Kaniva's Mark Merrett to deliver speech at Innovation Generation 2022

GrainGrower's Innovation Generation event will bring together farmers between the ages of 18 to 35 to deliver speeches and talk shop across three full days.

Kaniva farmer Mark Merrett will be among the event's keynote speakers, sharing his story of bringing ag to the online world and why he does it.

"I will be talking at the conference about my story with YouTube and how I fell into that, but also how it is everyone's responsibility to tell the story of agriculture, and that there are a lot of different ways of telling it," he said.

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"Everything is very valuable and all help to paint agriculture in the best way it possibly can."

The 24-year-old farming contractor comes from a six-generation farming family.

For three generations, the Merrett family has farmed a 7000-acre mixed farming operation in west Wimmera.

Mr Merrett said he first began playing around with photo and video as a way to advertise his farm contracting business.

What began as a marketing scheme, however, turned into a passion for producing online content which Mr Merrett has taken to a worldwide audience.

Inspired by US farmers, Mr Merrett first began making vlogs of his day-to-day life, before expanding into platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

"It is pretty much just a day-to-day life on the farm. A bit more of what goes on, an insight into why we do the things that we do," he said.

"When you see a farmer on a tractor sowing their crop, there were a lot of steps leading to that. Summer spraying, pickling seeds, putting the fertiliser in the truck and calibrating so the right amount of product comes out."

At the Innovation Generation event, Mr Merrett will deliver a speech about 'Telling a farmers story on YouTube'.

He said the idea was inspired by what he observed as increased interest from consumers in agriculture and the process behind putting food on the table.

"I really believe that farming has in the past been a very closed-off type of thing, you don't stick your head up or make too much noise, you do the best you can and make sure the food we are producing is going to supermarkets for people to eat," he said.

"I think it is changing from the consumer, they are really interested in where it is coming from and how it is produced.

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"It is really the farmer's responsibility to provide these consumers something to find if they want to come looking."

GrainGrower's Innovation Generation 2022 event will be hosted at the William Inglis Hotel in Sydney from July 18 to 20.

The event will also feature keynote speeches from New South Wales farmer Emma Ayliffe, Market Check general manager Richard Perkins, Central West Farming Systems Inc chief executive Diana Fear and Paralympic gold medalist Scott Reardon, among others.

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