Dave’s iconic image is all over the internet, but he’s been too busy pioneering sustainable agriculture techniques to notice. “The only one I’

For farmer Dave Brandt, being a meme is honest work

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2023-05-23 06:00:14

Dave’s iconic image is all over the internet, but he’s been too busy pioneering sustainable agriculture techniques to notice.

“The only one I’ve ever looked at was mine,” he told me over the phone in between tasks around his 1200-acre farm in central Ohio (that day, he had to fix a combine, mail cornmeal to farm-to-table customers, and prepare for a public speaking engagement).

To non-farmers, Brandt is simply another character in the internet’s cast of memes: a friendly, flannel-shirt-clad portrait of a stereotypical farmer. His tagline? “It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.”

But while Brandt’s face is well known by young people online, he’s also a bona fide celebrity IRL among regenerative farmers as a “cover crop guru.” Dave Brandt’s farm in Carroll, Ohio was a birthplace for soil health principles, and his now-iconic photo was taken in 2015 when the United States Department of Agriculture wrote about Brandt’s farming tactics in an article called "Soil Health Campaign Turns Two: Seeks to Unlock Benefits on- and off-the-Farm.” It wasn’t until three years later that he unwittingly became a meme.

Dave Brandt’s image took off in a 2018 Reddit post captioned, “When your teacher asks you why you have submitted only one paper of 20 paper homework.” Hey, it ain’t much, but it’s honest work!