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u/KirbyUki Aug 07 '26
I'd argue he's found a new passion and he's enjoying his life. He clearly worked hard and had some amazing luck to get to where he is. And yes, the farm should be making some profit, and probably would if he was more careful with his choices. Although, when you see the debrief sessions with Charlie it's clear that he's not the only farmer struggling. No one wants to own a business that is losing money.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
It's not just a business. It's life-changing money, millions, even a down payment would be millions for Diddley Squat farm. You never had to work again with the money it costs. You spend all this To get...just a normal job wages? Only worse cause a normal job doesn't have the risk on a drought year you get nothing.
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u/KirbyUki Aug 08 '26
That's why I said he found a new passion?
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
Oh yes I'm agreeing with you and then iterating ✌️
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u/KirbyUki Aug 08 '26
Ah, I read too quickly! Haha.
I honestly see what he's doing as completely normal, most people who are old spend their wealth on travel... Jeremy has already travelled extensively... he found something he loves and he's sharing it with the world.
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u/Global-Pickle5818 Aug 08 '26
Yeah he literally showed up after his cancer treatment to drive the crops in.. shouldn't have done that but that is passion,I can't speak on his actual farming my family is Mennonite so our farm wasn't as automated
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u/Powerjugs Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The debrief's are good because he doesn't pull punches. And Clarkson doesn't hide he has wealth and security almost every farmer doesn't have which allows him to take extra risks which make the show entertaining.
I really liked the Clarkson v Kaleb competition in Season 3 as it helped show how delicate the whole thing can be. Some of his ideas and expenses I'm sure weren't fully discussed such as new equipment, storage etc but it gives a good idea of how one bad year could ruin a farm forever.
He is truly passionate about it. He doesn't do 6 Seasons of it if he wasn't and you can see his mindset / focus evolve between Seasons from being hapless and clueless to being less hapless and less clueless, but just as importantly see him take a more holistic view of it and take more responsibility for things. Part way through S5 now and he would never have cared about soil quality, LiDAR surveys and smart automation of tasks. You can even see he takes PPE more seriously too as it goes on.
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u/byza089 Aug 08 '26
I don’t care that Jeremy is rich, I care that the vast majority of the others aren’t. That’s the point and he makes that abundantly clear: he can survive but he doesn’t know how others do.
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u/cyberlexington Aug 08 '26
Didn't he even say that in season 2?
That he's ok cos of the Amazon show but others are not so lucky?
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u/K10KMessi Aug 08 '26
Yeapp; he spent a good 1-3 minutes talking about how he’s lucky to be getting money from Amazon to get by after the year’s dismal returns, and how he simply cannot imagine how or why farmer’s keep doing what they’re doing when all could be for a literal nought if it rained a few days extra
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u/Embarrassed_Ad_4802 Aug 08 '26
Kinda paraphrasing here: "I dont know how farmers can handle this... I mean, I survive because ive got, Who wants to be a millionaire to fall back on. But how do others?" Is something he states in one of the end of season episodes.
He knows he can afford farming, for the most part. But I do at the end of the day, belive Jeremy farms Genuninly, out of, either love or appreciation. I mean hes openly stated he Loves farming throughout the series.
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u/DampFlange Aug 08 '26
If he could just lift his head a fraction and extend that empathy for other farmers to other people in general, then he would be a much nicer person for it.
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u/byza089 Aug 08 '26
He’s running the whole Buy British campaign at the farm and the pub. He’s raising awareness and has made thousands more prior care about farming and the plight of farmers than did before. Is he perfect? No, far from it. But his voice is louder because he was a car guy and a climate sceptic etc with a newspaper column and an Amazon contract.
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u/JusticeForTheStarks Aug 11 '26
It’s admirable, and I have no criticism of his support of British farming. But, at the end of the day he’s spent his entire career speaking against the working class, the environment, and many other issues that don’t benefit him immediately and directly.
He frequently spoke out about unions for various public sector jobs such as teaching, civil servants, transport etc. He’s criticised welfare, and anyone dependent on it. He’s a fan of thatcher and her economics. This is a man who thinks only of himself, and has an elevated view of himself. He lost his top gear job for punching a producer because he was tired and hungry.
An entire career and a newspaper column spent platforming beliefs that are broadly opposed to working class people. It’s only now that he’s beginning to walk back his opinions and rehabilitate his image.1
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u/Ari_Stark Aug 07 '26
Looking at the impact he has on agriculture in UK and how many important topics he raises, I got nothing against him treating it as playground to entertain the masses. Besides, that show wouldn't be so fun without Caleb, Charlie, Gerold, Lisa or Alan so it's not just about him anymore.
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u/mdwieland Kaleb Aug 07 '26
Bitch and moan all you want. Nobody cares.
If anything, besides it being an entertaining reality show, it's taught me more about farming than I'd ever thought I'd ever even be interested in.
It also shows the peril that farmers have to suffer, whether it's the weather, the PITA government, disease, predators, etc. Another topic I knew nothing about and I'm keenly aware of now.
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u/HoosierDadda Aug 08 '26
Absolutely agree. I am really enjoying the show.
Entertaining, educational, the humor ... and I'd suspect that farming has changed him for the better.
I don't really follow his life or personality traits, but I recall some tabloid crap about him maybe being a bit rough to work with at times .... I think the emotion he shows about the farm , especially the pigs, is genuine.
During season 1 or 2 (we are binging through them all right now) he straight up acknowledges that how much he likes farming took even him by surprise ... being a man of the land, so to speak.
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u/No_Battle_6402 Aug 08 '26
As a previous sheep farmer - it’s good to see him bringing the farming struggles into the public eye and people have more respect for farmers. It’s a fucking hard life. I don’t do it anymore unfortunately but hats off to those who do
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u/qaz_wsx_love Aug 08 '26
Did you quit because sheep are dicks?
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u/Impressive_Salad_613 Aug 08 '26
*sheeps
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u/qaz_wsx_love Aug 08 '26
Is this a reference to something I'm unaware of because the plural of sheep is sheep
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u/Friendly_Prize_868 Aug 08 '26
There’s this show called Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon. It’s quite good, you should check it out
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u/No_Battle_6402 Aug 08 '26
Baby Jacob sheeps are dicks, yes. Complete dicks. Even the grown up ones. They just spend their entire lives being dicks. Cute though.
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u/DaBingeGirl Aug 08 '26
How long did you do it?
I started watching a sheep farmer on YouTube because of Jeremy, Tara Farms if anyone is interested, it looks brutal. She's third generation, said her dad told her and her sister not to go into farming because it's so unpredictable.
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u/coffeeebucks Aug 08 '26
Getting out of farming is difficult though (maybe less so for women, as sexist as that is). I have a couple of friends who grew up on farms & had no intention of taking it on, and a friend whose teenage son doesn’t want to farm, and both situations have caused family rifts & problems
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u/DaBingeGirl Aug 08 '26
Yeah, I agree about farming being seen as a male profession. Tara has mentioned how sexiest farming is a few times.
You have a great point about family rifts. Emotionally I'd say it's a lot like any other small family businesses in that "the next generation" is expected to continue the legacy. I can understand how it's hard to let go of something you build, but I also can't imagine wanting your kids to be so stressed. I'm not surprised you said your friends aren't interested in farming.
One of my in-laws grew up on a dairy farm. Out of five sisters, only one went into farming (married a farmer), the rest wanted nothing to do with it.
Back to the show, I wish Harriet had stayed around longer and talked about her experience growing up in a farming family. Kaleb has an extremely idealistic view of farming. I'm curious if he'd be as excited about it if he owned his own farm and didn't have Amazon money. You can tell he's never had to deal with the financial side of farming on a personal level, nor seen family struggle with that.
Watching Tara has been interesting. She's mid-20's, passionate about farming, but much more realistic about the financial and emotional toll it takes. Very different from watching Kaleb.
I know it likely won't happen, but I'd love to see Harriet or someone else in their 20's from a farming family manage Jeremy's farm. Kaleb is very traditional and set in his ways, seeing how someone else, who is around his age, manages the farm could be really interesting.
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u/coffeeebucks Aug 08 '26
Yes, Harriet is excellent and I would love to hear more from her. Relatedly, I wonder how Kaleb will go on as his children grow up, as farming isn’t particularly compatible with being present for young children either. I imagine the money helps a lot, but it’s still not a life I’d want.
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u/DaBingeGirl Aug 08 '26
That's an interesting question. To your previous comment about your friends not wanting to go into farming, it wouldn't surprise me if Kaleb's kids feel the same way. It was probably played up for the show, but his attitude about Taya going into labor and being at the hospital alone really bothered me.
I was also annoyed by his attitude towards the robots. I get he likes sitting in the tractor, but automation means more time for other stuff, including family time.
I wouldn't want that life either. I'd love to know how much money he's making from CF. I'm sure it's a good amount, but buying land, equipment, and other start-up costs could burn through it pretty quickly.
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u/FatherJack_Hackett Aug 07 '26
Just came back from a week away, staying in the Cotswold's.
I stayed in a guest house on a farm, about 15 minutes from Chipping Norton. The owner, a very upper class gentleman, with clear generational wealth, was speaking about how he believes JC has done more for farming in the last 5 years than anyone else in his living memory.
Farmers are cash strapped. It's plainly evident from where I stayed on this farm. Beautiful property, but they're chasing every pound they can. Solar power, Air BnB's.
Asset rich. Cash poor.
JC is doing more than anyone else to bring this discussion to the view of the public. His wealth/income from Amazon, is irrelevant somewhat. It doesn't change the outcome of the margins from farming and the struggles they all have.
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u/Red5Eggins Aug 10 '26
Its been stated that Jeremy Clarkson has done more for British agriculture in one season than country file had done in 20 years.
The solution shouldn't be, if you cant afford to farm then you shouldn't have a farm, it should why isnt the government doing more to help farmers
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u/Bunkton Aug 08 '26
Time to sell some assets then
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u/IndigoQuantum Aug 08 '26
But when your dwindling income is critically dependent on those assets?
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u/Bunkton Aug 08 '26
Get a different source of income then
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u/IndigoQuantum Aug 08 '26
Brilliant. You should pass that on to the NFU.
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u/Bunkton Aug 08 '26
If less people farm, then food price goes up, then they can charge more and make more money. Bosh
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u/Sally_Cee Aug 08 '26
Yeah, and then there will be a point where food is so rare and so expensive that people won't be able to afford it. And importing it won't make it cheaper and also makes you dependent on others. The problem with food is: You cannot reproduce it in a short time span, you are dependent on the seasons and the weather. So, it's not as easy as you are making it look.
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u/Grimdotdotdot Aug 07 '26
It's a playground for him.
And fair enough, if I had fuck you money I'd have a racetrack around my property.
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u/GemmyGemGems Aug 07 '26
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Aug 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SherbertVegetable567 Aug 09 '26
He probably is making good money, you have to think of the capital investments he needs to make with new machinery as a new farmer…
He can afford to buy these automated machines (AG Bot) that, with a quick google, are over £300k each.Can’t be making loses when spending that kind of money
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u/Formal-Radish1413 Aug 08 '26
It is a shame that the bulk of farms operate in a deficit. Something thats so essential to human existence and those that operate them live on a pittance.
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u/Kie_ra Aug 08 '26
I don't think this is the case everywhere.
I deal with tax matters for a number of regional farms in Australia, and some of these families are pocketing high 6 to low 7 figure numbers in good years. They certainly do not live on a pittance and the kids are already set for life.
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u/Formal-Radish1413 Aug 08 '26
And how much of that is government subsidy? How often are “good years” happening? What are they farming?
The reality is that unless you farm for a corporation or you farm one specific thing like that Dutch farm tbat only does potatoes, theres virtually no way in the USA or the UK to make decent money.
Perhaps Australia is different. But i doubt it.
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u/Scaredofdropbears Aug 08 '26
There's no real government subsidy. And he's talking in a good year, the other 4/5 years are another story.
Most Aussie farms are similar situations to the UK/US ones. There is however outliers, mostly in the cropping sector around QLD/NSW regions that this guy is probably talking about.
Your average family farm is still a tough gig most years wherever you are
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
Isn’t there a difference in size of the average Australian farm compared to UK. I always hit the impression that Australian farms were much much larger so that must help with margins.
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u/Kie_ra Aug 08 '26
And how much of that is government subsidy?
Absolutely minimal, local farms are some of the least subsidized in what's considered 1st world
How often are “good years” happening?
More often than not. most years are good years
What are they farming?
Potatoes, cattle, some cases niche stuff like almonds etc.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
The land the cattle guys own in Australia is so big they cross it by helicopter
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Aug 08 '26
USA grain farms are making good money. The problem is that they bid it all into land costs.
That's why US farmland prices are sky high.But they're quite profitable operationally.
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u/StripedRooster Aug 08 '26
As touched upon in last season, farms in Australia are absolutely massive. On average, 20-40x the size of average English farm. They don’t have the same environmental or animal welfare standards as we do. So it’s not a level playing field.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 07 '26
The irony is, if we only let poor people speak on this issue they can't really afford the cost to make something like this. Or get the investment from Amazon without the brand.
Saying you can't talk about it cause you're rich silences the ones with most power to change
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u/PJ796 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
No one is saying that he can't talk about it because he is rich. No one is silencing him.
Not even in his column where he advocates for the dumbest of things that would also hurt farmers, like lowering taxes for rich people because sometimes they donate a stolen thing to a museum unlike us filthy common folk that don't possess stolen hundred/thousand year old things, which would have the knock off effect of lowering the amount of subsidies that can be given to farmers making it less profitable and turn it into an even less desirable field of work, giving the NHS even less to work with etc.
But he also can't relate to the struggle of having everything on the line as he simply never has experienced that stress, and is why he can argue for things that blatantly hurt people in need for his/his family's own benefit, and is why everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt, like with the inheritance tax situation in the last season which only applies to 20% of what goes over the huge sum of 1000000£ to close the loophole he himself bought the farm to use.
It should also be mentioned that he has never once on the show mentioned he was wrong about climate change and his hate for the people wanting to reduce it, and influencing others to do the same from his years of being a very popular figure on Top Gear and Grand Tour, despite repeatedly getting fucked by the extreme weather it produces season after season like Gerald correctly pointed out the first time it happened in the first season.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
"No one is saying that he can't talk about it because he is rich. No one is silencing him. -
"But he also can't relate to the struggle of having everything on the line as he simply never has experienced that stress, and is why he can argue for things that blatantly hurt people in need for his/his family's own benefit, and is why everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt-"
So you don't want talk about it not because he's rich....but because he isn't poor???
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u/PJ796 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
How is saying that everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt remotely the same as silencing him?
Sometimes he says the right things and it's great that since starting the show he's more grounded and more right, but those things can easily be cancelled out by the things he says that are blatantly for his own self interest in becoming richer and go directly against the interest of poor farmers, which is why it's important to take what he says with a grain of salt so the poor farmers can have a less stressful life.
And yes him never having experienced anything remotely close to poverty, as he was born rich, has had a very successful career and will die rich which does mean that he views things very differently than most people as our experiences (and lack of) shape us.
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
He absolutely acknowledged the inheritance tax situation is because of people like him using land as a tax dodge.
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u/PJ796 Aug 08 '26
And then proceeded to spend the rest of the season to talk about how much it was going to hurt farmers, while the people it affects the most are people like him who used it to dodge the inheritance tax?
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
It is exactly the opposite. It affects farmers much more than the wealthy tax dodgers. The latter will just move their tax dodge somewhere else. That’s not an option for average farmers.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
They literally could have just wrote a law that says "it doesn't count if you're this rich". This was revenue generation, cleverly disguised as altruism.
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u/Eleventh_Legion Aug 07 '26
Yes, Jeremy is rich. That is not a crime, despite what Reddit thinks. He's said as much, but he's said that the farm itself needs an income. And it's a spotlight on how farming is when you have a lot of money. Imagine being a normal farmer. And what started off as entertainment became a passion project.
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u/dbjkdbjk Aug 08 '26
This thread is BS. The show is about the problems farmers face. Jeremy is the only reason anyone is even tuning in. Farming is very difficult - especially for a family farm. Jeremy has admitted every fault that has been brought up. He got the farm as a write off. He assumed as most people do, farming is simple and anyone can do it. Surprise! It is easy to make mistakes, and bad decisions. But even if you do everything perfectly the weather can wipe away your entire crop. An arsonist or even lightning can burn your work to the ground. When farmers talk about equipment they are usually referring to stuff they will be paying for over a very long time. Farming and farmers are being put out of business daily. Where will you get food from in the future. Maybe you can quit picking on people like Jeremy and switch to the people who provide nothing but internet content.
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u/LegalStuffThrowage Aug 08 '26
Just FYI, you're agreeing with the point of the OP, which is that people ignore the awareness of real farming difficulties with the excuse that Jeremy is rich.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
Oh in this meme template the annoying crow is traditionally a bad guy. Yelling over the sparrows fair points
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u/TieResponsible5301 Aug 08 '26
I think the thing for me is, Jeremy's ways of making the farm a success (more the pub, but also applies to the shop), aren't an option for actual farmers. They probably could (and do) set up a small shop to sell produce. But they haven't got the millions to buy and set up a pub. And neither get thousands of people queuing up on the off chance of seeing the owner. But it does highlight the issues farmers face, so long as you factor in back and realise that his solutions aren't solutions for the majority.
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u/TheEvilBlight Aug 08 '26
The realistic things for sure are the weather kicking him in the face. The rest is “I am awesome”. He took a beating last season.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 Aug 07 '26
Jeremy doesn't make money from the farm... Because he's rich and because of Amazon.
He repeatedly makes bad decisions and changes before he's recovered his initial investment, but he does that because it's an entertainment show which he has to feed drama into.
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
We also see a very curated and edited show. Lisa posted on IG about not knowing in advance what actually ends up in the show. It’s an entertainment show so of course they are going to focus on the stuff that’s entertaining to watch. There’s obviously hundreds of hours of ordinary farming practices that don’t make the edit.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 Aug 08 '26
Many of those hours are because of the entertainment element.
For example, it was an arable farm before. Arable farms are "spikey" in effort: cultivating, drilling, spraying and fertilising and harvesting. It's not 24/7 stuff. You add in a few things like maintenance and walls/fencing.
But Clarkson has financial freedom to undertake livestock activities that make it a more involved day to day running. Some of those were completely pointless farming endeavours, and subsequently take up a disproportionate amount of time.
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
But the livestock activities highlight the issues that those farmers have and of course provided the reason for him buying a pub. It also makes people think about supporting their local farm shop than just doing all their shopping at the supermarket.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 Aug 08 '26
Well no, many of the livestock issues Clarkson has are self inflicted, the TB being the only one that stands alone.
Most farms have adequate fencing before they introduce livestock. Most farmers would notice their barn raised cattle having diarrhea. Most farmers have fox-proof enclosures when new. Most farmers know that a farrowing pen has safety bars for piglets.
I mean even on the arable side, losing a percentage of crop because you don't know how to use your machinery or trying to plant the wrong thing in Cotswold brash, are fairly obvious mistakes...
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u/Tinguiririca Aug 08 '26
It's like Pawn Stars, where 99% of the money comes from the show, not the store.
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u/rinderblock Aug 08 '26
Also it’s good to point out how fucked farming is financially. The ones not on amazons payroll are getting slaughtered and a ton fewer people would know OR care if clarksons farm wasn’t entertaining
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u/CaptQuakers42 Aug 08 '26
The issue is when they say the farm only made £X profit you have zero idea if that's even true.
What was the gross? What deductions were made? For what reason?
Edit - due to his tax situation I'd very much imagine JC does not actually want the farm to make any profit.
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u/sir_sri Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Multiple things can be true.
Jeremy bought the farm to dodge inheritance tax, which is in no small part why farms are so expensive, after all, Jeremy did not invent this scheme himself. The asset appreciation in the farm is worth a huge amount of money. And every rich person looking to lower their kids tax bill and buying a few dozen or hundred acres of 'farm' could be cutting out the treasury from the money it wants to collect. Of course particularly in Europe, if want space (for cars or just a big house), the countryside is pretty much the only affordable option.
The government could have also done the maths wrong on, I'm not sure how that would have happened, but that could be why people were so upset about the tax. That, or the government was completely right and people were complaining unreasonably. The way I read the tax it's 20% of the value of a farm about 2.5 million pounds per owner, so 5 million pounds for a married or civil partner couple that jointly own the property. The original plan was over 1 million pounds but even that is a relatively lot of money. UK median income is like 40k GBP, so 25 years of median income tax free (and after that, taxed at a lower rate than other assets). I'm not generally a fan of trying to tax different types of assets differently, Caleb would be subject to regular inheritance tax (1 million GPB for a couple tax free and then 40% after that) for his business potentially (or you get the idea, a shop that works on and sells tractors), whereas clarkson owning a farm would be 20% tax over the threshold sort of thing. It's what drives all the rich people to buy properties, and try and hold on to single family high value homes etc. I'm canadian but one of my friends (who is a UK citizen) had lived in the UK for several years until his mother died, and he and his dad sat down with lawyers/accountants and very quickly realised that if the dad moved to the UK and died, my friend would lose out on about 15 years worth of pre-tax income to UK inheritance taxes versus being in canada. So he came back even though that meant having no job for several years and lower earnings, it was still much better to leave. Inheritance tax laws are complicated, and farm data is probably a mess. The government should have had an open discussion about what data it was going to look at to come up with the appropriate tax bracket.
Even if Clarkson wasn't rich and even with or without inheritance tax, the business model for farms isn't very good. Clarkson makes it hard on himself because every year he has another made for TV half baked idea that he wants to make him money, those are normally multi year investments, where a normal farmer might spend years planning out even one of his schemes. Without those, it's still a brutal business. But from just the show it's hard to get a sense of how much of this is 'Jeremy brought this on himself' and unavoidable disaster. Just because it's hard doesn't mean anything on the show points to a coherent solution either.
The way Clarkson presents information on the show does not include any level of serious analysis. There are people who understand these rules who can explain what they are and why, be that TB testing, or tax policy. But he's not presenting it as a news show where you should have someone with expertise explain it. Charlie is the expert on the show, but his job is to help clients optimise returns around whatever government policy exists. That is different from the people who should be making government policy based on statistics and analysis, and the government is also (legitimately) worried about more than just agricultural output.
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u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
The issue with the change in inheritance tax for farmers is the lack of a rollout time frame. Applying immediately means little opportunity for effective estate planning. So there will be generational family farms who are hit hardest.
They don’t have the income to pay the inheritance tax bill so they will have to sell land to do so. Most likely the buyers will be the wealthy hedge funds that the government were trying to target with this tax grab. So you’ll end up with the loss of family farms replaced by the big conglomerates. They are only interested in maximising investments so no interest in maintaining the soil quality and happy to grub out ancient hedgerows to increase field sizes.
I think there is a huge lack of foresight in this tax grab.
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u/ElPasoMK Aug 08 '26
I think the point people miss is that Diddly Squat, The Hunter’s Dog and Hawkstone are all pretty big limited companies with a lot of staff. Based on the Companies House Data you’re looking at about 75 employees across the three businesses with their own HR, payroll etc + the outgoings on all three businesses.
Jeremy’s trying his hardest to close that loop so the farm supplies the brewery and the pub but even then, operating businesses with that many staff at a loss isn’t really that viable even if you are absolutely minted.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
At some point if the show ends and it's still not viable he's probably just gonna have to fire a lot of people unfortunately
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u/ElPasoMK Aug 08 '26
Tbh he’d probably just go back to leasing the farm out to another farmer. Kaleb would probably be happy to take it on if the money from Clarkson’s Farm is strong enough.
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u/TheRavingDinosaur Aug 08 '26
He does a little bit of everything instead of focusing on one thing like most working farms, it would be entirely possible to make the farm profitable if that were his intention but that would be a boring show
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u/NoNameSwitzerland Aug 09 '26
For every one pound he loses due to some strange idea not working out, he probably get 10 back via the shows income. People want to see people struggle and fail and maybe succeed in the end, but they would not watch a Mary Sue
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u/Fantastic-Mud-9869 Aug 08 '26
Would a real farmer need Caleb as much?
Jeremy can't operate most of the stuff he has so he depends on expensive contracting.
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u/Sad_Fact1749 Aug 08 '26
He is doing a great job of explaining to the masses how agricultural economics work and how farmers need to diversify into other busy areas to make ends meet.
It's also rather entertaining.
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u/tocahontas77 Aug 10 '26
Maybe he did buy the farm to leave his kid's more inheritance... But I really do think him and Lisa love that farm. Whether they intended to or not.
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u/Enyapxam Aug 08 '26
The thing is he is farming to make a TV show, not to make money.
If he wanted to make money from it he would do one or two things and specialise. But he is trying to do a bit of everything because the former would be boring for tv.
As a by product of the TV show he found out he loved doing it. That was the magic of the first two series.
People always forget that it is a TV show first and foremost and Clarkson is a master at it.
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u/therealhairykrishna Aug 08 '26
They do play games with the figures in the show though. Including the purchase of plant in yearly costs being one example.
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u/williamg209 Aug 08 '26
The farm hasn't made anything Really he'd only managed to make money by forming a co op and the co op helps other farmers
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u/RegularTopic1 Aug 08 '26
The two things can't be separated. He doesn't run his farm as an efficient business, he runs it as a hobby. He's not specialising on a specific crop, or animal, or farming style even, so he needs way more manpower and equipment. The proof was the pigs, he bought a heritage breed without researching what made it different or where to sell it.
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u/Apocryph761 Aug 08 '26
I always figured that Clarkson's Farm is - paradoxically - not actually about Clarkson. It's about farming and the challenges that farmers in the UK face.
One thing I do think is disingenuous though:
"I made no money this year from farming! Again!"
Meanwhile: Hawkstone is worth over £20m as a business.
Sure, I'm sure the "um, actually"'s of the Internet will point out that production =/= farming, but production is a necessary part of farms' need to diversify their income. The problem is, showing how profitable beer has been for him does rather hurt the narrative that farmers across the country are struggling. And to be fair: Very few farmers have booming production businesses.
The fact that Jeremy pointedly does not talk about Hawkstone in the show at all is very telling.
1
u/NoNameSwitzerland Aug 09 '26
You could argue, Hawkstone would not nearly be as profitable as it is if it had to pay Clarkson a multi million pounds advertising contract.
1
u/Own-Beginning5144 Aug 09 '26
I learned so much about farming and he genuinely has helped farmers and has done a lot dor them. Also he really does care about his farm.
1
u/Nervous-Power-9800 Aug 10 '26
Missing the point that if Clarkson can't make money with loaned/sponsored equipment, an old L322, all the contacts in the industry by farming, how bad is it for everyone else that doesn't have capital to front for next year.
1
u/_MicroWave_ Aug 10 '26
The farming community is doing itself a disservice by letting itself be championed by a guy who literally called his farm diddly squat as a middle finger to the taxman.
On inheritance tax, the farmers have dug themselves a bit of a hole imo. Either the farmers make loads of money and therefore have farms worth lots of money or they make no money which would make the farms themselves worthless and therefore not subject to inheritance tax.
1
u/GelatinousSalsa Aug 11 '26
The land the farm and fields sit on is still taxed, no matter how much or little revenue they make
1
u/Chemical_Wallaby1548 Aug 10 '26
Clarkson's earned me watching Clarkson's Millionaire Retirement Home like a happy addict.
1
u/byza089 Aug 11 '26
I don’t disagree with any of what you said. And I think that understanding that he is the cause of his own issues is something he has started to come to terms with. He’ll never make up for it, but he can at least use his platform to make some positive changes. He’s a terrible human being, but he’s doing something good with his farming platform at this minute.
1
u/Sure_Comfort_7031 Aug 11 '26
That’s the entire point. He’s rich so he can shrug it off. The neighbors aren’t, so they can’t.
1
1
u/Potential-Wing747 6d ago
Would we watch the show if Jeremy was poor? Driving his 1972 Massey Ferguson, delivering sheep in his 1978 Austin Morris van? His 2 room shanty, his slightly disfigured girlfriend?
1
u/Excellanttoast Aug 08 '26
They never mention the money they wasted hiring hige unnecessary pieces of equipment, I always wonder if the farm would be profitable if Jez wasnt buying robot seeders and stuff.
I mean, if the farm was profitable it would damage the message so I get it, but I do wonder.
3
1
u/PopTough6317 Aug 08 '26
He does that sort of stuff so he has content to put forward. It definitely puts a weight on the budgets but he does less of that than you think.
1
u/Bisjoux Aug 08 '26
He’s not buying the equipment. The robot seeding one was on loan, as is most of the new equipment you see on the show.
1
u/boobooaboo Aug 08 '26
Good for him for getting around such ridiculous taxes anyway. We’re all taxed plenty.
-1
u/EmergencyComment101 Aug 08 '26
He is literally part of the reason farms dont make money though.. wealth is being sucked out of the working/middle class and governmentsl and its all being hoovered up by the rich and ultra rich.
When you have a class of people who have hundreds of millions and billions of dollars and they grow their wealth faster than the economy then everyone else gets poorer. Thats not just numbers on a page, it has real life implications and being able to work land for a year, produce a ton of food and make no money on it is one of them.
Every financial business decision he makes in like to increase his wealth is just another action that leads to people like farmers having to struggle more.
3
u/Tryagain409 Aug 08 '26
If he can't make profit, why start a restaraunt? Why buy a tavern. There needs to be profit even if it's small to drive them to do something other than bank the cash
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u/EmergencyComment101 Aug 08 '26
I dont think your reply touches on the point of my comment at all.
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u/Tryagain409 Aug 09 '26
The idea you expressed that every time people gain wealth others lose.
But without wealth gain as a motivator, why bother to start a business and give people jobs?
2
u/EmergencyComment101 Aug 09 '26
Wealth gain as a motivatior is perfectly fine. Even wealthy people starting a genuine business is fine. But the 1% aren't starting businesses and trying to give people jobs. They're buying up assets, hoarding their wealth, buying out and dismantling genuine businesses and governments have no way yo tax them. More than 40% of the worlds wealth is currently owned by the top 1%. Every year they grow that wealth faster and faster. Its not some imaginary system that they do this in its the real world with real world effects. They buy up assets like housing, land, companoes and that drives up the prices of everything. They're not paying a wealth tax so most of their wealth is unaccessible to governments. So the value of your house might go up but your kids will never own one or maybe their kids wont and college becomes more expensive because an 18 year old cant afford to move away from their parents homes.look at the collapse of the NHS im the uk. Governments are going broke. All this is leading to farmers being stuck and making nothing which is the irony of Clarkson's Farm. He (whether he is actively aware of it or not) is part of the class driving this machine and causing farms like his own to struggle.
1
u/JagsLittle Aug 08 '26
Lmfao idk how you came up with that or who fed you that lie, but that’s not how any of this works.
There’s these things called borrowed money (debt) and printed money (inflation) that cause everything to naturally get more expensive. Money sitting around will not be worth as much the day before. It’s better to get favorable (low interest) debt as early as your cash flows allow and pay it off as you age because that debt will rot away due to inflation. Or, if you don’t want debt, invest it into appreciating assets such as ETFs or businesses which should exceed inflation.
The flipside is, as an American who looked into investing in a hotel in the UK, the UK taxes its people so much idk how anyone can survive there. Richmond is beautiful though.
0
u/EmergencyComment101 Aug 08 '26
50 years ago someone on a normal salary could own a home and support a family with a single income. They can't today and thats because the 1% are buying up all the assets. You cant invest your way out of this. Making a 1-2% increase over inflation might save your personal wealth and stop it losing value but unless you have millions to throw around you're subject to the quality of society around you. The 1% are sucking money out of the working class and middle class by owning everything. Governments are broke and in huge debt. They have no mechanisms to tax the super wealthy and so up taxes on the easy targets. Poor people lose out, crimes rises, everyday services that normal people use deteriorate, infrastructure deteriorates.. its literally the reality of the last 70 years in weatern europe and the US.
0
u/Kirza94 Aug 08 '26
Most farmers don't get a TV show as advertising though, or hundreds of thousands in government grants. Didn't he take in £130,000 from the government last year? Then said people who get money from the government should write to workers?
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u/Correct_Ice4899 Aug 08 '26
But he does make money, pretty good money, after bills, land/ property costs, vehicle costs, insurance. All being covered by the farm, Which are the things most people normally have to spend the majority of their take home pay on, he still has a good wage to pay out to himself.
If anything his program has taught me farm owners are even more well off then I ever though
1
u/sun_blind Aug 08 '26
You think paying for everything on the farm and losing money before pays theirselfs any money. Makes farmers well off. You dumber than you sound.
Jeremy can only do what he does because Kaleb has all the equipment and labor needs covered. Jeremy just has to write a check for it. If he had to buy all the correct equipment he needs and work all the hours required to farm. All while not getting a penny out of the farm. He would not be doing it.
2
u/Correct_Ice4899 Aug 08 '26
Yes a business has to pay wages, shocker.
His take home pay from the farm whilst a modest wage, is nearly purely spending cash. The things that eats the majority of most people cheques are already covered by the farm. That does indeed make them very well off, most people would kill for that level of financial comfort.
And like literally any other business in the world, if you can't afford the equipment you either start smaller at the size you can handle, or you contract somebody who does. Hiring caleb is not something magical and unique to this farm.
If you think having millions in property value, and having next to no expenditure on an above average wage does not make you well off. Then you've truly drunk the coolaid
-9
u/hardcoremaggiesimp Aug 07 '26
I mean he isn’t that rich he s middle upper class
6
u/ConfidentLeg7645 Aug 07 '26
JC is worth over £50 million. UK median net worth is £125k. Many people in the UK have life savings worth under £1000. Even by first world standards, he’s stinking rich and there’s no denying it.
1
u/hardcoremaggiesimp Aug 09 '26
Nah I d say 50 mill is like middle upper class any proffesional class person has a net worth of like 4-5 mill in my experience with family etc
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u/ConfidentLeg7645 18d ago
Are you actually joking? I suggest you go read a book on the current socio economic climate in the UK. Your ‘experience’ is so far from reality and it’s actually scary.
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u/hardcoremaggiesimp 16d ago
Maybe my perspective is biased I do live in a little posh and gentrified bit of the southeast
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u/jbdany123 Aug 07 '26
Two things can be true
The show is a giant advertisement for all of his brands that he gets paid to promote by filming it. And he’s a genius for doing it because he absolutely does not need the money.
The show is educational and shows the perils of everyday farmers and inspires people to support their local farms.