SD Farmer Adam Krause Uses Social Media to Promote Agriculture and Connect with Community

Adam Krause does not keep to himself. To begin with, the Clear Lake, South Dakota farmer is outgoing. He’s naturally friendly and welcomes the chance to talk about his farm and his family, which he does regularly on social media.

“In the YouTube world and social media world that we live in today, especially my generation, there’s just so many different opportunities to promote yourself, but also promote what you do and how you make a living,” said Krause, in an interview for The Soybean Pod podcast.

Raising soybeans, grains, and pigs, Krause is president of the South Dakota Pork Producers Council, giving him a voice in commodity group governance. But he makes his voice heard in other ways and encourages others to do the same.

“I feel like you can be an influencer and support your industry without being on the board too,” said Krause. “I think just about everybody has a Facebook account, just being able to post that picture with a tractor or a combine in the sunset. I like to post sometimes that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; I get a barn alarm sometimes at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and you’ve got to go see what happened in the barn. So [I’m] showing not only the beauty of farming and agriculture but the rawness too and the realness of what we do every day.”

Krause, who is to be featured on an edition of The Soybean Pod, posts on his own and also appears on other platforms, such as Ag United of South Dakota’s Adopt a Farmer video series.

“Every month I make a short 10 to 15 minute video just kind of taking little tidbits of what I did in the month, and another thing of outreach is my cooking show, kind of how I utilize farm products,” he explained. “I try and highlight soybeans using vegetable oil and dairy and pork cuts of course. I do some beef, a little bit of chicken too just being able to just be you, and one: not only be kind of entertaining but to be pretty educational, I think, is a lot of fun as well.”

Krause is a farmer and also an influencer, but he insists it’s the element of fun that keeps people coming back.

“We’re on our phones because we want to be entertained,” he ventured, “so if I can be entertaining but still help people maybe learn something along the way, I think that might carry a lot of weight.”