramatically overestimate what effective digital marketing requires.

You don't need elaborate videos, perfect lighting or a new post every day. You definitely don't need to learn the latest TikTok dance. Most customers are looking for much simpler information. What's growing? What's available? When are you open? What should I expect when I visit? Who are the people behind the business? What happens before that peach, steak, flower or jar of honey reaches me?

That is content, too.

You don't have to be an influencer. But you do have to be discoverable.

In fact, small farms have an advantage that many of the world's largest brands spend enormous amounts of money trying to recreate: human connection.

Large companies conduct extensive market research to understand their customers. Farmers can talk to theirs. National brands hire creators to put human faces on their products. The farmer already is one. Companies build elaborate campaigns around authenticity, transparency and community, while those things already exist naturally in many farm businesses.

Farmers see customers at school, church, restaurants, grocery stores and community events. They hear what people liked, know what sold out and hear what customers keep asking them to grow. In some cases, a small farm can respond to a customer need in weeks that might take a large corporation years of research, approvals and product development.

Being small isn't necessarily a marketing disadvantage. Sometimes it's the greatest advantage a business has.

But only if people know it exists.

Farmers Shouldn't Have to Build Audiences Alone

There's another assumption about agricultural marketing that I think deserves reconsideration: that the responsibility for finding customers falls entirely on the farmer.

Some of the most effective agricultural storytelling I've seen happens when other organizations help amplify it. Tourism organizations, economic developers, restaurants, chefs, Extension, local media, community organizations, other farms and creators can all introduce agriculture to audiences that an individual farmer might struggle to reach alone.

A tourism organization introducing a family to a strawberry farm isn't simply promoting an attraction. It's introducing a potential customer to agriculture. A chef naming the farm that grew an ingredient isn't simply describing dinner. They're creating awareness of the agricultural system behind it. A local creator showing an orchard to an audience of young families isn't simply creating content. They're helping that farm reach people who may never have thought to follow a farm account.

Discovery can be a community effort.

This is one reason I've become increasingly interested in the intersection of agriculture, tourism and economic development. When agriculture is integrated into the larger identity of a place, farms don't have to rely exclusively on their own marketing channels to be discovered. They become part of the story a community tells about itself.

And that has implications much bigger than social media.

The Next Succession Question

Agriculture spends a tremendous amount of time talking about succession, and for good reason. Who will take over the farm? Who will own the land? Who will become the next generation of farmers?

But there's another succession question I think we need to start asking: Who will become the next generation of customers?

It isn't enough to successfully pass a farm from one generation to another if we aren't also developing the people who will support that farm.

Today's child picking strawberries may become tomorrow's farmers market customer. A college student who discovers a farm through TikTok may eventually become a CSA member. A young couple visiting an orchard may return years later with their children. A restaurant customer who learns the name of the farmer behind their meal may start looking for that farmer at the market.

Those relationships compound over time, but first someone has to make the introduction.

Previous generations often had more direct connections to agriculture. They may have grown up on farms, had grandparents who farmed or simply lived in communities where agriculture was more visible in everyday life. As fewer consumers have those direct connections, we can't assume the next generation will naturally know where the farms are, understand how to buy from them or recognize why those businesses matter.

We have to build those connections intentionally.

That's why I think the next evolution of agricultural marketing requires us to broaden the conversation beyond storytelling.

Yes, farmers should tell their stories. But we also need better pathways for consumers to discover them. We need farms to be easier to find. We need agriculture represented in tourism and community marketing. We need farmers connected with chefs, businesses and organizations that already have relationships with the consumers they're trying to reach. And we need to better understand how the next generation searches, shops, travels and decides where to spend its money.

Most importantly, we need to stop assuming future customers will simply find agriculture because previous generations did.

They may not.

The next generation of farmers will need a next generation of customers. Building that generation starts long before the transaction. It starts with awareness, grows through experience and eventually becomes a relationship.

Before someone can support a farm, they first have to know it's there.