YouTube agriculture channel hoping to attract young farmers

A YOUTUBE channel is seeking to fill in the knowledge gap for people seeking farming know-how, borne out of the founder’s own struggle to find advice on agriculture.

Reden Mark F. Costales, who started the YouTube channel “The Agrillenial,” said he wants to provide potential young farmers access to videos that will help them set up and improve their own farming operations.

In a phone interview with BusinessWorld, Mr. Costales said the channel released its first video on July 31, 2019.

“I often go to the internet for research and I rarely find the content that I am looking for. And if ever I do find it, it always leads me to papers written by scientists, which are too much for me to understand. If I, a university graduate, am having difficulty taking in research, what more of farmers who barely finished high school?” Mr. Costales said.

Mr. Costales said the usual sources of know-how are formal seminars that impose costs on farmers.

He said since launching the channel, he has received much positive feedback from younger people, some of whom are determined to start their own farms.

“There is a connotation that farming is just for the older generation. I want to change this perspective. I want to show that farming is also for millennials and for kids,” Mr. Costales said.

“Farming really doesn’t have an age bracket If they see a millennial teaching and doing agriculture, it will somehow spark interest because “if he can do it, why can’t I?” Mr. Costales said.

Mr. Costales manages his family’s Costales Nature Farms in Majayjay, Laguna, which produces organic high-value vegetables and organic livestock.

“After I graduated from college, I immediately helped in managing the farm’s daily operations. In 2012, we started offering training and seminars here in the farm to those who want to start their own organic farms as well,” Mr. Costales said.

The YouTube channel brings in additional income of around P50,000 per month from advertisements and affiliate marketing.

“Affiliate marketing is a simple link pasted in our video descriptions and every time people buy from that link, we get a commission. Of course, the video would feature the product itself,” Mr. Costales said.

Moving forward, Mr. Costales said he wants to create more engaging content for his viewers.

The pandemic has not hindered content creation and has even helped increase viewership beginning from early in the pandemic last year.

“I don’t need to go out or to other farms to create content. It was actually beneficial for me since a lot of people are locked down. They have nothing else to do, so they just watch on YouTube,” Mr. Costales said.

To date, “The Agrillenial” channel has around 115,000 subscribers and 125 videos. —