It all started last spring; the 22-year-old Greg was sitting with friends at a restaurant when the song, “Sexy and I Know it” by LMFAO came on the speaker system.
Peterson and his friends joked about the song and started coming up with their own lyrics to the pop hit. Peterson took the “new” lyrics home to his brothers.
For the last year, he and his brothers had been posting informative videos on YouTube about life on their family farm near Salinas, Kansas. The videos had gotten a little attention, about 1,000 hits. That would soon change.
In June, the boys posted their parody of the LMFAO tune. “I’m Farming and I Grow It” went viral and now has over eight million views.
The brothers were invited to appear on Fox News, performed at the National FFA Convention and have become minor celebrities – often recognized when in public.
In early December, the brothers released a second video – and within a matter of days, “Farmer Style,” a parody of the PSY hit “Gangnam Style,” surpassed the first video with over 11 million views.
“If someone had told me I’d have a part-time job as a public speaker and T-shirt salesman, I’d have laughed,” Greg Peterson said.
“It’s hard to adjust to the attention, but we try to live our lives as normal as possible.”
“Normal” for Greg is living as a senior ag communication major at Kansas State. His brother, Nathan, who is 19, also attends K-State.
Kendall is 16 and still in high school. A little sister, Laura, who is 12, also helps with the videos behind the scenes.
The Petersons help their parents run a beef cattle operation, along with 1,000 acres of cropland, just outside of Assaria, Kansas. They grow wheat, corn, alfalfa, soybeans and sorghum, Greg Peterson said.
The YouTube channel began as a way to help educate consumers about life on the farm. They have videos of harvest and feeding the cows.
The brothers also have a website, where they sell T-shirts, and manage a Facebook page and Twitter handle for their farm and music.
The goal is to serve as ag advocates while having a little fun.
“I got tired of hearing people’s ignorance about the farm,” Greg Peterson said. “I’m passionate about telling them.”
This may be a long spring for Peterson brother fans. Greg Peterson said he’s wrapping up his senior year and looking for a job, and the other brothers have to not only keep up with their academics but their chores, too.
In the meantime, the brothers will continue to post updates from the family farm on Facebook and Twitter and wait for the right combination of time and inspiration to create their next viral video. 
PHOTOS
The Peterson brothers’ ag tribute YouTube video “I’m Farming and I Grow It” has collected over eight million views on YouTube. Images from YouTube..
See the videos online at:
Others in the spotlight
The Peterson brothers aren’t the only farmers promoting ag advocacy online.
Erin Ehnle began her Facebook page “Keeping it Real: Through the Lens of a Farm Girl” in January 2012 as part of an internship at the Illinois Corn Marketing Board.
When the internship ended last spring, she kept the page going. It’s now followed by nearly 16,000 people with thousands more seeing Ehnle’s work through the sharing process on Facebook.
“My audience is very ag-based. Most are in areas where there is a land-grant university,” she says. “I provide the material and content and they use it to share and educate their consumer friends.”
At its peak last summer, the page was getting 150,000 to 350,000 page views per week. One of those views came from Mississippi rancher Gina Dupree.
After looking through Ehnle’s work, Dupree started her own page, “Thoughts of a Working Ranch Woman.”
“I offer a different perspective,” she says. “I’m a 40-something woman on a ranch in Mississippi. I didn’t want to compete with her.
I love the grains and the dairies she shows. I have hay fields and horses and beef cows. We are both farm women at work.”
Click here to read more about Ehnle and Dupree from a related Progressive Dairyman article.
