Scroll, Post, Plough: How Gen Z Found Gonerby YFC Through Their Phones and Decided to Stay

Nobody planned it as a recruitment strategy. The first few videos that members of Gonerby YFC posted online were almost accidental — a clip of a stock judging session here, a reel of a county rally there, the kind of casual documentation that Gen Z does almost reflexively. But something unexpected happened. People watched. People shared. And then, a bit unexpectedly, people turned up.

The relationship between Young Farmers Clubs and social media is, to put it gently, still being figured out. But at Gonerby YFC, a generation that grew up with TikTok and Instagram is finding ways to make that relationship work — not just for recruitment, but for something that feels more genuinely meaningful.

The Algorithm Meets the Agricultural Show

If you haven't spent time in the rural corner of social media — sometimes called FarmTok or AgriTwitter, depending on your platform of choice — it's worth knowing that it's considerably larger and more engaged than most people assume. Content about farming, livestock, countryside skills, and rural life consistently outperforms predictions on most major platforms. People who've never set foot on a farm are watching sheep shearing videos at midnight and genuinely enjoying them.

"I think people are hungry for something that feels real," says Dylan, 20, who joined Gonerby YFC after seeing a friend's Instagram stories from a county competition. "Everything online is so filtered and performative. And then you see someone genuinely stressed about whether their heifer is going to behave in the ring, and it's just — honest. You can't fake that."

Dylan grew up in Grantham, has no farming background, and would probably have described himself eighteen months ago as someone with zero interest in agriculture. He now competes in stockmanship classes and is planning to take his first agricultural show entry seriously this summer. The journey from spectator to participant was, in his telling, almost entirely driven by what he saw online.

Authentic Content in an Inauthentic Age

The social media content that tends to resonate around Gonerby YFC doesn't look like marketing. It looks like what it is: young people doing something they find genuinely absorbing, occasionally getting it wrong, and being honest about both the hard bits and the rewarding ones.

"We're not trying to make farming look glamorous," says Izzy, 21, whose short-form videos about rural crafts and competition prep have built a modest but engaged following. "I post stuff that's muddy and stressful and sometimes a bit chaotic. And people seem to connect with that more than they would with something polished."

That instinct — towards authenticity over aesthetics — is, counterintuitively, very on-trend. Research into Gen Z social media behaviour consistently shows that this demographic is more sceptical of branded content than any previous generation and more drawn to lo-fi, unfiltered documentation. Gonerby YFC's members, by simply being themselves online, are accidentally doing exactly what every content strategist is trying to engineer.

The Tension Between Heritage and Hashtags

Not everyone in the club is entirely comfortable with the digital turn. Young Farmers Clubs have a heritage that stretches back nearly a century, rooted in values — community, land stewardship, practical skill — that don't always translate neatly into a fifteen-second video.

"My concern is that it becomes about the content rather than the experience," admits Rob, 28, one of Gonerby YFC's longer-serving members. "You don't want someone standing in the middle of a lambing shed pointing a camera at everything rather than actually helping. The doing has to come first."

It's a fair point, and one that the club's younger members take seriously — perhaps more seriously than Rob gives them credit for.

"Nobody's filming when there's actual work to do," says Dylan, a bit defensively. "You film before and after. And honestly, having something to document makes you more invested in the experience, not less. You want to be able to show people something worth watching."

The tension between these two positions is, in many ways, generational rather than irresolvable. The club is finding its way towards a middle ground — one that embraces digital communication without letting it colonise the spaces where real learning happens.

What They Find When They Show Up

The most interesting part of Gonerby YFC's Gen Z story isn't the social media content. It's what happens after someone watches a video, gets curious, and actually walks through the door.

Because what they find, consistently, is something that social media cannot fully replicate: genuine community. The kind that involves shared physical space, shared effort, and the slow accumulation of trust that comes from doing difficult things together.

"I came because of TikTok, basically," admits Chloe, 18, who joined six months ago. "But I'm staying because of the people. I've made proper friends here — not online friends, actual friends. People who'd come and help you if you needed it. That's different."

Chloe's observation cuts to something important. Social media can introduce young people to Gonerby YFC, but it can't replicate what the club actually offers. The discovery might happen online, but the belonging happens in person — on a cold Tuesday evening at a meeting, at a county competition, during a shared late shift that nobody planned to enjoy but somehow did.

A New Kind of Rural Ambassador

Perhaps the most significant thing happening here is the emergence of a new kind of rural ambassador — young people with one foot in digital culture and one foot in the Lincolnshire soil, translating between two worlds that don't always understand each other.

"I've got friends from school who think farming is boring or irrelevant," says Izzy. "But when they see what I post, they get curious. And sometimes they ask to come along. And then they realise that rural life is interesting and complicated and actually really important. That feels worth doing."

Gonerby YFC didn't set out to become a bridge between Gen Z and the countryside. But that's increasingly what it is — and the phones in members' pockets are part of how that bridge gets built.