If you thought 2022 was going out with a bang, you must have overheard by palm connecting with my forehead when I saw the news that Jeremy Clarkson got himself in trouble once again.
As is his wont, Clarkson is in trouble for something he’s said. Like slurry runoff into a watercourse, his cellular-level hatred for Meghan Markle has contaminated the pages of the Sun. He’s upset a lot of people, so much so that the IPSO has recorded a record number of complaints and the Sun issued an apology.
But I’m not here to talk about Meghan Markle and how Jeremy Clarkson feels about her. I’m more interested in spelling out why Jeremy Clarkson’s willingness to court controversy is not helpful for British farming.
If you’re not a farmer…
If you’re not a farmer and you don’t spend much time socialising with farmers, you might be surprised to learn we don’t spend that much time thinking about Jeremy Clarkson. We also don’t spend much time reading what he has to say because our trade magazines, like the Farmer’s Weekly and Farmer’s Guardian, are already full of insights from industry-leading farmers and journalists.
Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t write columns for the Farmers Weekly. Perhaps because their budget doesn’t compare to that of The Sun. Or perhaps it’s because their readership might mistake his writing for the fine mist that comes out the back of their dung spreader.
If you are a farmer…
If you are a farmer and you spend most of your time socialising with other farmers, you might not expect Jeremy Clarkson to be so prominent in the public’s mind. I spend 42.857143% of my week in off-farm employment and have many friends who’s only understanding of farming is that I am their mate who does it. The people I meet might start by asking me what sort of farm it is and how many animals there are. But it doesn’t take long for Clarkson to come up.
They know who he is, they’ve seen his show and they know it’s highly likely we have this in common. Asking me about Jeremy Clarkson and his show is an opportunity to get a bit more insight into what they’ve seen. It’s impressive that with just one season of Clarkson’s Farm, Jeremy Clarkson placed himself at the centre of the public’s understanding of British farming.
What has Clarkson’s Farm achieved?
Unless this is the first time you’ve heard of Clarkson’s Farm, you’ll know that Clarkson has achieved something for British farming. Anyone who watches it is able to see a real working farm. Other television shows visit equally real farms and see equally real work being done. But the extent of the access that Amazon’s cameras have had to Clarkson’s farm gave viewers more information than ever before.
Clarkson’s Farm was able to construct episode-long story arcs for different projects on the farm. For example, following Jeremy tackle an entire drilling season enables the viewer to understand the work holistically. In contrast, for shows like This Farming Life, a camera crew visits a farm and films a portion of a farmer’s working day.
From vegetable growers to dairy farms and beyond, they’ll visit farms of all shapes and sizes. Their attempts to show different types of British farming are admirable, but you end up showing a single job on that farm. The results is a series of moments on a number of different farms and its impossible for the viewer to get the context of why these jobs are really happening.
Clarkson’s Farm did a better job of presenting farm work to the general viewer. Plus they were able to add a layer of comedy by peppering it with typically Clarkson-like antics that viewers of Top Gear would recognise. But whilst all the tomfoolery keeps a wider audience watching, the viewers are incidentally being educated on what happens on a working farm and the challenges farmers face.
Jeremy is not a farming expert yet, and he’s only ever one or two steps ahead of the average viewer. When he does the maths and realises his sheep operation isn’t profitable, or when he can’t even get hold of a ewe, let alone shear it, Clarkson is doing a service for all farmers. Every farmer has these moments like these in common, as did I when I tried to figure out if keeping chickens could be profitable.
The viewer finally understands the level of skill required to do what we do. The viewers see the challenges our businesses face, and they have little desire to switch places with us. If you won’t take it from me that Clarkson’s Farm has been good for British farming, just take it from somebody else. James Rebanks, who is both a better farmer and writer than I am, has stated quite clearly that Clarkson’s Farm has done more for farmers in one series than Countryfile has achieved in 30 years.
Clarkson’s Farm is widely credited for showing the challenges British farmers face
Is your public sympathy sustainable?
Getting a loader-bucket-full of public sympathy has been helpful for British farming. But it’s a problem when the man that we’re counting on to enhance our relationship with the public is also the same man that’s courted controversy throughout his career. From calling an Asian man a ‘slope’ to punching a colleague for not sorting him out with a hot meal, Clarkson has perpetually rocked the boat.
His latest balls-up is a reminder of how capable he is of really pissing off the masses, and there a plenty of people who despise the man regardless of what he does. For us farmers, where our public sympathy comes from matters. It’s the same as caring about where your food comes from. You won’t flourish by filling up on unsustainable junk food. Similarly, British farming won’t flourish by getting its public sympathy from unsustainable sources.
What frustrates me further is Clarkson’s ability as a broadcaster. Seriously, go and watch him review some square-shaped motor on the old Top Gear. His style is almost unrecognisable, but he’s informative, engaging and you come out the other end of a segment with a far greater understanding of the topic at hand.
Clarkson’s Farm does the same job, but we can’t take Clarkson seriously as a farming expert yet. This puts him in the Top Gear Clowning Around role, whilst he stands at the centre of the show as the link between the supporting cast who are the bona fide farming experts.
Given Clarkson’s style over the last ten years or more, you can understand the initial fears from some farming-opinion augers that Clarkson’s Farm was going to be a disrespectful Top Gear with Tractors. But because Clarkson genuinely wants to understand farming and do it for a living, we instead get an informative show that’s helpful for our industry. And if you were actually excited about the idea of Top Gear with Tractors, you can watch BBC 3’s The Fast and the Farmer-ish instead.
Clarkson’s not literally in charge of British farming
But what does it matter if Clarkson’s record isn’t squeaky clean. He’s not actually in charge of British farming. He doesn’t literally represent us all. It’s not like he’s walking the Westminster corridors of power, lobbying for our industry. He’s not chairing the Efra committee and exerting pressure on the Government to roll out the ELM schemes in the same century as BPS is to be phased out.
No, British farming has a man on the inside for that. British farming’s own Neil Parish. Of course that was until his NSFW internet browsing dominated national headlines and he resigned in disgrace.
I’m not upset with these men because I’m particularly fond of Meghan Markle or especially offended by pornography. It’s that there have been moments this year where I’ve been questioning whether running a farming business is going to be remotely enjoyable.
What’s he got to be depressed about?
There are plenty of people that have such a poor understanding of what farming is that I despair at trying to convince them their prejudices are wrong. I despair that for the foreseeable future we’ll still be counting on the government, through subsidies, to be a partner in our businesses.
It’s just so typically governmental to be able to define how Basic Payments will be phased out, without even a shred of a plan for what the new schemes will be. If the Government were literally your business partner, they’d be about as reliable as an alcoholic, work-shy younger brother who’s on course for a third divorce.
Clarkson has helped the public understand what the farmer does. Neil Parish was helping government understand what it needs to do for the farmer. But both these men have hit reputational lows in 2022 and I refuse to let them give British farming an image problem. There’s a vacuum where a farming champion, free of all the baggage, and free of skeletons in their closet should be.
Who else can champion British farming?
If you take Clarkson out the equation, who the hell are our representatives that the general public can even say they’ve heard of? Most of the public won’t know who Neil Parish is, but it doesn’t ease my despair to think that there have been two high profile news stories in which the men involved in each have the words ‘farmers’ and ‘farming’ printed in and around their names over and over.
Who are we farmers left with? The BBC’s This Farming Life might have some candidates, but with a roster of characters longer than Love Actually’s, it’s hard to spot a shining light. A divorce has sucked some of the charm out of the Yorkshire Farm, plus it’s on Channel 5 so we can hardly expect swathes of the public to have noticed it.
Maybe the master of mild Matt Baker, having leapt from the One Show sofa and back to see his parents, will stick his neck out and ask more Tories how on earth they sleep at night. Perhaps Adam Henson could continue to unite farmers and the general public behind a common cause that isn’t Having Gripes with Countryfile. Maybe English Pastoral can be added to the curriculum and in a decade or so James Rebanks can be our man.
Does British farming have an image problem?
It’s tricky to know what the answer is. The reality is we’ve probably gotten away with the Jeremy Clarkson one this week. The press seem to have dropped his honorary title of Farmer Jeremy Clarkson, sparing us the job of apologising for him like an embarrassed parent collecting their tantrum-throwing sprog from a play date. It helps too that several members of the public, rightly or wrongly, are on his side and so Clarkson’s Farm is going nowhere for the time being.
Neil Parish however has left a bit of a void. I’m no longer sure who I’m supposed to point to as the MP who’s outside the tent pissing in. Meanwhile I’m out erecting fences because mid-tier stewardship is my only route into HM treasury.
There are a wealth of individual farmers working on improving British farming’s public image. But it’s obvious that people like Jeremy Clarkson have clout. If Clarkson is synonymous with British farming in the public consciousness, then we’re only one more screw-up away from having a problem on our hands.
For whoever out there fancies the role of British Farming Celebrity Figure Head, you can learn a lot from Clarkson. All you have to do is tell your farm’s whole story. The one that takes all four seasons to tell. Show them why you sheared the sheep, drilled the corn or calved the cows when you did. Show them why you’re putting up a fence, building a shed or concreting that part of the yard. Show them what you’ve done so your grandchildren won’t have to. And if you can do all that without racially abusing anyone along the way, that’d be greatly appreciated.