Clarkson's Farm

["A Hazy Shade Of Winter" by Simon and Garfunkel playing]

Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm.

It's been almost a year since the film crews were last here.

But though the cameras stopped rolling,

life at Diddly Squat carried on.

And in amongst the familiar comings and goings,

there have been a few changes.

The ruinously expensive sheep

are now being looked after by an actual sheep farmer,

just down the road.

I provide the equipment and the sheep,

he does the work, and then we share the losses.

We're growing a new crop, durum wheat,

which is used to make pasta.

We've got millions more bees.

And on the subject of pollination,

there's a new addition to the Diddly Squat community.

And then there's the farm shop,

which turned out to be rather more popular than we'd expected.

- -

And that's 6.72.

Thanks so much.

Hi. How are you?

Look.

It's full.

There's three spaces left.

That's it.

Last week, the main road jammed up.

-I was stuck in the traffic. -Yeah, for three hours.

People couldn't get to be vaccinated at the health centre.

They couldn't get a crew for the fire station.

- It's not good. -I know.

-If this backs up to the main road... - We're gonna be stuck again.

This meant we had to mow two acres of wheat

to make a car park, and even that wasn't enough.

I'm gonna be in there crying, when I'm mowing this.

I know, I know. I am.

Shall we not do it?

You're the boss.

But you said on ITV the other day you were the boss.

I am the boss on the farming side, but you're managing this bit.

Why don't you just do a bit here then?

You'll have to move everyone back then.

I just didn't think it through.

I didn't think this many people would come.

In truth, the farm shop issues would have to be dealt with by Lisa,

because I was too preoccupied with a timebomb

that was ticking on every single farm in the country.

First though, it was harvest time.

Here we are.

My second harvest.

Last year, the 520 acres of barley, wheat and rapeseed

had earned me the principal sum

of £144.

This time round, I was obviously hoping for more,

as we began in the barley fields with the all-important moisture test.

So hopefully we get all this barley finished today.

That would be good, wouldn't it?

What, when you're not opening supermarkets

and going on Celebrity Love Island?

I don't do Love Island. The other half doesn't like it.

-Right, what is it then? -I'm a Celeb.

-I'd love to see you in Australia. -That's probably the worst thing.

That's what I'll be most scared about, is actually leaving.

-You just don't wanna go to Australia. - Yeah. If they come here...

I'll do it.

"I'm a Celebrity and I'm in Chipping Norton, where I live."

Ready?

15.9.

Since we weren't far off the magic number of 15.5,

we got on the phone to Simon.

And when he arrived in a brand-new combine,

I took another reading.

15.3. That's good, isn't it?

That's good. We're on.

Right, sunglasses. We're ready.

My gramp, who suddenly passed away, this is his tune.

The Who. He got me into it.

It's been a year since I did this.

If I can remember anything.

There it is.

- Move! -

Oops!

Has he parked in your way, Simon?

Yeah.

There's a lot of traffic in this area.

The goal was to break the back of the barley today,

but we'd only done a couple of loads before Kaleb was on the radio.

Moisture's coming out about 15.8.

15.5 is the level we need.

We don't really wanna be going above.

As the numbers seemed pretty marginal to me,

I sought advice from Britain's cheeriest land agent.

Hello.

Charlie, hi, it's me. The last load we took in was 15.8.

Yeah, that's quite high.

So we're gonna have to stop?

Yeah. OK, that's frustrating.

Frustrating, definitely.

All right, thanks Charlie. I'll talk soon.

- OK, bye. -Bye.

Oh bloody hellfire.

Such a pain in the arse.

What have we got?

Three trailer loads, that's it. 36 tons.

Just don't have the mentality to be a farmer.

I just lie in bed thinking barley's out there

and it's gone past its best and I can't get it up.

I don't mean I can't get it up, I mean...

I can't get the barley up.

Kaleb and I took the last load to our storage area,

which annoyingly had received yet another visit from the local vandals.

That's the bund they burned last year,

and they've tried to burn this one this year.

I was talking to the police about it.

The rural crime police.

They've had their Mitsubishi L200 taken away,

which they could chase baddies in,

and they've been given a Vauxhall Corsa.

This is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

the sixth richest country in the world.

How the fucking hell are they gonna catch anyone in a Corsa?

Even more annoyingly,

because of the national shortage of lorry drivers,

we'd only managed to book one lorry to take the barley away.

That meant some of it would be left outside.

And the forecast for tomorrow was rain.

I'm pissed off.

How much have we got here? Five tons?

About four or five tons, yeah.

It's just gonna sit here and rot all weekend.

It's getting on for 750 quid's worth of barley

-just sitting here, being ruined. - Yeah.

But the weather forecast could be wrong. Might be nice in the morning.

We never know, do we?

The next day, we did know.

Bloody hell.

I've just had a message from the grain merchant.

This is why we stopped last night.

Load from tip this morning was 16.5% moisture.

There'll be drying charge of £9.75.

A ton?

A ton. And a weight loss of 4.5%.

So a ton and a half they're not gonna pay you for.

So they're charging you for the water, which is why we stopped last night.

We've lost how much money?

So that would have cost 450 quid

-in basically merchant taxes. -And the 750 quid...

- Sitting in there. -Sitting getting soggier.

But...

...as frustrating as the harvest problems were,

they were nothing compared to the issue now facing me

and every other farmer in the UK.

One that had been brewing since the tumultuous event

of June 2016.

There can be no doubt about the result.

The British people have spoken, and the answer is: we're out.

Farmers knew that Brexit meant

there'd be no more EU grants and subsidies.

But the British government told us not to worry.

We will guarantee the support for UK farming at its current level,

100%.

This government has provided a greater degree of certainty

on future support for farming than any government in the EU,

let alone elsewhere in the world.

However, these promises have so far rung hollow.

The government may be big on ambition,

but farmers say money and detail right now are in short supply.

There's a lot of vagueness in those announcements.

We don't know what they're gonna pay for, how much.

So what system am I gonna be in a year's time,

in two years' time, in five years' time? There's so much detail to be worked out.

- Post-Brexit then. -Yeah.

Farmers, you better off or worse off?

Worse off.

This seismic issue now required

some decisive action from Charlie and me.

So we know that you are going to lose £82,000 a year in subsidy.

Over the next few years you will get zero pound per hectare.

All those direct subsidies are going.

So there may well be some grants and subsidies,

but we don't know what they're going to be for yet?

We know that they have said "public money for public goods."

So they're gonna pay farmers to provide public good.

But it doesn't mean anything. That's just a slogan.

But there's absolutely no substance, at the moment, to those words.

Every farmer I've talked to is going, "We simply...

What are we supposed to do? What do you want us to grow?

What do you not want us to grow?"