Oh, Jeremy. We all adore him, the pompous baritone, the deadpan wit, and that slightly feral Yorkshire charm. Plus the man who taught the world that farming wasn’t just admiration-worthy, it was uncomfortably gruelling.
Clarkson’s Farm splendidly ripped back the curtain on rural toil, reminding us that to put food on the table is to wrestle with mud, weather tantrums, bureaucracy, and occasionally a minuscule orchestra of pigs. It is delightful and infuriating, and undeniably educational.
But—and there’s always a but—when Clarkson waves away the weather troubles as unrelated to climate change, I’m forced to clutch my tea and think: “Oh, come on now.”
Let’s be clear: one can love Clarkson for his comedic misadventures, his honest fascination with arable reality, and his big, bonkers personality, while still scolding him for what borders on wilful denial.
His unwavering dismissal of any connection between extreme weather and climate change—particularly when crops are drowning one minute and the next cooking under an unprecedented heatwave—is frankly bonkers. The phrase “it’s just weather, why make a fuss?” might work as a gag on Top Gear, but in the muddied fields of Diddly Squat, it’s an unforgivable dodge.
Clarkson’s Farm is, in reality, a gift to public understanding. It’s the sort of documentary that has converted metropolitan pesticide-phobes into defunct-subsidy ponderers and brake-lights watchers into early risers gauging rainfall. It is the most unfiltered, unpretentiously riveting showcase of British farming there is, and for that, Clarkson deserves not just applause, but maybe a medal—or at least a free pint at his pub, The Farmer’s Dog.
The very idea that he sneers at climate change while simultaneously portraying its effects—and then blithely disconnects them—feels, to put it politely, like telling the vicar to stop worrying about sermons because “it’s just words.”
To be fair, Clarkson seems, in recent times, to have eased off. In a surprise u-turn, he’s admitted that shrugging off global warming was part of an exaggerated persona—“a joke” staged for shock value—rather than a deeply held conviction . If this is indeed the case, bravo for the epiphany. Farming, as he’s now well aware, is not a sitcom; it’s a power‑soaked education in geology and long-term planning, where weather isn’t seasonal angst—it’s existential risk.
And what a year on Diddly Squat it’s been. A TB outbreak, a harvest that’s been nothing short of catastrophic, and the dramatic failure of some 400,000 beetroot seeds—of which two grew—sound like satire, but they’re the grim reality of natural volatility and mounting climate stress.
Add in the revelation that most farms don’t make a profit, that many farmers work moment to moment, reinvesting every pound to stay afloat—often without even making their own wage—and it’s clear: this is about more than crumbling onions and drowned seeds .
Clarkson might well argue that the sleuthing of journalists or politicians can’t match the visceral awareness born of daily farm life. And he’s quite right. There’s no carbon calculator or policy paper that will ever tell the story of a flooded field with the same visceral punch as an old bloke in a hi‑viz jacket stomping through mud, grumbling about yet more rain when everything’s already sodden. That’s television—no, that’s modern life—made palpable.
But ignoring the link between that “funny farm weather” and our shared, warming planet is, to borrow Clarkson’s own language, “a fucking nightmare” . The struggle between farms and climate isn’t a coincidence—it’s systemic. Clarkson’s willingness to stare that truth down, with that same blunt honesty he brings to power harvester misfires, would elevate Clarkson’s Farm from great television to essential cultural reckoning.
So here’s my toast to Jeremy: May you continue to farm with furious passion and accidental finesse. But if you’re going to nudge climate change off the podium with a flippant shove, you’ll have to parry the feral glare of every farmer—and pretty much every sane viewer—who knows the weather isn’t just a performance. It’s a warning.
Read more:
Why Clarkson’s Farm should tackle climate change – before the business of farming crumbles