NEVADA, Mo. — Hopeful authors, musicians, producers and creators of all kinds have turned to Web-based “crowdfunding” as a way to finance dream projects. Now a farm media company is hoping to use the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to harvest support for a farm docudrama featuring a young Missouri farm family.

“We want people in agriculture to come to Kickstarter to show their support for what we’re doing,” said Harold Weitzberg, a California-based brand consultant who is managing the project for Against the Grain Productions, LLC.

It would be the second project for Against the Grain Productions, which produced a self-funded one-hour docudrama on challenges faced by farmers in 2012. That program was syndicated to 174 television stations.

“We were in Boston, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oregon, Florida,” said Weitzberg. “We were able to get the interest of stations outside the Midwest, reaching beyond agriculture’s core constituency.”

The company seeks $115,000 through support on Kickstarter for its next project, a “webisode” series of 30 five-minute episodes about the Lincoln and Trinnade Hughes family from Nevada, Mo. The Hughes were featured in the first Against the Grain project.

“I’m 35 years old, my wife’s 34, we have three boys, we’re really active in the community. I think they picked us (for the new project) thinking people could connect with us,” said Lincoln, who farms with his father, Robert Hughes. If funded, the project will follow the family from this August through harvest in October.

Media companies are taking a harder look at fan-funding avenues after a Kickstarter campaign generated more than $5 million for a “Veronica Mars” movie in April, based on a canceled television series of the same name targeted at teen viewers that ran for three seasons.

Here is how a Kickstarter campaign works: The person or group with a creative idea creates a project page at www.kickstarter.com where the project page describes it and sets a financial fundraising goal. People who like the idea can then contribute $1 or more toward the project goal.

The concept, called crowdfunding or crowd equity, relies on the word spreading through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to people who may be interested enough in the project to contribute a small amount. Contributions are returned if the project does not meet its fundraising goal; Kickstarter takes a 5 percent commission for successfully funded projects.

The Hughes family was featured in Against the Grain’s first project because of their connection to Al Kluis, a prominent commodities broker and marketing consultant from Minnesota who is a partner in Against the Grain Productions.

“After the popularity of ‘Food, Inc.’ and other programs bashing my customers, I wanted to show that the people growing food are entrepreneurs, and that there’s a lot of heart and risk that goes into growing a crop,” explained Kluis.

Another partner in Kluis Commodities, Katie Thompson, is listed as a partner in Against the Grain, along with Weitzberg, whose clients have included “VeggieTales” and the Olsen twins (actresses and fashion designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen). The company’s production partner is Weller/Grossman Productions, an Emmy Award-winning production company that has produced more than 9,000 shows seen on 36 television stations.

With prominent agriculture and media partners, Weitzberg said the company is turning to Kickstarter for its non-financial benefits. “It’s not about the money,” he said. “It’s about the story, showing that there is interest in the show.”

According to Kickstarter, backing a project involves more than just the supporters’ money. “It’s supporting their dream to create something they want to see exist in the world,” the company’s website explained.

Weitzberg said he hopes a successful Kickstarter campaign and Web series demonstrates a strong base of support for the new show, attracting potential corporate sponsors and television outlets. The company approached many potential corporate sponsors, but the timing was not yet right, he said.

“It’s kind of the chicken and the egg thing,” he explained. “Sponsors and stations want a show to exist before they sign on, but a show can’t exist unless there’s some (financial) backing.”

And while the Kickstarter campaign appears designed to attract more “buzz” around the project, the company’s end goal is to educate the viewing public about agriculture. “People don’t understand what’s going into growing their food,” said Weitzberg.

“We want to tell this story so people can actually understand what goes on in America’s Heartland and become emotionally attached to it. We feel there’s a lot of drama in day-to-day farming.”

More information about the project is available at the company’s website at www.AgainstTheGrain.tv and the Against the Grain Kickstarter project may be viewed directly at http://kck.st/11aFzEj