Clarkson's Farming Fix

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Clarkson’s Farming Fix

The Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm was mentioned here long ago—in blogging timescales, at least. Since then, I gave up the streaming service in a huff after their abrupt declaration that the ad-free service would include advertising: you’d suddenly have to pay more to retain the service you’d thought was a fair deal. But that’s a different issue.

The Clarkson’s Farm series is a reality TV series based on journalist Jeremy Clarkson’s escapades in farming. Having made himself wildly rich as a popular television presenter—often obnoxiously outspoken, at least by politely reserved British standards—Clarkson bought a rural farm he calls “Diddly Squat Farm” of some 1,000 acres. He decided to try his hand at running it like a real farm and make a TV show of it: growing food and selling it as profit-generating business.

To sum up the prior review: the show was spectacularly entertaining. Clarkson presents as something of an oaf and boob, but he is willing to permit himself to be shown as such. He’s also willing to learn, and to make considerable investments in the equipment and personnel to serve as workers and guides. What results is a roller-coaster ride of laughs and tears as he learns just how amazingly difficult it is to make a living as a farmer in the UK, where autonomous local government—councils peopled by his own neighbors—have the final authority over just about anything he might want to do on his own property.

They object to him having a restaurant, a shop, and, naturally, as much as a parking lot for customers who might patronize either.

The popularity of the show in the UK—as well as its depiction of the constant challenges placed on the country’s farmers by man and nature—drew public attention. It led to public debate and discussion, and in the end, even changes in policy so as to give farmers some greater autonomy in what they are able to do with their property.

A write-up of the so-called Clarkson’s Law and how it came about is here.

It seems difficult to imagine that anyone would be satisfied to work with such aggressive regulations, most of which remain intact. Would American farmers be willing to work under such onerous second-guessing about every single thing they do? Since these impositions mount gradually, usually with the stated goal of “food health and safety”, backed by popular government, how likely are farmers to rebel? It’s a boiling-the-frog sort of dilemma. And since modern farming is so productive anyway, no one is really alarmed when farm employment decreases again, leaving those tolerant of all the bureaucratic headaches—which often come with government support subsidies to make earning a living in the business possible.

When Jeremy shows the negligible returns on a year’s work and investments from his own deep pockets, it is hard to imagine how normal farmers manage so survive at all. And what they do earn, most has to be reinvested in the next year’s seed and chemicals.