1The Ponds of Mithila
A makhana farmer films his dawn harvest in the lotus ponds of Bihar.
Honest Farms already prints a farmer's name on every pack. This is the next step: give those farmers the tools, the training and the stage to tell their own stories, and end the year by owning National Farmers Day.
Read the idea Go to the finaleConcept visual, AI-generated for this proposal. Every image on this page imagines what farmer-made content could look like.
The audience exists, the habit exists, and the infrastructure exists. What's missing is the platform that puts farmers behind the camera instead of in front of someone else's.
Sources: IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India 2025; Oxford Economics / YouTube Impact Report 2024; Microsoft Research & J-PAL evaluations of Digital Green.
India's biggest agri creators built million-strong audiences with nothing but a phone and their own fields. The country has noticed: in March 2024, the first-ever National Creators Award for agriculture was handed out by the Prime Minister.
Delhi's largest organic farmer. Won the first "Most Impactful Agri Creator" award from PM Modi at Bharat Mandapam. His family farm earns around ₹3.5 Cr a year, supported by his content.
Two friends from Sangli, Maharashtra, explaining irrigation, seeds and crop care in plain Hindi since 2018. YouTube made a documentary about them. Mahindra put Santosh on its Kisan Diwas film jury.
A graduate farmer who turned his 12-acre organic farm into one of India's largest farming channels, covering dairy, goats, mushrooms and machinery.
A former agricultural worker from Telangana who became a Telugu YouTube star in her late fifties, profiled by CNN, later cast in films.
An MSc Physics graduate from Ahmednagar who grew her family's buffalo trade into a ₹1 Cr-a-year dairy enterprise, and has trained over 5,000 aspiring dairy farmers through her content.
Bihar grows ~90% of the world's makhana. Since the GI tag in 2022, farmer earnings have risen from ₹50,000 to ₹3 to 5 lakh per hectare. The farmers behind it, from Madhubani growers to women's cooperative packagers, have stories national media already covers.
The question is not whether farmers can be creators. They already are. The question is who gives the next hundred thousand a way in.
A national programme that trains farmers in storytelling and mobile videography, run on rails DeHaat already owns.
15,000+ DeHaat Centres become local recruitment and training points, run by micro-entrepreneurs who already know every farmer in their area.
2.7M directly served farmers and 503 FPOs form the first talent pool, with a path to DeHaat's wider 12M+ farmer network.
The DeHaat app delivers lessons, weekly challenges and creator payouts the same way it already delivers crop advisory.
Five steps, none of which ask a farmer to stop farming. The farm is the content.
Recruit through DeHaat Centres and the FPO network.
Storytelling and mobile journalism, taught in local languages.
Weekly video challenges with simple, repeatable formats.
Audience building, league rankings and public recognition.
Brand work, platform payouts and Honest Farms collaborations.
For scale reference: 65,000+ Indian YouTube channels earned over ₹1 lakh in 2024. Top agri creators earn between ₹70,000 and ₹2 lakh a month.
State chapters that compete through the year. The way IPL turned cricket into a season, this turns farmer storytelling into one.
Eight founding states: Punjab, Bihar, UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, MP and West Bengal. Five award categories:
Monthly challenges keep content flowing year-round, so the movement never depends on a single campaign window.
Honest Farms already sources directly from farmers, prints farmer identification on packs, and stands on "pesticide-free, 230+ checks". Farmer-made video completes the loop.
QR codes on packs open a film by the farmer who grew what's inside: makhana from Mithila, ghee from the dairy, dal from the field.
E-commerce pages on Amazon, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart carry farmer videos where stock photography sits today.
Campaigns and retail draw from a living library of real farmer content instead of commissioning actors to play farmers.
No FMCG brand in India can show you the person who grew your food, in their own words. Honest Farms can, and trust is the whole brand.
Discovery has been rated India's most-trusted factual entertainment brand for four consecutive years. It runs 18 channels in 8 languages, a streaming platform, and a branded-content team that has built exactly this kind of IP, from The Great Indian Factory to state tourism films.
Flagship documentary cut from farmer-shot footage, in 8 language feeds
Same lane as The Great Indian Factory and the Trident Budhni documentary
Simulcast premiere, plus extended episodes per state and category
90% of WBD India content already premieres day-and-date
20 to 60 second capsules of the best farmer clips, released daily
The model Jharkhand Tourism used: 1.35M+ views from short capsules
"Where food comes from": farming stories for India's #1 kids network
~28% market share in urban India's kids entertainment
There is a precedent for turning thousands of ordinary people's videos into premium cinema: Life in a Day did it with 80,000 clips, and India in a Day did it here with 16,000. Nobody has done it with farmers.
Sources: TRA Brand Trust Report; BARC (kids network share, 2022); WBD India content strategy as reported in Business Standard; Campaign India (Discovery School Super League, government projects); Wikipedia/Variety (Life in a Day, India in a Day).
Every pitch needs a picture of the finished thing. This is how the Farmer Creator Movement arrives on screen: a six-part documentary series cut from farmer-shot footage, premiering on Discovery Channel and discovery+ together, with short-form capsules running on TLC and social.
A DeHaat Honest Farms Original, in association with Warner Bros. Discovery
Filmed by the farmers of India
Episodes
1The Ponds of Mithila
A makhana farmer films his dawn harvest in the lotus ponds of Bihar.
2Her Field, Her Frame
A woman farmer in a mustard field turns the camera on herself for the first time.
3The First Lesson
A village courtyard becomes a film school for eight farmers.
4Golden Hour
One farmer, one tripod, and the story of a season.
5The Next Generation
A 22-year-old chooses the farm, and brings his camera with him.
6One Hundred Thousand Voices
The finale: Farmers Day, a festival, and a world record attempt.
Short-form capsules of MAATI run across TLC and Discovery Channel feeds in 8 languages
Tonight 9:00 PMOne series, every Warner Bros. Discovery screen
discovery+
Concept visualisation. MAATI is a working title. Network marks shown to illustrate the proposed partnership, subject to Warner Bros. Discovery approval.
Cadbury's "Shah Rukh Khan My Ad" won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix by making 130,000+ personalised ads for small stores. The template of giving ordinary people the spotlight at scale is exactly this idea.
Kan Khajura Tesan won three Golds by inventing a media channel for rural Bihar and Jharkhand. Rural-audience invention from India wins globally.
The Unfiltered History Tour took three Grand Prix for platform-native Indian storytelling.
The open lane: a national creator programme for people who were never considered creators, entered across Creative Strategy, Social & Creator, SDGs and Creative Commerce. The shift it represents: from influencer marketing to creator creation.
Three engines generate coverage without media spend: a world record, an awards run, and a national broadcast. Each one feeds the others.
A verified record set by 100,000 farmers is a wire story by default: national dailies, TV news and international agencies cover the attempt, the count and the result as three separate news moments.
The regional press multiplies it. Eight league states means eight sets of local heroes, covered in eight languages by papers that rarely get a national story of their own.
Cannes entries create a second wave of coverage in marketing and trade press months after the campaign itself. India's wins travel worldwide: Cadbury's Shah Rukh Khan My Ad and The Unfiltered History Tour were reported globally.
A first-ever farmer-creator entry gives editors a new story, not a repeat. Shortlists alone earn coverage; a Lion makes DeHaat a global case study taught for years.
A premiere across 18 channels in 8 languages, day-and-date on discovery+, with daily capsules across a 20M+ owned social footprint. The launch itself is an entertainment news story: a documentary event, not an ad campaign.
Discovery's reference point: when the Prime Minister appeared on Man vs Wild, the network reached 42.7 million cumulative viewers and led news cycles for days.
Every version of the coverage repeats the same sentence: DeHaat handed farmers the camera.
Reference points: Man vs Wild with PM Modi (42.7M cumulative network reach, Discovery India); Mahindra's 2024 Kisan Diwas film festival drew 600+ entries and national trade coverage; Cannes coverage precedents per Ad Age, Campaign India and Storyboard18 reporting.
1,000 farmers trained across 20 states and 100 districts, recruited through DeHaat Centres and FPOs. A fast first cohort: formats tested, local-language curriculum locked by September.
State competitions and monthly challenges across 8 founding states. Five award categories build the content engine and surface the festival's stars.
A 30-day national celebration, 50,000+ participants, a Guinness World Record attempt, and national awards broadcast with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Kisan Diwas has existed since 2001. Today it lives in government seminars and a handful of tribute campaigns. No brand has ever built it around farmers' own voices. India's day for farmers is still waiting for its farmers.
Where every crop, and every story, begins.
The land, the testing, the care it takes.
Machines, methods and jugaad that change a farm.
The households and generations behind every harvest.
Water, soil health and farming that lasts.
The young people choosing to stay, and why.
"What Farming Means To Me"
A measurable, verifiable target. A national archive of Indian agriculture in farmers' own words. And the raw material for a broadcast documentary on Discovery. 16,000 clips became India in a Day; 80,000 became Life in a Day.
One theme, one day, one verifiable count, built for a record book, not a press release.
The best footage becomes a Discovery documentary in 8 languages, premiering on linear and discovery+ together.
A permanent, farmer-made archive of Indian agriculture, owned by the brand that put farmers' names on its packs first.
From growing crops to growing voices.