BBC Trending: Brazilian farmers are (very) online

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Being a farmer in Brazil has never been cooler - at least, that is the impression you might get from social media. Music videos featuring cowboy hat wearing farmers, driving tractors and boasting about their wealth, have garnered millions of views online. Meanwhile, farmers turned influencers offer a window into rural life, insisting Brazil is not just a country of football and Carnival, but of farming. Critics say social media has become the latest battleground in a long-running effort by Brazil’s powerful agribusiness industry to improve the way it is perceived. They say posts and videos like these are “propaganda” meant to distract from the sector’s poor environmental track record. But farmers argue their livelihoods are being targeted by “ideologues” and “activists”, who fail to grasp where their food really comes from. And, as Brazil prepares to host COP30, how does this idealised image of agribusiness fit into a world facing climate change?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being a farmer in Brazil has never been cooler.
0:07.3	Or at least that's the impression you might get from social media.
0:11.5	There are viral music videos featuring farmers with cowboy hats boasting about their wealth.
0:16.7	And also the influencers with big followings offering a taste of rural life in deep Brazil.
0:24.5	My farm is my little corner of the world.
0:28.1	I often joke it's paradise for me.
0:30.4	But not everyone buys into the dream.
0:34.3	Some say that beyond the videos of tractors and the snapshots of idyllic landscapes,
0:40.1	something more troubling is at play.
0:42.5	When you are selling ideology, then we need to be a little bit more cautious, I think.
0:48.3	Some claim a battle for hearts and minds is going on.
0:52.1	Our Brazil is that of rodeos, leather boots, cowboy heads, small towns.
0:58.8	A battle to change the way big agriculture is seen, not as a villain that, according to
1:04.6	scientists, is helping drive global warming, but rather as an economic hero.
1:10.0	And it's all unfolding on social media.
1:14.6	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
1:18.3	I'm Marco Silver with BBC Trending, where we take an in-depth look into the world of social media.
1:26.8	To start us off, there's someone I'd like you to meet.
1:33.2	That's the Brazilian musical duo Usagroboy.
1:37.0	The first thing that strikes you when you see them is their looks.
1:40.6	Cowboy hats, blue jeans, with big belt buckles, tight tank tops, checkered shirts, sports jerseys.
1:48.0	Then there are the tattoos, the leather boots, the bling.
	...

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