Cascade farmer John Carmody highlights Western Australian farming practices with YouTube channel

What started out as a fun idea in 2012 has become a way to educate the world about farming practices in Western Australia.

Cascade cropper John Carmody took to YouTube, creating the channel Tom’s Brook Farm, with his Go Pro 11 years ago when he saw producers from the US and Canada recording their work on-farm, and thought it would be something fun to do.

He started out with harvest and seeding videos but wasn’t taking it seriously until recently, when a “Pommie farmhand”, George Summers, said to him he “should give it a go” and do some videos to highlight how and what he did on the farm.

Mr Summers told him it may be of interest to producers and farmers around the world who had different soil types, conditions and practices.

“I had a think about what George said and decided to give it a go,” Mr Carmody said

“I recently started uploading more consistently.”

He said he used a Go Pro and a drone to film the videos while he walked around talking into a camera.

“They are easy to use — you just point and shoot, and they produce quite a good image,” Mr Carmody said.

He tries to keep the videos about 20 minutes long to keep them interesting.

So far, he said he had amassed more than 1100 subscribers and the channel was gaining traction, although there were no plans to expand upon the idea as yet.

“I’m just taking it as it comes but if someone wants to showcase something in particular then I would happily help out,” he said.

Mr Carmody and wife Rhiannon crop 4500ha of wheat, barley and canola in sandy loam soils.

He said the Cascade area received about 400ml of rainfall on average, with 250ml-290ml during the growing season.

He said the purpose of the YouTube channel was to “educate people and show them what happens on-farm” in WA because it was a different model from what Americans and Canadians had.

On Tom’s Brook Farm they practice no-till farming with minimal disturbance to the soils, inputing minerals to replace what they use for cropping.

“I wanted to show that we are not the enemy,” he said in reference to anti-farming activists.

“We are just normal people.

“We use the latest technology for spraying, seeding and harvesting.”

The Tom’s Brook Farm channel also highlights how WA farmers use a variety of vehicles, machinery and practical engineering skills in their everyday work situations, building and maintaining firebreaks and roads, repairing and maintaining their equipment, as well as “how to manage soils and weeds to not take all the moisture away”.

In this week’s upload, Mr Carmody will be showing how he operates a road roller to compact the road, having graded it last week.