Clarkson's Farm

[Trig]

Can't wait for season 3. What a great show
It's never occurred to me how much meat you can get from one cow. When they said they could feed 1000 people from one animal, my mind was blown. I had no idea.......

I was the same tbh, you always here about how much a cow eats and how much gas comes out of it but never anything about how many people a single animal feeds.

 

[gingergundog]

Great show, love seeing the Head of Security moments even if they are too few. Shame they couldnt create what they set out to do, some in that village wont give a crap if farmers are struggling sadly.

I was the same tbh, you always here about how much a cow eats and how much gas comes out of it but never anything about how many people a single animal feeds.

Yeah I was also surprised by this, incredible.

 

[MarcLister]

Yeah I was also surprised by this, incredible.

I thought the butcher was winding Clarkson up knowing he's not an expert farmer. Turned out he wasn't.

I did really like Jez' descriptions of Charlie's office with the bare walls.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Is there something to be gained from UK farming failing? For government/rich old *****, I mean.
I'm well aware that this show will have it's own bias, but it just seems like everything is set-up to cause problems.

 

[Raymond Lin]

No idea, and I thought they want the UK to be more self sufficient, but yet they don't support it. It does make one want to bang your head.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Is there something to be gained from UK farming failing? For government/rich old *****, I mean.
I'm well aware that this show will have it's own bias, but it just seems like everything is set-up to cause problems.

Outside of the subsidies/Brexit issues, it’s not really the central government causing the problems for JC.

External market pressures on meat and dairy production is massive. Farming is hyper competitive, it’s all about production efficiency and monetising every last item you produce, including cow dung (some dairy farmers have invested in bio digesters that take the gas it provides to run electricity generators that feed into the grid).

But focusing in on JC, is issues are the local council have taken a personal dislike to him and that’s a problem. Partly a self made problem in that he really didn’t think through the farm shop that well and the tourists it would bring in.

That said, local council planning is typically anything but, it tends to be more NIMBY focused rather than focused on actual town planning and developing the prospects of the local area.

 

[Trig]

No idea, and I thought they want the UK to be more self sufficient, but yet they don't support it. It does make one want to bang your head.

Typical of this government though no?
I'm sure I heard one of them say something about increasing tariffs to 'non-UK' sellers to make the playing field more even..

The bit that gets me though, farmers are literally being told what they are selling is worth, surely at some point this is akin to some sort of forced/slave labour no, pretty sure there are laws against that sort of thing, maybe its time to stop them being able to tell farmers what stuff is worth when they are all making decent profits...

 

[b0rn2sk8]

It’s really not though, supermarkets have huge buying power and the competition is extremely strong, particularly in fruit and veg. If U.K. farmers are not willing to supply say carrots which enable a super market to hit a 60p/kilo price point, they’ll just import them from somewhere that will.

Frankly no one is going to be paying £3/kg for wonky carrots any time soon which is the sort of pricing we will be talking about.

Generally speaking farmers make more money/wealth from just holding their land than actually farming it.

Generally speaking, farmers are not poor in that they are nearly all multi-millionaires. They may not make much, if any cash from actually farming and farming itself is really hard work but the reality is they are not poor in the true sense of the word.

When you look at the first series of Clarkson farm, he made nothing but from what I remember, that was before he was paid the subsidy so he did make something from it.

 

[Freakbro]

It’s really not though, supermarkets have huge buying power and the competition is extremely strong, particularly in fruit and veg. If U.K. farmers are not willing to supply say carrots which enable a super market to hit a 60p/kilo price point, they’ll just import them from somewhere that will.

Frankly no one is going to be paying £3/kg for wonky carrots any time soon which is the sort of pricing we will be talking about.

Generally speaking farmers make more money/wealth from just holding their land than actually farming it.

Generally speaking, farmers are not poor in that they are nearly all multi-millionaires. They may not make much, if any cash from actually farming and farming itself is really hard work but the reality is they are not poor in the true sense of the word.

When you look at the first series of Clarkson farm, he made nothing but from what I remember, that was before he was paid the subsidy so he did make something from it.

My partners farm holding is small at ~45 acres (avg in the UK being around ~200 acres) but our RPA payment last year was £4,200 and that has been reduced 20% this year to £3,360 (the progressive reductions started in 2021). When you think of the cost of farming machinery, maintenance etc etc it's a pittance that goes nowhere!

 

[Trig]

My partners farm holding is small at ~45 acres (avg in the UK being around ~200 acres) but our RPA payment last year was £4,200 and that has been reduced 20% this year to £3,360 (the progressive reductions started in 2021). When you think of the cost of farming machinery, maintenance etc etc it's a pittance that goes nowhere!

Yeha. but multimillionaires right, so you can just chuck some of your personal money into keeping things running...

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Yeha. but multimillionaires right, so you can just chuck some of your personal money into keeping things running...

No one said that they should but I think the above poster highlights the problem perfectly.

They say the average farm in the U.K. is 200 acres, that will be split into a countless number of fields. 45 acres is probably a single field growing cereal crops in somewhere like middle America or Australia. That’s how they produce meat so cheaply. How can a small British farmer compete with that kind of scale in a global marketplace?

 

[Trig]

No one said that they should but I think the above poster highlights the problem perfectly.

Someone said that Clarkson should the other day, hence my comment, tongue in cheek but the same point..

 

[Dis86]

Uneducated. Unqualified. Bigoted. How do councillors have so much power?

 

[DB_SamX]

It’s really not though, supermarkets have huge buying power and the competition is extremely strong, particularly in fruit and veg. If U.K. farmers are not willing to supply say carrots which enable a super market to hit a 60p/kilo price point, they’ll just import them from somewhere that will.

To me, that's exactly it. Personally I'd happily pay reasonably more for local/uk farmed foods over cheaper imports.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

But focusing in on JC, is issues are the local council have taken a personal dislike to him and that’s a problem. Partly a self made problem in that he really didn’t think through the farm shop that well and the tourists it would bring in.

That said, local council planning is typically anything but, it tends to be more NIMBY focused rather than focused on actual town planning and developing the prospects of the local area.

Just watching this now its absolutely mind boggling. The entire council is run by and for the benefit of NIMBYs in teh village who aren't villagers in the old fashioned sense I doubt theres any locals amongst them all the cottages are owned by retired merchant bankers and other City folk who think its farmers duty to maintain the verges and keep the pretty views from their very expensive cottage's windows they don't give a fig for that fact that they're actually trying to make a living the guy who's on a personal crusade against JC being a case in point hiring a top barrister to argue against paid for out of a very substantial personal pension fund no doubt. Bugger the farmers who simply want to make a living from their land. Unbelievable.

 

[Semple]

It was frustrating to watch, council needs some new blood.

I feel there needs to actually be an age limit on being a member of the council. It seems to be the case that the older you get the more nimbyism you get.

I bet if that council was made up of people in their 30s / 40s / 50s then the decision outcomes will be vastly different.

 

[Fubsy]

Farmers should just turn their fields into solar farms seeing as that will probably bring in more than crops, animals and council interfering magnet side projects. I bet the nimbys will love that.

 

[Nitefly]

My annoyance with the whole "protect the natural beauty of the countryside" mantra is that there is absolutely nothing natural about a bunch of farmed fields. Granted, they have their own charm, with their own nature worth of preservation, but 'natural beauty' is a bit of a stretch.

... what a pointless moan of mine - maybe I should join the council

 

[fez]

Uneducated. Unqualified. Bigoted. How do councillors have so much power?

Because its a bit of a racket and the vast majority of people of working age don't have the time or energy to be doing it. Its the same reason why certain views are far more represented on twitter and social media. Its the demographics that have a huge amount of time and spend it doing particular things.

People working a 45 hours week, caring for their family along with all the commitments that entails probably don't have much time for politics outside of voting occasionally.

As to farmers making no money, we have a choice, we are either at the mercy of the rest of the world for our food at a time when climate change could drastically alter the global food production landscape or we try to help our farmers.

The thing that boggles my mind is the costs involved in doing anything. The costs he was quoted to fight the planning permission denial were frankly a joke. There should be structures in place in the public sector that provide these services at low cost to farmers.

 

[Semple]

The thing that boggles my mind is the costs involved in doing anything. The costs he was quoted to fight the planning permission denial were frankly a joke. There should be structures in place in the public sector that provide these services at low cost to farmers.

I think that's only because he was looking at getting the big guns in. As was said with the road he was building, any other farmer has never had planning permission denied for this sort of thing, but obviously this council has an axe to grind with Clarkson and every request is met with an automatic denial.

So in most cases farmers wouldn't have to consider a lot of these legal costs for planning permission requests.

IMHO if he overturned the councils decision, they should be liable for his legal costs. It's hardly fair when some old man loser can pay a barrister a few hundred quid to write a poorly spelt defensive statement, and to counter that realistically he'd have to spend half a million.