Utah farmer’s field damaged by trespassing TikTokers trying to get a cool picture: ‘It’s all dead and won’t come back’

TikTokers are infamous for doing whatever it takes to get their shot. And for a farmer in Utah, it was to his detriment.

Todd Brown is a farmer in Southern Utah who has been managing farmland for the past 20 years. He grows alfalfa and oats (1) and has 60 cattle. And up until last week, Brown has rarely had any issues with trespassing on his farmland, he told ABC4 (2).

Must Read

• Robert Kiyosaki issues grim warning for baby boomers. Many could be ‘wiped out’ and homeless ‘all over’ the country. How to protect yourself now

That is until 22-year-old TikTok user Emerson Nix posted a video of his truck parked on Brown’s crops. After his initial video — which he has now deleted — it happened again another night. When viewers of Nix’s TikTok saw where he took the clip, they wanted to pose their trucks in that ‘field,’ too (3).

Brown saw the trespassing occur, telling ABC, “I was just posting up in my shop down here and watching them pull out into my fields, and then I was calling the police, and they were coming out issuing citations. Went back out the next night, the same exact thing happened.”

In a follow-up video, Nix said he thought the farmland was just grass, and didn’t realize he was driving over crops. “At the end of the day, this is an honest mistake,” he said (3).

Viral stunts can create real financial damage for struggling farms

Regardless of Nix’s claim that the issue was an accident, Brown and his farm are hurting. “Farmers, we’re going to take it personal, you know, we’re the ones feeding your families … All of these crops feed my cattle, and when the cattle come off of the summer range, we sell the calves, the calves go to the slaughterhouse. That goes to your grocery store,” Brown said (2).

“Everywhere they drove their trucks, mashing down the crop is all crop-loss,” Brown told KSL (4). “It’s all dead and won’t come back. I can’t harvest that.”

Read More: Almost 50 with no retirement savings? Here’s why you shouldn’t panic

For farmers already operating on thin margins, even relatively small damage can matter. Last year, small and medium-sized farms in the U.S. were largely impacted (5) by Trump’s tariffs and cuts. This year, the increased cost of fuel and fertilizer have caused issues for farmers. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (6), U.S. farms filing for bankruptcy reached 315 in 2025, a 46% increase from 2024.

Brown said the viral attention has been frustrating not just because of the crop loss, but because people seemed to treat working farmland like a backdrop for social media content rather than someone’s livelihood.

“I didn’t go through all that work to make my field into a TikTok haven or a parking lot for TikTok,” he said (2).

What looked like harmless content for TikTok viewers translated into a reminder that online trends can carry real-world costs for the people caught in them.

What To Read Next

Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first — clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.

Article Sources

We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see ourethics and guidelines.

YouTube (1); ABC 4 (2); TikTok (3); KSL (4); The Guardian (5); Facebook (6)

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.