Creeping across the pasture land. Got dirt on
the boots and a working hand. From the milk house
home to the auction call. These are the folks
standing strong and tall. Yeah, this is... Welcome
back to the Bullvine Podcast, where we cut through
dairy industry noise to get you the insights
that actually matter for your operation. We aren't
here to sugarcrete the market, and we certainly
aren't here to waste your time with fluff. And
today we're doing a deep dive into a feature
piece about something that, well, usually makes
most of us want to throw our phones directly
into the lagoon. Social media. I can literally
hear the collective groan rising up from milking
parlors across the country right now. Oh, I'm
groaning too. I know. I know. You've got... Corn
to plant, cows to breed, machinery to fix. The
absolute last thing you want to hear is two people
talking about building a brand or, you know,
engagement metrics. It's the worst. Honestly,
when I see these influencer farmers popping up
on my feed doing these dances in the alleyway
or, you know, spending four hours editing a cinematic
video of a tractor driving into the sunset, I
just roll my eyes. I'm thinking, who actually
has time for that? I've got a silage pile to
cover. I've got a fresh heifer down. Real farming
just isn't pretty, and it definitely doesn't
fit in a 15 -second clip set to pop music. And
that is exactly the skepticism we need to address
today, because the article we're breaking down,
it's titled, Barnyard Brands Trading Polished
PR for Authentic Farmer Trust. It actually agrees
with you. Does it? It does. It argues that the
polished influencer stuff is, well, it's dying.
But, and here's the really big but before you
tune out. The numbers in this report regarding
social license and actual hard dollars might
just change your mind. Okay, I'm listening. We
aren't talking about vanity metrics here. We're
talking about protecting your milk check. I'll
admit, when you first sent me the brief. for
this deep dive. I was completely ready to tear
it apart. I know you were. But then I looked
at the financial data. We're going to talk about
something called social license, which sounds
like corporate jargon. Very corporate. But when
you actually break it down, it's basically the
only thing standing between us and an absolute
regulatory nightmare. Exactly. Context is everything
here. It is February 2026. Let's look at the
landscape we're operating in. It's rough out
there. We are dealing with an environment where
anti -dairy campaigns are better funded. They're
more sophisticated and they are way more aggressive
than they have ever been in history. Yeah. We're
talking about nine -figure budgets targeting
the consumer's mind. And they aren't just targeting
the vegans anymore. They are targeting the moms
buying yogurt and the teenagers buying lattes.
That's the David versus Goliath dynamic this
article really highlights. And it's the part
that actually got me interested. On one side,
you have these massive non -governmental organizations
with tens of millions of dollars in the bank.
Oh, easily. And on the other side, you have a
guy in Wisconsin with a hoof knife and a flip
phone. Literally a flip phone. A flip phone.
And the crazy part, the guy with the knife is
winning. It is absolutely incredible. But let's
set the stakes before we get into the how -to
of it all. Why does this matter right now, today,
in 2026? Why should a farmer who is barely breaking
even on inputs care about a YouTube strategy?
It matters because of market access. Yeah. Plain
and simple. It's not about likes or hearts or
becoming internet famous. Right. It's about ensuring
you actually have a place to sell your milk.
The article argues a very fundamental point.
If farmers don't tell their story, someone else
will. And spoiler alert. Yeah. Spoiler alert.
The people telling your story right now, they
don't know the difference between a steer and
a heifer. And they certainly don't care about
your margins. They won't get it right. And that
brings us to that concept of social license.
I want to drill down on this because I think
a lot of guys hear this phrase and immediately
tune out. Oh, for sure. They think it's something
for the processors to worry about, not the boots
on the ground. Yeah, it sounds like something
you hear at a conference in a stuffy hotel ballroom
while you're trying not to fall asleep. But think
of it this way. Social license isn't a piece
of paper. No. It's not the permit you get from
the county to build a new freestyle barn. It
is the informal permission the public gives you
to operate. That's a great way to put it. It's
the fact that your neighbors and the people buying
cheese. Don't actively vote for regulations that
put you out of business. Right. It's the buffer.
When you lose that social license, that is when
you get ballot initiatives banning AI. That's
when you get regulatory crackdowns on manure
spreading. That's when you get retail buyers,
the Walmarts and Costcos of the world, saying
we can't buy from you anymore because you are
a PR liability. And we're going to preview a
bit of a controversy here because, well. The
bullvine likes to stir the pot. Always. The industry
for the last 20 years has been completely obsessed
with clean marketing. You know what I mean? Red
barns, green grass, everything looking like a
vintage postcard from 1950. Oh, absolutely. The
whole happy cows narrative. Yeah. The Chekhov
loves this stuff. Yeah. But this article suggests
that the Fair Oaks style of polished transparency,
where everything is behind glass and looks like
Disney World, might actually be a liability in
2026. A huge liability. The public is smarter
than that now. They know farms have manure. They
know cows get sick. This is the part of the deep
dive that really surprised me. The data actually
suggests that showing pus, showing blood, showing
manure, the real visceral gross stuff, might
actually build more trust than a sanitized guided
tour. It's totally counterintuitive. We're going
to talk about Nate the Hoof Guy and why showing
a bloody abscess is actually good PR. It sounds
completely backwards. It sounds insane. If you
told my grandfather that showing a cow with a
lesion on her foot to millions of people on the
internet was a good idea, he would have chased
you off the property with a pitchfork. I believe
it. But the world has changed. So let's unpack
this. We really need to start with the problem
identification. We call this the trust gap. Or
as you like to call it. The wallet gap. It is
the exact same thing these days. Let's look at
the disparity in resources here. The source material
highlights two specific anti -dairy groups, PETA
and Mercy for Animals. Now, we all know they
have money, but I really don't think most farmers
realize just how much money. They really don't.
In a single year, fiscal year, ending July 2024
for PETA and December 2024 for Mercy for Animals,
do you know what their combined spending was?
I read the number of the report and I honestly
had to reread it. I thought it was a typo from
the researchers. It was not a typo. $102 .7 million.
That is a war chest. That is a massive amount
of capital deployed specifically to target the
consumer's mind and convince them that what we
do, what we literally wake up at four in the
morning to do every single day is evil. Let's
break that down just a bit more. PETA spent $77
.6 million. Mercy for Animals spent $25 .1 million.
Unbelievable. And that doesn't even count Humane
World for Animals, which used to be the Humane
Society of the United States before their big
rebrand in 2025. They dwarf both of those other
groups combined. Think about that number. Over
$100 million. That is more than the GDP of some
small island nations. And they aren't spending
that on research to improve animal welfare. They
aren't spending it on feed efficiency or better
genetics to reduce emissions. They're spending
it on ads, on lobbying, on lawsuits, and on undercover
operations designed specifically to destroy our
reputations. So if you're a farmer sitting in
the cab of your tractor right now, listening
to this, looking at the milk price and worrying
about the cost of diesel, you're thinking, I
can't compete with that. You can't. I can't spend
$100 million to run ads during the Super Bowl.
I can't buy billboards in Times Square. If it
is a spending war, we lose. Period. If it's a
dollar for dollar fight on traditional media,
we are dead in the water. We cannot outspend
them. But. And this is the crux of this entire
deep dive. That is the myth of the budget. Yes.
The article counters this massive spending with
a story of Nathan Ranallo, known to the entire
Internet as Nate the Hoof Guy. This is such a
great story. Nate is a guy from west central
Wisconsin, a hoof trimmer. He has been doing
it for two decades. Right. He's a veteran. This
isn't some Gen Z kid who decided to play farmer
for views. This is a guy who smells like hoof
sink and manure at the end of every single day.
Exactly. And in 2020, he was using a flip phone.
He told Wisconsin Public Radio he had never edited
a single piece of footage in his entire life.
He didn't know what Premiere Pro was. He didn't
know about three point lighting or camera angles.
He didn't hire a marketing agency. He didn't
have a focus group. He didn't even have a script.
He just wanted to push back on viral clips that
made hoof trimming look like torture. He saw
these videos circulating online where activists
were saying, oh, my God, they're grinding the
cow's foot. It must hurt so much. We've all seen
those videos. Yeah. Infuriating. Right. And he
just thought, that's not right. I need to show
the work. I need to show what I'm actually doing.
So he just starts filming. Straight up filming
the trim. And where is he now? The stats are
just wild. As of February 2026, he has a 1 .7
million YouTube subscribers. On TikTok, he's
at 2 million followers. Facebook, another 1 .6
million. The scale is massive. But the number
that really blows me away is the total views.
His YouTube channel has passed 880 million total
views. 880 million. That is nearly a billion
times that a human being has sat down and intentionally
watched a guy trim a cow's foot. Let's do the
math on that for a second. PETA spent $77 million
to reach people. Nate spent $0. Okay, maybe he
spent $20 on a phone mount for a shoot. Fair
enough. And he reached 880 million people. If
PETA paid for those views at standard digital
ad rates, that would have cost them tens of millions
of dollars. Nate got it for free. The lesson
here is profound. You do not need a marketing
team. You don't need the slick production. In
fact, the article argues that having a marketing
team might actually hurt you in today's climate.
Why is that? Because I think a lot of farmers
assume, well, if I had the cash, I'd definitely
hire a professional videographer to make my farm
look good. Because authenticity is the currency
now. People are so tired of being sold to, they
are tired of the corporate look. Yeah, the perfectly
manicured image. When they see a video that is
perfectly lit. With uplifting stock music and
a rehearsed script, they immediately think, who
paid for this? What are they trying to hide?
They put their guard up. Exactly. But when they
see a shaky video shot from a phone with wind
noise hitting the microphone and a guy talking
in dirty coveralls, they think, okay, this is
real life. This is the truth. It's anti -marketing
marketing. And that leads us right into the industry
reality check. Because for a long time, the dairy
industry as a whole thought the answer to PETA
was... polished transparency. We really thought
the answer was agritourism on steroids. We have
to talk about Fair Oaks Farms here. This is the
case study that really serves as a massive warning
for the entire industry. And I know this is a
sore subject for some people, but we have to
look at it objectively if we're going to learn
from it. We do. And look, Fair Oaks did an incredible
job at the front of the house. It really was
the Disneyland of dairy. I've been there. It
was incredibly impressive. Huge operation. Glass
windows everywhere, birthing barns where you
could sit in stadium seating and watch calves
being born in a very controlled, clean environment.
Gift shops, guided bus tours. They had 600 ,000
visitors a year. It was the absolute gold standard
for industry PR. Everyone pointed to them and
said, this is how we do it. This is how we educate
the public and win them over. But in June 2019,
that all collapsed overnight. Why? Because undercover
footage came out. And that footage destroyed
their trust immediately. Now, we can sit here
and debate the tactics of the activists, and
they were absolutely deceptive. There's no doubt
about that. But the public reaction wasn't just
about the abuse shown in the video. It was about
the betrayal. Explain that a bit more. What do
you mean by betrayal in this context? It was
the gap. The massive gap between the Disney version
they sold to the public, the perfect, pristine,
happy image, and the reality of the working barn
that the undercover footage showed. The article
makes this key insight, and I highlighted it
because it's so true. A visitor's center shatters
under scrutiny. A working barn weathers it. That
is a really powerful line. A visitor's center
shatters under scrutiny. Think about it. If you
present yourself as perfect, as a flawless polished
brand, any crack in that facade looks like a
massive lie. Right. If you say, we are 100 %
perfect and our cows are always happy and the
floors are always clean, and then someone sees
a cow with a dirty tail or a worker getting frustrated
and yelling, the consumer says, you lied to me.
The whole thing is a sham. But if you start from
a place of reality. Exactly. If you show the
barn. warts and all. If you show that sometimes
cows get sick, sometimes equipment breaks down,
sometimes it's muddy and miserable, then there
is no deception to uncover. The back of the barn
and the front of the house are the exact same
thing. Which brings us to the gross advantage.
This is where the consumer psychology gets really
interesting. Nate, the hoof guy, isn't showing
cows grazing in a pristine meadow with butterflies.
He is showing abscesses. He is showing hairy
heel warts and lesions. He is taking a grinder
and paring away overgrown claw. I actually asked
my wife about this because I can't watch that
stuff while I'm eating lunch. It turns my stomach
a bit. And I do this for a living. It is pretty
graphic. But apparently there is a whole genre
of this on the internet. Pimple popping videos.
It is oddly satisfying. Don't look at me like
that. Millions of people watch Dr. Pimple Popper.
It's the exact same psychology at play. You have
a highly visible problem. It looks painful or
uncomfortable. Then you have a methodical expert
coming in to fix it. And then... Release. It
is the resolution arc. Tension and release. But
Nate adds the vital context. And this is the
critical part for farmers to understand. He doesn't
just chop the foot and leave the camera rolling.
He explains what he is doing while he does it.
He explains that hoof horn is dead tissue. He
uses that analogy. I loved this one in the article.
The rock in the boot. It is brilliant because
literally everyone can relate to it. He says
the hard hoof part is like the thick rubber sole
of a work boot. If you take a sharp knife and
dig a rock out of the sole of your boot, you
don't feel the boot being cut. You feel the instant
relief of the rock being gone. That one sentence
creates a massive bridge of empathy. Suddenly
the viewer understands the mechanics of it. And
then he shows the cow walking away. The viewer
sees the cow limping in the beginning and striding
comfortably after. Suddenly, a guy with an angle
grinder and a sharp knife isn't torturing a cow.
He is a caregiver. He is a healer. He is actively
relieving pain. It turns a scary -looking procedure
into an act of profound care. And here is the
kicker. Because it looks bloody or dirty sometimes,
it feels undeniably real. Yeah. If he scrubbed
it all clean and didn't show the pus or the blood,
people wouldn't believe it. They would think
he was hiding the bad stuff. By showing the bad
stuff, the act of infection, he proves his honesty.
So the real takeaway for me there is that authentic
care, even if it's ugly, even if it involves
pus and blood and manure, builds way more trust
than a sanitized tour where everything is hidden
behind a pane of glass. 100%. If you hide the
manure, people naturally wonder what else you're
hiding. If you show the manure, they trust you
when you say the milk in the tank is clean. Now...
You're the numbers guy. You always tell me, show
me the money, so let's follow the money. Because
I know there is a farmer listening to this right
now who says, that's great for Nate. He's got
a million subscribers. But I'm running a business.
I don't have time to be a YouTuber. Right. And
I get that. I really, truly do. Time is our absolute
most scarce resource. There's never enough of
it. But let's do the barn math. The article breaks
down the actual financial cost of silence. Walk
us through the scenario they laid out. Okay,
imagine a standard 300 -cow dairy. A decent -sized
family operation. You are working tight margins,
like we all are. Let's say you get hit with a
PR crisis. Maybe an activist group targets you
specifically. Or maybe the industry takes a broader
hit and your processor gets nervous about brand
safety. A processor panic. Exactly. You lose
your mill contract for 30 days. Just one month.
A temporary suspension while they conduct an
investigation. Just 30 days. Now, let's be super
conservative with the numbers. Let's say milk
is at $18 a hundredweight. And let's say your
herd is averaging 75 pounds per cow per day.
Which is a bit low for high -performance herds.
I know guys pushing 90 or 100 easily. But let's
stick with a conservative number so nobody accuses
us of inflating the stats to make a point. Fair.
At those highly conservative numbers, a 30 -day
suspension is a $121 ,500 loss. Ouch! That is
a massive, crippling hit to cash flow. That's
payroll. That's the feed bill. That is the banknote.
And it is just gone. Now, if we look at 2025
USDA prices, which were hovering closer to $21
a hundredweight, you're looking at over $141
,000 gone in a single month. That's devastating.
And that is assuming you can even get picked
up again by a processor after 30 days. If you
can't, you're done. You're selling the cows.
So the argument the article makes is that spending
20 minutes a week filming a raw video on your
phone is basically an insurance premium. Exactly.
It is insurance against that $141 ,000 catastrophic
loss. Think of it this way. You pay for fire
insurance on the milking parlor, right? You pay
for liability insurance on your feed trucks.
Why wouldn't you pay in time, not even cash,
but just time for reputation insurance? Because
if you have a community, if you have established
that social license, the processor knows you
have real people who trust you. You aren't just
an easy faceless target. Right. If PETA comes
after Nate the Hoof Guy today, what happens?
His 2 million followers swarm the comments and
say, you're wrong. We know Nate. We watch his
videos every week. We know exactly how he treats
those animals. You're tactically untouchable.
He is inoculated against the attack. But if you
are a faceless barn at the end of a dirt road
that nobody knows anything about, you are the
easiest contract in the world to cut to save
face. The processor sacrifices you instantly
to make the public noise go away. Now, there
is a revenue upside discussed here, but I really
want to be careful with this part. The article
explicitly warns us not to count on it. Yeah,
let's definitely not get gold fever here. I don't
want people quitting their day jobs or neglecting
the herd to try and become full -time influencers.
Nate is an extreme outlier in this space. The
article cites vidIQ estimates for his YouTube
ad revenue at somewhere between $8 ,000 and $24
,000 per month. Which is a very, very nice side
hustle. That pays for a lot of skid steer parts.
It's more than a side hustle. That is a legitimate
second income stream that's a new tractor every
couple of years. But look at the hours he puts
in. The guy puts in 30 to 50 hours a week just
on content creation and community management.
Oh, wow. That's a second full -time job. When
you break it down... to an hourly rate, it's
like $62 to $111 an hour for the digital work.
That is good money, but it is not retire on a
beach in the Bahamas money. Exactly. And most
farmers will never see those numbers. Most farmers
will make $0 directly from the social platforms.
If you go into this thinking, I'm going to get
rich off TikTok ad revenue, you're going to be
severely disappointed. But the ROI, the return
on investment, isn't the monthly ad check from
Google. No. Absolutely not. The ROI is keeping
the market open. It is making sure that when
an activist group drops a heavily edited video
in your county, your neighbors and your local
politicians say, nah, I know that farm. I watch
their videos. That's not how they operate. It's
community defense. It is about community defense
at a grassroots level. It's the trust shield.
Let's look at some case studies of how different
farms are actively building this shield, because
it's definitely not a one -size -fits -all approach.
You don't have to be a hoof trimmer slicing open
abscesses to make this work. Let's start with
the big guys, because the common narrative in
the public, and honestly, the narrative pushed
by a lot of mainstream media, is that big equals
cruel. It's all factory farming myth. Right.
The assumption is if you have 4 ,000 cows, you
must be a heartless factory, and factories are
inherently bad for animals. Enter MVP Dairy in
Ohio. 4 ,500 cows. That is a very large operation
by any metric. It's owned by the McCarty and
Van Tilburg families. Now, typically, a farm
of this sheer scale stays very quiet. They put
up a tall fence, plant some trees to block the
view, and put up no trespassing signs. But MVP
went the complete opposite direction. They are
tackling the big is bad myth head on. They are
a certified B Corp. Do you know how incredibly
hard it is for an agricultural business to get
B Corp certification? It is notoriously difficult.
The auditing process is grueling. It really is.
You need a score of 80 to pass. And it covers
everything. It covers environmental impact, worker
treatment, community engagement, and animal welfare.
MVP scored a 102 .7. They are also dairy care
certified. They have the receipts, as the kids
say today. But receipts are fundamentally boring.
Nobody is curling up to read a 70 -page B Corp
audit report on a Friday night. Right. And that
is exactly where the social media strategy comes
in. They don't just rely on the framed certificates
in the office lobby. They use TikTok. And this
is the absolute genius of their approach. You
have this massive facility, state of the art,
millions of dollars of concrete and steel and
technology. But the TikTok feed is just a guy
in coveralls talking to the camera. It's pampering
the girls. It's daily chores. It's highly personal
and low production value. It makes a massive
mega dairy feel exactly like a relatable family
farm. Because, well, it is a family farm just
operating at scale. They show that even with
4 ,500 cows, there are still individual humans
who care deeply about individual animals. An
audit score north of 100 paired with a human
face makes the farm feel like a place you could
just walk right into. It removes all the mystery
and the menace of the scale. MVP also has a learning
center where people can actually physically go
and see the rotary carousel in action. They effectively
combine the physical openness with the digital
openness. Let's jump to the complete opposite
end of the spectrum for a minute. Let's go to
New Zealand. Chloe Payne. Oh, cows of New Zealand.
She's managing 600 cows, but she really focuses
her content on the ones she owns personally.
And she names them. Popcorn, Barbie, brown sugar.
Now, I know a lot of old school dairymen who
would say, do not name the cows. It's a business,
not a petting zoo. You can't get emotionally
attached to inventory. But that exact attitude
is what kills us with the general public. The
public desperately needs to know that you see
these animals as individuals. They need to know
you aren't just a cold calculating robot. There
was a really powerful moment mentioned in the
Deep Dive article about a calf named Gingerbread.
Yeah, that was Brown Sugar's daughter. This part
actually made me tear up a bit when I was prepping
for the show. When Gingerbread died, Chloe didn't
hide it. She didn't pretend it didn't happen
to keep the feed happy. She posted a raw tribute
video. And it wasn't just a sad post for engagement.
It proved to her audience that the death actually
mattered to her. It proved that these animals
aren't just spreadsheet numbers to her operation.
It showed genuine grief. And that single post
reached 325 ,000 followers. Even Khloe Kardashian
shared a photo of one of her calves. That is
organic reach you literally cannot buy. You can't
pay a Kardashian to post about your dairy farm
unless you have tens of millions of dollars in
a marketing budget. Khloe got it just by being
real. And it fundamentally changes the public
conversation. It shifts it from the activist
talking point of farmers exploit animals for
profit to the reality of farmers. love their
animals and sometimes animals tragically die
and it breaks the farmer's heart too that is
a shared human experience yes that grief is universal
profit margins are not now there's a third angle
here that i think is incredibly important and
honestly it's often overlooked when we talk about
this stuff we talk about pr we talk about saving
the milk check we talk about the processors but
what about the farmer themselves you're talking
about the mental health angle big farmer andy
From Australia. This is such a great story because
it started completely by accident. He wasn't
trying to save the dairy industry or build a
brand. He had no surgery, was stuck inside the
house for two weeks recovering, and just started
posting old videos out of sheer boredom. And
now he has nearly half a million followers. He
uses a lot of humor. His bio is actually a full
-time farmer, part -time washed -up TikToker,
but he gets really serious about the isolation
of the job. Farming is incredibly lonely. We
really don't talk about that enough in this industry.
You spend 12, 14 hours a day alone in a tractor
cab or in the parlor. You might not see another
actual human being all day long. And he talks
openly about suicide in agriculture. He talks
about the intense mental pressure. And the article
points out that this is the hidden benefit of
social media for the farmer. It's a lifeline.
It connects you directly to the outside world.
If you are milking cows at four in the morning
and you haven't spoken to another human being
in 12 hours, having a community online, even
if they're total strangers living in different
time zones, can massively reduce that suffocating
sense of isolation. It turns out social media
isn't just PR for the milk processor. It is legitimate
mental health support for the operator. That
is profound. It really makes you realize that
connection isn't just a corporate buzzword. Okay,
let's get into the contrarian take segment. This
is the bullvine, after all. We like to zig when
the industry tells everyone to zag. And the absolute
biggest contrarian take in this entire report
is this. Show the slurry. Show the slurry. We
mentioned Tom Pemberton in the UK earlier. He
is the absolute king of this strategy. Tom runs
a mixed dairy and beef operation. He has over
half a million subscribers on YouTube. And he
intentionally shows the bad days. He shows the
equipment breaking down in the middle of a critical
job. He shows the slurry pit overflowing. He
shows the deep, miserable mud. Why does that
actually work? Because conventional marketing
wisdom says you hide the mess. Every ad agency
in the world would tell you to power wash the
tractor before you dare film it. Because in 2026,
perfection looks like a lie. Think about where
we are with AI right now. Think about deep fakes.
People are becoming hyper suspicious of anything
that looks a little too good. If you only post
when the sun is shining, the grass is perfectly
green and the cows are spotless, people automatically
think you are staging it. I think it's just corporate
propaganda. Exactly. But if you show a quarter
million dollar tractor hopelessly stuck up to
its axles in the mud, you're covered in manure
and maybe swearing a little bit at the situation.
That looks like real life. Nobody fakes getting
stuck in a slurry pit for views. The public trusts
struggle way more than they trust perfection.
They relate to the struggle. Everyone has bad
days at work. They don't relate to a perfect,
sanitized, frictionless image. A breakdown looks
like honest, hard work. It instantly makes you
the relatable underdog. The second contrarian
point is what the article calls PETA -proofing.
And this involves a story about a New York dairy
that I think every single farmer listening needs
to memorize. This is such a great story. An AP
Reporter Associated Press, so we're talking big
time, national syndicate, contacted a dairy farm
in New York. She had a story pitched directly
to her by PETA. PETA gave her all the supposed
dirt. She was locked and loaded, ready to do
a massive expose on this farm. This is the literal
nightmare call. Hi, this is the Associated Press.
We have serious allegations of animal abuse at
your facility. Most farmers would just hang up
in a panic and call their lawyer. And panic is
the worst reaction. But the owner of this farm
didn't hide. The owner actually invited the AP
reporter to come out to the farm that day and
see for herself. But here's the crazy part of
the story. The reporter didn't even go. Why not?
She had the scoop. Because she did her basic
research first. She looked up the farm online.
She found they had a long documented history
of verification. They had NYS CHAP certification.
She called Cornell's Pro Dairy Program, and the
experts there personally vouched for the farm's
management. She looked at their digital footprint
and saw years of transparent operation. So the
foundation of trust existed long before the crisis
ever hit. That is the entire key to this. You
cannot build trust during a crisis. It's impossible.
If you wait until the activist camera crew is
literally standing in your driveway to start
being transparent, it is way too late. You just
look defensive and guilty. But if you have years
of openness, third party audits, and a steady
digital presence, that becomes your shield. The
reporter looks at the wild PETA claims, looks
at your boring, consistent history of good management,
and says, These two things don't match, and the
hit piece dies on the desk. That's incredibly
powerful. It is the definition of being proactive
versus reactive. Now, looking at the future implications,
the digital landscape is changing so fast, it's
hard to keep up. Platform volatility is a very
real risk here. We saw this play out with TikTok.
In 2025, it faced serious threats of divestiture
or outright banning. It was ultimately saved
by a joint venture in January 2026. But for a
while there, it looked like the whole platform
was going dark in the U .S. The lesson there
is clear. Don't build your house on rented land.
Tom Pemberton, the guy who shows the slurry,
he focuses heavily on YouTube. Why? Because it's
searchable. Its long -form video is a much more
stable platform. TikTok is fantastic for explosive
viral reach, but it is highly volatile. Building
entirely on TikTok is like relying on spot market
prices for your entire annual income. You absolutely
need to diversify. And the other big future trend
they identify is verification stacking. The future
isn't just making fun videos. It's providing
the receipts. It is no longer enough to just
get on camera and say, I treat my cows well.
Anyone can say that. You need the video showing
the daily care. And you need the farm program
audit and the B Corp score and the dairy care
certificate backing it up. It's the synthesis,
the combination of the accessible digital presence
and the rigorous third -party audit. Exactly.
The video provides the emotional connection.
The audit provides the empirical proof. Together,
they are basically bulletproof. The video touches
the consumer's heart. The audit satisfies their
brain. All right, let's get extremely practical
here. We have covered a lot of high -level theory
today. We've covered the consumer psychology,
the hard economics, the case studies. But a farmer
just finished the morning milking. They are driving
their truck to the feed store and they are thinking,
OK, all of this sounds good in theory, but what
do I actually do today? I do not have a camera
crew. Right. We need to break this down into
actionable bite sized chunks so it isn't overwhelming.
I want three specific takeaways. Immediate action,
medium term strategy and long term positioning.
OK, let's start with takeaway one. The quick
start. This is for this week. If you take nothing
else away from this deep dive. Do this. What's
the specific action? The Path 130 day test. I
want you to pull out your phone and film three
videos this week. Just three short videos. What
kind of production value are we talking about
here? Absolutely none. Zero production value.
Use your phone only. Shoot it vertical. No editing
whatsoever. Do not even download an editing app.
What exactly are they filming though? Jan Kielstra
from up in Saskatchewan gives the best advice
on this. He says just show what you do. Literally.
Film the feed push -up. With a skid steer. Film
the newborn calves getting their colostrum. Film
yourself checking the flow rate on a water trough.
And the goal isn't to go viral with the iceberg.
No, not at all. The goal is simply to get over
the mental hurdle and the fear of hitting record.
The goal is to see what regular people actually
find interesting. You will be shocked. You think
pushing up feeds the most boring, repetitive
chore on the farm. To a guy sitting in a cubicle
in Chicago who has never been within 50 miles
of a tractor, it is fascinating to watch. Just
post it. See what happens. Okay, I love that.
Takeaway two, the rhythm. This is the three to
six month plan once you've dipped your toe in
the water and survived. This is path two. You
need to make a commitment. Pick one platform,
just one. Do not try to be an expert on TikTok,
Instagram, YouTube, and X all at the same exact
time. You will burn out in a week. How often
should they be posting? Once or twice a week.
But make it consistent. And here is the absolutely
crucial part of the medium -term strategy. You
have to engage with every single comment. Even
the dumb ones. Even the trolls asking if brown
cows give chocolate milk. Especially the curious
ones. If someone asks a seemingly dumb question
like, why are the calves separated from the mothers
in those hutches? Do not get defensive. Do not
block them. Explain it calmly, just like Nate
explains the hoof horn. Say, it's for their health.
It's so we can monitor their exact milk intake.
It's to keep their immune system safe from mature
cow germs. Be the patient teacher, not the defensive
fighter. Find your oddly satisfying moment. Yeah,
exactly. Maybe your moment is scraping the return
alley. Maybe it's the visual of the milk flowing
cleanly into the bulk tank. Find the one thing
that looks visually cool on your farm and lean
into it. Build the habit of documenting it. And
finally, takeaway three, the fortress. This is
the one to two year strategy. This is path three.
This is primarily for the larger operations,
the ones who rightfully feel like they are prime
targets for activist groups. This is the receipt
stacking we talked about. Yes. You need to systematically
pair your raw content with formal, rigorous audits.
Start looking seriously at B Corp certification.
Look at maximizing your farm program score to
the highest tier. Look at dairy care. You need
to make absolutely sure that if a Fair Oaks -style
moment tries to happen to your operation, your
local community and your processor already know
the undeniable truth. You want to fundamentally
turn your size into an asset instead of a liability.
Exactly. The message becomes, we are big. which
means we have the financial resources to have
the absolute best technology, the highest animal
welfare standards, and the strictest independent
audits in the business. Prove it. Don't hide
behind defense. Transparency is quite literally
the only defense that actually works in 2026.
It really all comes down to this. If a hook trimmer
in Wisconsin with a flip phone can get 880 million
views just by being honest, there is absolutely
no excuse for the rest of us to remain invisible
and let activists tell our story. That's the
bottom line. We cannot sit in the coffee shop
and complain that the public doesn't understand
dairy farming if we flat out refuse to talk to
them. The microphone to reach the world is sitting
in your pocket right now. Use it. And on that
powerful note, we are going to wrap it up for
today. This has been a really fascinating deep
dive into the rapidly changing world of dairy
reputation and social license. This has been
another Bullvine podcast from the Bullvine podcast.
For more straight talking industry analysis.
and maybe slightly fewer TikTok dances, head
over to www .thebullvine .com. Subscribe wherever
you get your podcasts. We are out with new deep
dives every single day. Upcoming topics include
Well, next week, we are going to completely tackle
genomic bulls. Hype or holy grail? That should
be a pretty spicy conversation. Oh, I have some
very strong opinions on that one already. I think
we are heavily over -indexing on spreadsheet
numbers and completely forgetting how to look
at the actual cow. I bet you do. We will save
that fight for tomorrow's recording. Until then,
keep it real and keep the cameras rolling. See
you later.