Clarkson’s Farm is back – with the finale of season four out on Prime Video today – but not everyone is happy about it. It’s not the anti-farming brigade I’m talking about – or even the specific anti-Clarkson brigade, who’ve disliked him since his Top Gear days. No, it’s the people within the rural and farming communities that I’m talking about.
When the programme launched, it was heralded by many as something of a miracle for British agriculture. Clarkson’s programme showed the people at home all the ups and downs of farming life in its brutal reality: the sheaves of inane paperwork; the incentives to actually not farm at all; the masochism of the British weather and the brutal acceptance that with life, comes death. As farmers always say, ‘where there’s livestock, there’s deadstock’, and Clarkson’s Farm didn’t shy away from showing viewers this truth. It might not all be entirely genuine, but it was far closer to the truth of life in the countryside than the likes of your average Countryfile episode.
I wouldn’t necessarily have put Clarkson down as a Gen Z icon
In fact, author and sheep farmer James Rebanks went so far as to say that Jeremy Clarkson had done more for farmers in one TV series than Countryfile managed in 30 years. ‘There’s an episode where he says, “I didn’t make any money – what’s everyone else doing?’”, said Rebanks, speaking at the 2021 Cheltenham Literature Festival. ‘I know what everyone else is doing, which is that they’re working for nothing or going broke.’
It isn’t just farmers who are fans of Clarkson. A recent poll of various Gen Z members of the public concluded that he was one of the best celebrity representatives of the British countryside – after David Attenborough.
That might come as a surprise; I wouldn’t necessarily have put Clarkson down as a Gen Z icon. But it just goes to show the reach that Clarkson’s Farm has achieved, which can only help to showcase the often thankless job that being a farmer is. The popularity of Clarkson’s Farm has almost certainly swayed more members of the public to support farmers in their inheritance tax row.
What surprises me even more, however, is the fact that many farming groups are trying to distance themselves from Clarkson and his agricultural endeavours. After Clarkson appeared at the Farmers’ March in November, he wrote about how he was given the heave-ho from the rally by the National Farmers Union (NFU). The NFU chairman Tom Bradshaw was quizzed by Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight, ‘Does it help that Jeremy Clarkson is turning up?’ ‘Probably not on this one,’ he replied.
It’s not just the NFU. I’ve heard plenty of other farmers bickering about Clarkson. The fact that so many news stories about farming focus on Clarkson frustrates some of them. While he has shown that farming is a struggle, they think he’s disconnected with the land and the local community, his ongoing battles with the local council being a prime example.
Others moan that he doesn’t go deep enough into the issues in agriculture: just skimming the edges of the real problems and then brushing them away with humour.
But do you know what? Of course we will never find a programme that unites everyone, whether that programme’s focus is farming, feminism or faith. Clarkson’s Farm is hugely popular and, whether you like the man or not, he has shone a light into some of the hidden crevices of the farming world and brought them onto mainstream TV. The show might not be perfect, but I’d argue that it has given farming communities a better platform than any other programme that’s out there. As someone else put it: ‘If Clarkson’s ego is what is needed to help people understand that farming is in a mess, then so be it.’
