Kub's Den
'Clarkson's Farm' Review: Getting the Economics Right
Isn't it interesting how you can meet a farmer from some totally different geographical region -- an alfalfa farmer from Arizona on an airplane, for instance, or a canola farmer from Saskatchewan at a conference, or even a goat herder on the red dirt roads of Ethiopia -- and instantly find such a deep, shared experience? The anxieties and heartaches of farming -- both economic and personal -- are so universal across all types of farming, generally, everywhere, that you know: This person "gets it." This person wakes and works and dreams with the uncontrollable weather and the uncontrollable markets always on their mind.
So, imagine the surprise of Amazon Prime viewers when they discover that a wealthy British super celebrity, best known for his television presenting and racing car enthusiasm, is now a farmer, too. Jeremy Clarkson and his team at Diddly Squat Farm "get it." They capture, in their TV program "Clarkson's Farm" (Season 3 was recently released on May 10) some honest, fundamental truths about the economics of farming that will resonate with farmers anywhere, not just the idyllic rural Cotswolds of England.
Speaking for myself, I tend to get very annoyed by the genre of "fish-out-of-water city folk buy a rural farm and then proceed to film a documentary or write a know-it-all book about how they're going to do everything 'differently' and 'better' than all those unsophisticated, downtrodden 'corporate' farmers." There are many examples of that genre with more attention paid to cinematography and cute little lambs than to the dollars and cents (or pounds and pence) of actually making a living in agriculture.
But "Clarkson's Farm" doesn't fall into that trap. Anyone who has watched Jeremy's previous hijinks in programs like Top Gear or The Grand Tour -- like building a homemade hovercraft or crossing the Namibian desert in a beach buggy -- might be able to guess that the man really does have the scrappy mindset of a true farmer. A willingness to give things a try, to throw himself into an unknown adventure, to learn how to run a new piece of equipment or to "MacGyver" some ad hoc invention to address one of the many mechanical problems that pop up on a grain and livestock farm. Clarkson's patented "Pig Ring" is a highlight of Season 3.
These are the things I'm grateful to Jeremy for showing the world: His legitimate stress about learning to do farm tasks with real-time constraints (like impending weather) and real importance (like other people's livelihoods). His genuine delight and worry about running a new piece of equipment. I wish I could tell him that even the most dirt-crusted, competent farmers in the world would admit having little wobbles of self-doubt the first time they ran a new planter if they were willing to be honest and vulnerable about it. His enjoyment of enjoyable things, like leaning on a gate and looking at his livestock, in a way that most farmers feel but maybe never admit out loud. Also: he's 100% right about sheep. "I (expletive) hate sheep. I (expletive) hate them."
Most importantly, his Diddly Squat farm includes both 500 acres of conventionally farmed commodity grain fields and 500 acres of wild land that tempt Jeremy into the quest of diversifying his income streams -- a farm shop, farm-to-table food products, even mushrooms. Some of the diversification projects are successful -- others aren't -- but viewers are always given an honest appraisal of farming's thin margins by realistic-minded professional farm adviser Charlie Ireland.
There are scenes with Jeremy that every American grain farmer will appreciate and identify themselves within -- standing at the edge of a field, doing arithmetic on a cell phone's calculator and feeling initially optimistic about the projected number. "The only problem with that," Jeremy says to the camera, "is that every single piece of math I've done on this farm over the past four years has been wrong."
Indeed, the key to the show's success is Jeremy's honesty and willingness to openly display all the deeply felt disappointments, all the disagreements with team members, all the screw-ups, the tears, the fears and the failures entirely outside any person's control. Reviewing the harvest results for just one crop with Charlie Ireland, Jeremy remarks, "So we've lost 33,750 pounds ... because it rained."
But Jeremy Clarkson, of course, is still undeniably a millionaire celebrity. Viewers can't feel too bad about his losses. He acknowledges, "I'm in the fortunate position of having other income streams," and -- crucially for the success of the show's message -- he is willing to share the camera lens with other real farmers, his neighbors and colleagues, who face the same economic challenges but without his millions to backstop their operations. A local cattle farming family sells shorthorns to Jeremy and his girlfriend Lisa Hogan (who also takes to farming with impressive verve); local chicken farmers show them how to keep the birds safe from predators; a neighboring dairy farmer walks Jeremy through the frustrating economics of selling in the UK's highly regulated agricultural markets.
The acknowledged hero of Diddly Squat Farm, however, is Kaleb Cooper. When Season 1 begins, Kaleb is a young man just starting to grow his custom fencing and farming operation and who has never traveled more than 50 miles from his hometown. By Season 3, Kaleb has become an effective advocate for farmers to the UK government, and he continues to burst with personality and competence when rescuing Jeremy from various farming shenanigans. Kaleb is the character who best represents the real life of someone trying to make a living from farming -- eating potato chip sandwiches at harvest for "breakfast, lunch and dinner," always rushing from one concurrent crisis to another, conducting his paperwork from an office in the corner of a barn full of decades of debris.
Kaleb also demonstrates one of the least appreciated aspects of modern farming today, especially for young farmers just getting started. When it comes to hope and heartache, it's irrelevant whether the land you're farming is technically "your" land or being farmed with "your" money. If a farmer feels responsible for a crop, as Kaleb clearly does, there is real pride and real heartbreak at stake. There is a tender motivation to always do the best job possible, to urge the Earth to achieve its best productivity possible.
The true-to-life depictions in "Clarkson's Farm" make my farmer friends' eyes light up when I ask if they've seen it. Meanwhile, the inherent drama, urgency and heroism of farming, as shown with such compelling storytelling in this TV program, now have my non-farmer friends taking a sudden interest in manure pricing and soil compaction -- topics they would never have realized were part of farming's complexity, if not for watching the immensely watchable "Clarkson's Farm."
Effective storytelling thrives on having heroes and villains. Ultimately, the lessons of "Clarkson's Farm" seem to be that the weather and the markets are not necessarily the villains of farming -- they're more like sometimes frustrating colleagues. The real enemies may be bureaucracy or the indifference of a society that has become removed and ignorant about the economic reality of agricultural production, especially its labor costs. Nevertheless, there is an underlying motivation and passion that drives farmers, something beyond the economics alone.
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Comments above are for educational purposes only and are not meant as specific trade recommendations. The buying and selling of grain or grain futures or options involve substantial risk and are not suitable for everyone.
Elaine Kub, CFA is the author of "Mastering the Grain Markets: How Profits Are Really Made" and can be reached at analysis@elainekub.com or on social platform X @elainekub.
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