Senwes Scenario Oktober / November 2015 | Page 30

••• NUUS AUBREY KRU g n i m r a f ) g n i p p a (r W IN ANOTHER PACKAGE Farmers getting in touch with people through music YOU MIGHT THINK THAT FARMING AND MUSIC HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN COMMON. HOWEVER, AT THE RECENT FREE STATE AGRICULTURE CONGRESS IT BECAME EVIDENT THAT IT INDEED DOES. G reg Peterson, an American farmer, had ut the congress goers in awe abo s way tive ova inn his new and to connect with the public through rapping. He also definitely had something to do with the positive spin on things as he explained his views. Peterson said that in America everyone used to have a farmer in their family, but over the past number of decades things have changed. The fact is that today only 1 in 20 people has a connection to farming. In his own words: “Society doesn’t understand farmers anymore”. That is where the Peterson Farm Brothers’ story began in 2012, when Greg and his l brothers, Nathan and Kendal y the as es odi par h started wit basically changed the words of hip and happening songs into a usable platform to get a message across to the general public that farming 28 GER is indeed a cool profession. Greg explained that it all actually started just to create a video for their friends and it escalated from there. Within a few months after having had the idea, they had millions of views on YouTube and they also appeared on television shows and at functions, just like the Free State Agriculture congress in August. They have songs in their repertoire like Psy’s Gangnam Style (Farmer Style), LMFAO’s Sexy and I know it (I’m farming and I grow it) as well as Katy Perry’s Roar that they turned into Chore and many more. In fact I’m farming and I grow it had 5 million views in a matter of a week. Now they have more than 30 million views across five of their best known parodies. Greg said that they “advocate agri through social media” to tell the public what they do and how important a Okt/Nov 2015 • SENWES Scenario GREG PETERSON