Harvesting The Crop – The Online Community Getting Farmers Out of a Pickle
If you’ve spent any time on Facebook during seeding or harvest, chances are you’ve stumbled across one of Australia’s biggest farming groups – Harvesting the Crop (which will morph into Planting the Crop in coming months, as it does every growing season).
Behind this booming online community of 105,000 farmers, contractors, agronomists and ag-curious followers from across the globe, is a bloke from Alawoona, who wears more hats than he’s probably got cupboard space for.
John Gladigau is a (retired) third generation farmer. He’s chair of Grain Producers SA, creative director at ifarmwell, he’s a Nuffield Scholar, actor and playwright!
His two worlds really collided at Bulla Burra, the collaborative farming enterprise he helped build. John started documenting farm life – with a splash of theatrics – and it struck a chord. Before long, people weren’t just watching, they were asking him to tap into his audience for advice, solutions, and the kind of paddock wisdom you won’t find in a manual.
So one night in 2013, probably after knocking off from the header, he created a Facebook group for grain growers.
No grand plan – no strategy – just a hunch that farmers might like a place to yarn, brag, troubleshoot and connect.
From 1,000 Farmers to 105,000 – and Growing
The group quickly hit 1,000 members. A nice little community. Six years later it reached 4,500.
Then between 2019 and 2020, “it went ballistic”, exploding to 20,000 members overnight – far too big for one person to manage.
John put a call-out for help, and today the group has eight moderators across Australia (many he’s never met in person), and they all work together to keep the community, which has now surpassed 100k members, running smoothly.
“We all have the same values and very much the same understanding – to keep the group what it is, and keep the idiots out,” John said.
“We’ve had to implement some strong rules to keep out spammers and clickbait. We probably get at least 20 to 30 posts a day from people advertising jobs or machinery, but there’s other places you can go for that. We work really hard to keep the group clean. We don’t tolerate abusive language, mysongy, agism, and I think people really appreciate that. It’s just farmers helping farmers – exactly how it should be.”
Over the years, the support group has helped quite a few farmers out of a pickle – from error codes on operating systems to advise on how much to pay the chaser bin operator.
“It’s like going down to meet a mate at the pub, but chances are you don’t know each other,” John says.
“But the support is real. When people are going through drought or tough seasons, the empathy shown is powerful. They get it. They’ve lived it. And I really don’t think farmers begrudge other farmers.”
Beyond the Farm Gate
Stepping off the tractor has given John time to juggle his many hats. And while each role differs, they all share a farming theme, including his touring musical, Kick off ya Boots.
Written by John and performed by a cast of Loxton locals (you guessed it, John included), Kick off ya Boots celebrates rural life, exploring challenges commonly faced by faring families.
The popular production has been touring SA, with 10 sell-out performances, and a movie-style version will hit the road again in February. You can find out more here.
