[Times article] Jeremy Clarkson: We’ve stopped doing real farming — and started breeding rabbits
Posted by FlipStig1@reddit | thegrandtour | View on Reddit | 51 comments
The Sunday Times conducted an interview with Jeremy Clarkson in advance of the upcoming season of his hit farming show. Here’s how he sees the current state of British farming:
“Honestly, we’re not doing any real farming this year. I mean, there’s rabbits and market gardening — basically growing herbs for the farm shop — and that’s it. There’s no point. It’s impossible to make money. And next year the UK gets a carbon tax on fertiliser, on top of the fact that it already costs a million, billion pounds an ounce. The only crop that’s gone up in value is this,” he says, gesturing at the yellow field. “That’s because it’s an oil product.”
(This article also gets the usual disclaimers.)
EntirelyRandom1590@reddit
Good luck farming rabbits given the various diseases doing the rounds.
But yes, like Harry he's taken his productive farmland into countryside stewardship projects.
Which, given the age of both of them is no bad thing. Rest the land for 5 years before putting it properly in the hands of the next farming generation.
BillWilberforce@reddit
I'm trying to work out what the great disaster could be. Everybody including Gerald is still alive. He opened a new SpecSavers in Chipping Norton a few days ago. So he has to be reasonably healthy.
Caleb and Lisa have their own shows. So they're alive and healthy. Harriet is on IG, Charlie's alive as is Mr. Wilman, despite the gag in The Grand-ish tour.
They had a TB outbreak but that's in the trailers. The farm hasn't burnt down and that would make good TV.
Jeremy did have health problems after the end of the last series. But seems to be healthy now.
It's hard to think of anything truly terrible and dramatic. That could have happened, without it having been in the press.
CharlieH_@reddit
Either the heart attack or there seems to be some kind of outbreak among the cattle, perhaps they were all culled and that is the big serious moment.
BillWilberforce@reddit
The culling is probably it. As this year he's doing very little farming apart from rape. As the other cereals he's guaranteed to lose money on. The rape can be turned into ethanol for cars. With the only animals seeming to be new "easy to care for sheep" and rabbits for London restaurants.
DMmePussyGasms@reddit
There’s an irony that Clarkson can only make money by growing fuel for cars.
Krauser_Kahn@reddit
As a non-native English speaker, this always gets me
HandOfGood@reddit
Only the bri*ish call it rape instead of canola anymore I think
timesuck47@reddit
TIL
daza666@reddit
Mate wow thank you for that piece of info. I’m UK so familiar with rape/rapeseed oil but watch a lot of online chefs, always wondered what canola oil was but never bothered to Google
ceapaire@reddit
It's a brand/variety name. I forget what they did to make it different, but it was developed in Canada, and the name is derived from Canada Oil.
EuanReid@reddit
Canada Oil Low Acid - it's bred to have less than 2% erucic acid.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Technically at least, there's a difference between rapeseed (usually abbreviated to rape) and canola.
https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/grains-oilseeds/rapeseed
s00pafly@reddit
I don't how you'd turn rape into ethanol as it's an oil crop. Perhaps biodiesel but rapeseed oil still yields more as salad dressing than at the pump.
AnyUnderstanding1879@reddit
Richard Hammond stops by for a visit
lingenfelter22@reddit
...but his car is upside down and has obliterated the fence containing the sheep
Overall_Gap_5766@reddit
Hammond you idiot, you've reversed into the sports tractor!
Strange-Raspberry326@reddit
*sports lorry.
Good_Barnacle_2010@reddit
If anyone would have a sports lorry it would be Hammond.
Strange-Raspberry326@reddit
I get downvoted for correcting a quote????
Neamow@reddit
They were trying to humorously edit that quote to fit the farming show, you numpty.
Strange-Raspberry326@reddit
You complete numpty Hammond. There I did it again haha okay I understand the downvotes. I'll delete it.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Could be worse, could have been May.
Suspicious-Whippet@reddit
I read that in Justin Timberlakes voice.
yeahjmoney@reddit
Its gunna be... stuck in my head all day now. Thanks.
The-Geeson@reddit
In the last minute of the end of season 4 they put a frame up of Rachel Reeves. I think they were gearing up the farm inheritance tax issue to be the big thing, and Jeremy big fight to stop it.
The show normally has been about a year behind, last season was filmed in 24 and broadcasted in 25. By the time they would have finished filming it would still be happening, but it’s dead now.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Jeremy was effectively ordered by the NFU to step down from the Inheritance Tax on farms debate. Because Victoria Derbyshire did an interview with him, where he was the main speaker at a farmers protest outside of Parliament. Where she accused Jeremy of having bought a farm and then renting out the fields to contract farmers "the chap from the village who retired and who had first employed Kaleb on the farm". In order to avoid Inheritance Tax (IHT) on behalf of his children. As farms weren't subject to IHT. Jeremy heavily denied it, then she read out a quote from his Sunday Times column from a few years prior. Where he said that he had bought the farm in order to avoid IHT.
The NFU/ the specialist pressure group set up to protest the changes in IHT. Asked Jeremy to step down and shut up about it. As he and people like him. Was the prime reason why, the tax change was made and why farms are so unaffordable for "normal" young farmers like Kaleb to afford. As the rich are artificially inflating their prices to avoid IHT.
The-Geeson@reddit
I didn’t know the NFU told him shut up, or that anyone could get him to shut up.
Yeah I remember that interview with Derbyshire.
BillWilberforce@reddit
He was talking about the NFU's but not the NFUs "embargo" on him in his most recent Sunday Times column. So it didn't work for that long.
Constant-Map7687@reddit
Theres no intrest in a reality tv show when everythings going ok . drama makes people watch. Drama must be hyped .
No criticism to Jereny Clarkson, just to the reality tv genre in general.
Drunkgummybear1@reddit
I’m imagining that this series is going to focus on the “woe is me, I now have to pay inheritance tax” situation. I enjoyed the first 4 but think I’ll be giving this one a miss.
doctorwho_90250@reddit
I got it!
Hammond's taken up residence at the farm. A great disaster indeed.
BobDobbsHobNobs@reddit
Surely just a little disaster?
remusuk81@reddit
2027 - "We've stopped breeding rabbits and now we're leasing the land out to wind farms and backup diesel generators"
TheEvilBlight@reddit
Data centers, in my AONB?!?
TheEvilBlight@reddit
Cursed timing too with Hormuz and such.
bouncypete@reddit
Farming is just too confusing to me.
69% of the total area of the UK is farmland, which means that only 31% is the bit with shops, houses, places of work, entertainment and transport.
Here's where it gets confusing. 49% of all the cereal crops grown is the UK if grown for animal feed.
The farmers growing those crops (like Jeremy) say they can't make any money growing those crops.
The farmers buying that animal feed say it's that animal feed is too expensive for them to make any money from animals.
Also, it stands to reason that out of the vast amount of land given to farming, some of it will be in land that is less than ideal for a particular type of farming. IE. The soil is poor, too wet, too dry too steep.
In Jeremy's area the soil is brash. There's only a thin layer of soil and what is there is full of limestone making it vulnerable to dry weather. No amount of internet posts can change that.
stern1233@reddit
There are two main reasons.
1 is that the UK isn't a reliable place to grow food. It has a wet fall that often ruins harvest and stifles yield. Therefore UK farmers are competing with geographical areas that can produce twice the yield per acre, and reliably.
2. Farming is big business and prices are dictated by a few large middlemen. You don't have direct access to markets as a farmer. Large buyers from the far corners of the world tell you the price and quality they are willing to buy at. If the price of bread goes up the middlemen will siphon off all the excess profits long before they reach the farmer. So every year the risk gets pushed more and more onto the people who don't have the buying power to absorb it. Slowly destroying the profitablility of farming.
Resident_Donkey4145@reddit
Things grow in different soil, and some soil and landscapes aren't arable at all. You can't harvest a field that is too hilly, which is why Wales is full of sheep not wheat. It's actually very simple.
bouncypete@reddit
That's really what I'm saying in the latter part of my post.
FearLeadsToAnger@reddit
13% of our total area is woodland, so the built up bits are significantly less than that.
BillWilberforce@reddit
Albeit most of that woodland, is owned by the Forestry Commission. Who plant their lands with single species trees, which kill off every other plant. So it's quick growing trees, on a grid system. About every 10 feet left and right and up and down. With nothing growing in between them.
bouncypete@reddit
Good point. Thanks
festess@reddit
Only 2% of UK land is built on. 31% would be insane. That would be 31000 square miles of buildings
VreamCanMan@reddit
You get different numbers based on if the analysis is England, England and Wales, or UK
Given they suffer with this problem the most, there's already different statistics handling and a different policy route for other regions I like seeing the england only statistics because they do show an immense land availability issue and they need policy changes in a way that isn't as badly required across wales scotland or Northern Ireland
BillWilberforce@reddit
Scotland is virtually empty apart from around the Glasgow to Edinburgh corridor and the East Coast. Outside of those areas it has a population density similar to say Nevada.
bouncypete@reddit
Good point, thanks.
KendalAppleyard@reddit
Carbon tax on fertiliser? Not like you had those lads round showing you how to farm without it… maybe revisit that.
villke@reddit
Ask Sri Lanka how they like it.
juanito_f90@reddit
Yeah and the yield was fucking atrocious.
Puzzled_Algae6860@reddit
It'll probably be enjoyable still. He seems to have a robot tractor now too, and sheep.
FlipStig1@reddit (OP)
When asked which version of himself was the real deal (as a farmer or a car enthusiast), Clarkson had this reply:
“I think Top Gear was a caricature of the three of us, and there isn’t time to do a caricature of yourself on the farming show. It’s not written, it’s not scripted. It’s not planned. I mean, I know this afternoon what I’m supposed to be doing, but I bet when I get back to the farm that I won’t be doing that. Something will have happened. There’ll be an ill sheep, or the goats need moving, or the cows have run out of grass. It’s just you, yeah, which is a lot more relaxing.”