Our Passion

Hello, this is us and this is our passion!

This is us – Tammo and Jörn. We spent every spare minute of our child­hood on our uncle’s dairy farm. This is where we learnt how to drive trac­tors on a Fendt Far­mer 309 LSA and took most of our first snaps of farm machi­nery on a pocket film camera.

We were always bor­ro­wing our father’s 8‑mm camera to cap­ture exci­ting images and action shots of farm machi­nery on film. We’ll never for­get our first shots of the Fendt Favo­rit 800 and 900 trac­tors dri­ven by various agri­cul­tu­ral con­trac­tors. We pro­du­ced our first film com­pi­la­tion entit­led “Five Hours of Farm Machi­nery – Across All Areas” on VHS tape. We made our first sales via news­pa­per adverts and were super proud of each farm machi­nery video tape we sold.

We just kept on gathe­ring mate­rial! Tammo recor­ded the video foo­tage and Jörn took the pho­tos. Jörn got his first digi­tal camera in the sum­mer of 2003 and one of his first ‘digi­tal’ sub­jects was a Claas Xer­ion 2500 trac­tor. With the new camera in tow, we set off on our bikes and not long after with the car, to hunt for more and more far­ming and farm machi­nery sub­jects to film in the sur­roun­ding area. We secu­red a small web­site and from then on, shared many of our farm machi­nery pho­tos online with a gro­wing com­mu­nity of fel­low enthu­si­asts. Our first web­site domain – www.vario716.de – is still active today. We made our first farm machi­nery DVD entit­led “Autumn 2003 – Beet Har­vest in Focus” on our home PC. Just like our VHS cas­set­tes, we made copies of the DVDs in our child­hood bed­room. Our par­ents sup­ported us from the very begin­ning with every new idea we had, and mana­ged all the ship­ping and accoun­ting tasks for our small family business.

Our film archive was fil­ling up fast and by now, we’d alre­ady docu­men­ted the main types of field work in our region. In the sum­mers of 2004 and 2005, we went to film in Meck­len­burg-Vor­pom­mern for the first time and got the chance to see some mega-sized farm machi­nery. We recor­ded ever­y­thing on a MiniDV camera from then on. We’ll never for­get film­ing our first arti­cu­la­ted trac­tor, a John Deere 9320, in the out­skirts of Mag­de­burg. The foo­tage we took of this and many other machi­nes was made into fea­ture-length films with titles such as “Farm Machi­nery Per­fec­tion” and “Agri­cul­tu­ral Adven­ture”. We con­tin­ued to repro­duce the farm machi­nery DVDs in our child­hood bed­room. We had also star­ted to reach inter­na­tio­nal cus­to­mers via eBay.

To cele­brate the 25th anni­ver­sary of Blunk Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors, we fol­lo­wed the team throug­hout the far­ming year and expe­ri­men­ted with nar­ra­tion for the first time on this farm machi­nery DVD. We were now film­ing in HD and shoo­ting pho­tos with a sin­gle-lens reflex camera. We used Landtechnikvideos.de as our web­site URL and brand name from then on. Our dou­ble-disc DVD “Four-Wheel Drive – Drive for More“ was the first film we had pro­du­ced extern­ally as part of a lar­ger run and the first for which we filmed abroad – this time in Hun­gary. We also took aerial foo­tage of til­lage work and maize har­ve­s­t­ing using a gyro­c­op­ter and para­gli­der. We sent a mailshot to all our cus­to­mers for the first time informing them about the new DVD. In April 2007, we uploa­ded the first video to our You­Tube chan­nel.

We filmed our first pro­per inter­na­tio­nal agri­cul­tu­ral docu­men­tary in Canada – spe­ci­fi­cally the pro­vince of Alberta – and in the US state of Mon­tana. How would the far­mers react to our came­ras, and what would our audi­ence think about the idea? We had a lot of ques­ti­ons on our mind when we embarked on this trip – it was the first time we’d inves­ted any serious amount into a pro­duc­tion. Along­side the film­ing work, we also repor­ted on our daily expe­ri­en­ces via a live blog. The two farm machi­nery DVDs “Far­ming in North Ame­rica” Volu­mes 1 and 2 were the first we had trans­la­ted into Eng­lish and French. Our inter­na­tio­nal audi­ence that we’d rea­ched via dea­lers and publi­ca­ti­ons hel­ped to increase the pro­duc­tion run. The com­men­tary-free audio track also allo­wed view­ers to enjoy the sounds of the audio wit­hout any voice-over. A fea­ture that we’ve kept on all sub­se­quent farm machi­nery DVDs. The first pro­per logo was crea­ted for ‘landtechnikvideos.de’.

We’d caught the tra­vel bug. Thanks to some hel­pful cont­acts, we had the oppor­tu­nity to focus on Rus­sia for our next inter­na­tio­nal topic. In spite of some serious forest fires, we set off on our jour­ney in Sep­tem­ber 2010 and were rewarded with some impres­sive foo­tage despite the cir­cum­s­tances. What sticks in our minds is the con­trast bet­ween the old Soviet equip­ment and the modern farm machi­nery from the West. Our „Far­ming in Rus­sia“ farm machi­nery DVD was trans­la­ted into three lan­guages and sold in num­e­rous count­ries. We added a GoPro Hero action camera to our coll­ec­tion of film­ing equipment.

In the spring, we filmed in Bel­gium and the Net­her­lands. Some good cont­acts and a lon­ging for a new adven­ture drew us back to Canada in the sum­mer of 2011. We tra­vel­led for thou­sands of miles around Win­ni­peg, Regina and Sas­katoon. We made some great cont­acts and filmed farm machi­nery at work in ways in which we’d never even ima­gi­ned before. Nevert­hel­ess, we were still active in the agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try back home in Ger­many. Our „Far­ming in Ger­many“ DVD box set top­ped ever­y­thing we had released to date: 370 minu­tes of run­time on four DVDs, film­ing loca­ti­ons across the entire coun­try, packa­ged in an appe­al­ing slip­case and trans­la­ted into five lan­guages (Ger­man, Eng­lish, French, Spa­nish and Italian)..

The posi­tive feed­back we had recei­ved on our first pro­duc­tion in Canada inspi­red us to embark on ano­ther inter­na­tio­nal trip in spring 2012. Gigan­tic seed drills and tri­ple-tyred arti­cu­la­ted trac­tors fea­tured hea­vily in our film­ing. In addi­tion to a farm machi­nery DVD, our „Far­ming in North Ame­rica Vol. 3“ title was also pro­du­ced on Blu-ray.
Landtechnikvideos.de got its own Face­book page. From then on, we used the page to keep our fans up to date on our film pro­jects. In late sum­mer, we took our first trip to the Czech Repu­blic. In Decem­ber 2012, in tem­pe­ra­tures of up to 47 degrees, we filmed the grain har­vest in Wes­tern Aus­tra­lia – our first time in the sou­thern hemi­sphere. It was the pre­lude to our most ela­bo­rate pro­duc­tion to date!

In the spring, we made two more trips down under for film­ing. Whilst there, we covered thou­sands of miles and filmed on dozens of farms. Cap­tu­ring the lar­gest seed drill in the world on camera was a uni­que oppor­tu­nity. That was also the first time we’d come across sugar cane cul­ti­va­tion. For our film entit­led „Farm Machi­nery in Focus – Maize Har­vest“, we stu­died the most powerful forage har­ves­ters in exis­tence and filmed in seve­ral regi­ons of Ger­many. We used a moto­ri­sed para­gli­der at the time to take aerial foo­tage of the Krone BiG X. This farm machi­nery video was also released on Blu-ray. Throug­hout the entire year, we fol­lo­wed the team from Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors in Luxem­bourg for a new docu­men­tary. Plus, we pro­du­ced a weekly calen­dar for 2014 with 52 dif­fe­rent images.

Our farm machi­nery DVD „Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors Vol. 1“ was released in spring 2014 and was just one of many film ideas that we have brought to life with Reiff over the years. Our DVD Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors Vol. 1 was even trans­la­ted into seven lan­guages inclu­ding Dutch and Luxem­bour­gish. “Far­ming in Aus­tra­lia“ , our most suc­cessful title to date, was released later the same year. The three-part DVD box set was pro­du­ced com­ple­tely inde­pendently and spon­sor­ship-free, as always, and pro­vi­des a com­pre­hen­sive insight into Aus­tra­lian agri­cul­ture and the chal­lenges they face down under. We took care of every sin­gle aspect of pro­duc­tion our­sel­ves, from rese­ar­ching, film­ing and editing to voice-over and pro­duct design. For 2015, we pro­du­ced our first monthly calen­dar, which came with an accom­pany­ing DVD show­ca­sing the sub­jects of each month in action. The calen­dar was sold throug­hout Europe. The acqui­si­tion of our first camera dro­nes ope­ned up a new chap­ter in our film pro­duc­tion care­ers. Drone tech­no­logy was impro­ving at pace, enab­ling us to shoot from impres­sive angles with the second and third gene­ra­ti­ons. From this point, our camera equip­ment also recor­ded onto memory cards. We were able to start using the new camera equip­ment during our first film­ing trip to France. Various media out­lets repor­ted on our work in 2014. They included Nord­deut­sche Rund­funk, das Bay­ri­sche Fern­se­hen, Sat.1‑Regional and Deut­sche Welle. We’ve com­pi­led a sel­ec­tion of TV clips, news­pa­per artic­les and radio recor­dings on our web­site. Jörn took on the agency side of the busi­ness and estab­lished agrimotion.com.

The French agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try is unbe­lie­v­a­bly diverse. It was clear from the out­set that we would have to pay seve­ral visits to the coun­try at dif­fe­rent times of year to be able to show­case as many types of field work as pos­si­ble. Our three-part box set „Far­ming in France“ was released in the autumn. In par­al­lel, we set off on a trip to the east of Canada in the sum­mer. We filmed in the Onta­rio and Que­bec pro­vin­ces during forage har­ve­s­t­ing and got to know the Cana­dian agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try once again from a com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent angle. In the sum­mer, we also had the oppor­tu­nity to visit the Rost­sel­mash com­bine fac­tory in sou­thern Rus­sia. We made a new monthly calen­dar for the fol­lo­wing year entit­led “Modern Trac­tors” and sold it in three lan­guages. We filmed one of the first John Deere 9RX tra­cked trac­tors in Ger­many for our You­Tube chan­nel and released seve­ral short films, two of which – on the work of Osters & Voß Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors – were extre­mely suc­cessful. We also filmed Part 1 of our film series on Maa­ßen Civil Engi­nee­ring, which has alre­ady been viewed 2.5 mil­lion times to date.

Our „Far­ming in Rus­sia“ film pro­ject gai­ned momen­tum. In the sum­mer, we filmed the grain har­vest in sou­thern Rus­sia and, later in autumn, the sugar beet har­vest in Voronezh Oblast, south of Moscow. We spent a lot of time rebuil­ding our web­site, www.landtechnikvideos.de, throug­hout the whole of 2016. Then in autumn, it was finally ready: as well as show­ca­sing our farm machi­nery DVDs, our new web­site also now gives you ple­nty of insights into our work. Our media library, which con­ta­ins freely acces­si­ble farm machi­nery pho­to­graphs lis­ted by cate­gory, now com­pri­ses over 18,000 images. The landtechnikvideos.de logo was given a refresh. Our new releases this year included our „Har­vest Time in Canada“ DVDs, which took view­ers on an agri­cul­tu­ral tour of four Cana­dian pro­vin­ces. This year, we also released a film entit­led “Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors: 5 Count­ries, 5 Sto­ries”, for which we filmed in Ire­land, Nor­t­hern Ire­land and Den­mark. Various media out­lets repor­ted on our work, inclu­ding Bild.de, Frank­fur­ter All­ge­meine Zei­tung and agrarheute.com. We gra­du­ally upgraded all our camera equip­ment to 4K reso­lu­tion. Our Face­book page pas­sed the 100,000 fol­lower mark and we expe­ri­men­ted with 360-degree videos on YouTube.

We tra­vel­led to see the soya har­vest in the Bra­zi­lian state of Mato Grosso. South Ame­rica was a new con­ti­nent for us in our film­ing history. Ten per­cent of the soy­be­ans pro­du­ced world­wide come from here. It was an exci­ting pro­ject, which would­n’t have been half as suc­cessful if we hadn’t car­ried out such in-depth rese­arch before­hand. Just a few weeks later, we tra­vel­led to Argen­tina and had a local guide to show us around the coun­try. We filmed the rice and maize har­ve­sts and visi­ted some large cattle farms. For just a few weeks, our film­ing work in Sibe­ria pro­vi­ded a stark con­trast in our sche­dule. On our visit to the area bet­ween Novo­si­birsk and Bar­naul in Rus­sia, we filmed on hundred-hec­tare fields, visi­ted the live­stock sheds of the lar­gest dairy far­mers in the coun­try and drove for miles and miles. We were often asked whe­ther we would con­sider taking guests with us on our film­ing trips. This gave us the idea to offer Far­ming Adven­ture trips. In spring 2017, we tra­vel­led to Canada to begin pre­pa­ra­ti­ons for our first far­ming trip to Canada. Just before we finis­hed put­ting tog­e­ther our latest farm machi­nery DVD, „Rus­sian Adven­ture“, we recei­ved per­mis­sion to film in the Kirov trac­tor fac­tory in Saint Peters­burg after leng­thy dis­cus­sions. This is where the famous Kiro­vets trac­tors are pro­du­ced. Along with this final chap­ter, our “Rus­sian Adven­ture” three-part DVD box set was finally released – a film pro­ject that pro­vi­ded uni­que impres­si­ons of and insights into agri­cul­tu­ral pro­duc­tion in the world’s lar­gest coun­try. In Sep­tem­ber, our first Far­ming Adven­ture trip took place in Canada, with 15 par­ti­ci­pants. In Novem­ber 2017, we pre­sen­ted our film work on our own stand at the Agri­tech­nica farm machi­nery exhi­bi­tion in Hano­ver for the first time. Fendt gave us an exclu­sive demons­tra­tion of the first 900 Vario MT tra­cked trac­tor for a test drive video on our You­Tube channel.

After a suc­cessful inau­gu­ral trip to Canada the pre­vious year, we deci­ded to add the option of an far­ming trip to Rus­sia this year as well. The pre­pa­ra­ti­ons took place in Sibe­ria and the area around Saint Peters­burg in spring 2018. We also nee­ded to com­plete our “Far­ming in South Ame­rica” film pro­ject. For this, we deci­ded to focus on the agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try in Chile as a con­trast to Bra­zil and Argen­tina. Tra­vel­ling along­side vol­ca­noes and the Andes, we filmed on some of the most fer­tile soils in the world. It was yet ano­ther high­light of our film­ing trips to date. Sugar cane pro­duc­tion at an advan­ced tech­ni­cal level only exists in a few count­ries world­wide, one of which is Bra­zil. After a leng­thy rese­arch pro­cess, we were gran­ted per­mis­sion to visit a farm owned by the second-lar­gest sugar cane pro­du­cer in the world. While there, we filmed the most powerful har­ve­s­t­ing equip­ment in exis­tence at the time, and it became a focal point of the last chap­ter of our „Far­ming in South Ame­rica“ farm machi­nery DVD. The new “Far­ming in South Ame­rica” release outran­ked our Aus­tra­lian film pro­ject as our most ela­bo­rate film pro­duc­tion to date. As ever, it was a com­ple­tely inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion with no spon­sor­ship invol­ved. Various media out­lets repor­ted on our latest release, inclu­ding the indus­try maga­zine Profi. This year, we also released a new epi­sode of our suc­cessful docu­men­tary series on Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors in Luxem­bourg. Part 2 show­ca­ses the latest deve­lo­p­ments at the com­pany. Our first Far­ming Adven­ture trip to Rus­sia was also a com­plete suc­cess. Just a few days later, we accom­pa­nied ano­ther tra­vel group to Canada. We show­ca­sed our Far­ming Adven­ture tra­vel acti­vi­ties along with our farm machi­nery DVDs on a stand at Euro­Tier for the first time in 2018.

Landtechnikvideos.de got its own Insta­gram page. After just 4 months, we had built up a com­mu­nity of 20,000 fol­lo­wers. We keep our film fans up to date with regu­lar posts and sto­ries. After various long-distance trips, we focu­sed on Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switz­er­land for our „Agri­cul­tu­ral Adven­ture“ pro­duc­tion this year. An inte­res­t­ing film pro­ject that star­ted early in the year with the win­ter ser­vice. We drove around 25,000 kilo­me­t­res to get to all 75 film­ing loca­ti­ons – it was a mam­moth pro­ject! In par­al­lel to this, we were working on our new strea­ming ser­vice, farmworld.tv. We tes­ted out the ser­vice initi­ally in Ger­man. Our three-part “Agri­cul­tu­ral Adven­ture” film was then finally released in the autumn as a farm machi­nery DVD box set and to stream in 4K on demand. This was a mile­stone for us in terms of future film pro­duc­tions. We con­tin­ued to sup­ply our You­Tube com­mu­nity with new short films and test drive videos on the latest farm machi­nery. We gai­ned visi­bi­lity through two docu­men­ta­ries on far­ming in Rus­sia, for which we visi­ted the Rus­sian agri­cul­tu­ral com­pany Eko­Niva. Part 1 and Part 2 recei­ved over 3.5 mil­lion views. More Far­ming Adven­ture trips took place in 2019 in Rus­sia and Canada. To end the year, we took part in the Agri­tech­nica farm machi­nery exhi­bi­tion. We had our own stand and had the oppor­tu­nity to speak to lots of our film fans in per­son again.

The test phase of our Ger­man-lan­guage strea­ming ser­vice was suc­cessful, so deve­lo­p­ment work began on a new inter­na­tio­nal plat­form. A new logo was crea­ted for Farmworld.tv and was used from that point on for inter­na­tio­nal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sur­roun­ding our work. Our web­site and film ser­vice, which was trans­la­ted into five lan­guages, had been visi­ted by film fans from over 20 dif­fe­rent count­ries by the end of the year – a gro­wing trend! Our next pro­duc­tion, “Har­vest Time in Ger­many”, was released on DVD and as a 4K on demand video at the same time. More film­ing took place at Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors in Luxem­bourg, this time with a focus on clas­sic trac­tors. Our Ger­man You­Tube chan­nel hit the 200,000 sub­scri­ber mark 13 years after we uploa­ded our first video. Mid­way through the year, we crea­ted a stan­da­lone Eng­lish-spea­king chan­nel on the platform.

In pre­vious years, our film pro­jects had all pre­do­mi­nantly focu­sed on modern farm machi­nery. This was to change this year. For our „Modern Clas­sic Trac­tors XXL“ pro­duc­tion, we focu­sed solely on the most pro­mi­nent trac­tors of the 80s and 90s. We show­ca­sed around 50 trac­tors from 20 dif­fe­rent brands, inclu­ding Fendt, John Deere, Deutz-Fahr, Mer­ce­des-Benz, Schlü­ter, Mas­sey Fer­gu­son and Fiat, as well as many more ‘exo­tic’ spe­cies. For us, this film pro­ject was also like a jour­ney back in time through our own history book. Our second new release this year is also all about older farm machi­nery. „J‑Reiff Fendt Clas­sics Vol.1“ was filmed at Reiff Agri­cul­tu­ral Con­trac­tors in Luxem­bourg. Over the past few years, senior part­ner Josy Reiff has assem­bled the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive coll­ec­tion of Fendt trac­tors. Vol. 1 covers the con­s­truc­tion period from 1928 to 1958. Both films are out on farm machi­nery DVDs and in 4K on demand. More and more peo­ple are enjoy­ing our You­Tube videos: in 2021 alone, we recor­ded 14 mil­lion views on our chan­nel, with an over­all watch time of 1.1 mil­lion hours! Our visi­bi­lity was enhan­ced by an exclu­sive video on the NEXAT wide-span car­rier vehicle that we filmed in Ukraine. We also crea­ted a French-spea­king chan­nel this year to run along­side our Ger­man and Eng­lish-spea­king channels.

Our „Far­ming in Scan­di­na­via“ film pro­ject clo­sed yet ano­ther gap in our docu­men­tary coverage of Europe’s agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try. Tack­ling all four count­ries at once – Den­mark, Swe­den, Fin­land and Nor­way – it was an ambi­tious under­ta­king, and took a great deal of rese­arch. In the end, we mana­ged to tra­vel all the key far­ming regi­ons over seve­ral visits, show­ca­sing the agri­cul­tu­ral and mecha­ni­cal high­lights along the way. We have now filmed in 25 dif­fe­rent count­ries on 5 con­ti­nents! This year, we also released a new inst­al­ment of our J‑Reiff Fendt Clas­sics video series. „Vol. 2“ focu­ses on the Fendt trac­tor con­s­truc­tion period of 1959 to 1969. Mean­while, our Ger­man-spea­king You­Tube chan­nel rea­ched 85 mil­lion video views and 250,000 sub­scri­bers, while the Eng­lish-spea­king chan­nel hit the 15,000 sub­scri­ber mark.

In Febru­ary, after exten­sive and chal­len­ging rese­arch, we tra­vel to South Africa for the first time, mea­ning we have now shot on six of the world’s seven con­ti­nents. Pro­duc­tion star­ted with the maize har­vest and a visit to large cattle far­mers east of Johan­nes­burg. The trip then took us cris­scrossing the coun­try to Cape Town. More visits will have to fol­low to com­plete the docu­men­tary “Har­vest Time in South Africa”.
We were really exci­ted for the live launch of our new web­site www.landtechnikvideos.de. With the help of an agency, we built up the site in large parts in five lan­guages, inte­gra­ting the clas­sic web­shop as well as the strea­ming offer. Farmworld.tv has now been used by film fans from more than 30 count­ries and makes all our agri­cul­tu­ral docu­men­ta­ries back to 2012 available. The new media library with around 20,000 pho­tos pro­vi­des a free insight into the pic­ture archive from 20 years of landtechnikvideos.de