Clarkson's Farm TL;DW: Being a farmer is hard. Dealing with government is even harder.
Local Link | Content link | Reddit Link
r/libertarianmemeu/PrudentVermicelli69 (1832)

Comments (46)

Man is a legend

A legendary piece of shit

Just got to ep7, it's redemption.

After being to told not to sell merchandise because the t-shirts are not produced locally he is giving them away with purchase of a single £20 vegetable.
Permit for a car park was denied? Build it anyway under a one month grace period, then move it every month after being denied again to restart the grace period.
No permit to turn an unused barn into a restaurant that would help out of local farmers? Just turn a different existing building that does not require a permit into a restaurant instead.

Having fuck you money must feel awesome.

I literally just watched this episode, like minutes ago.

I watched the whole season this weekend because it’s such a great middle finger to government meddling.

Amazon is paying not him. It’s ridiculous isn’t it how much regulation is holding back everything. People just give up I guess.

We need more people like Caleb.

My mums family is from 10 mins down the road in chipping Campden, he's a local celeb apparently 🤣

fuck the government

Nah, we need some government. Fuck the State.

Fuck the fed while we’re at it

Well, yeah, but I think that's covered by the State.

One of my favorite things that Jeremy Clarkson has ever said is that he believes the government is unfit to do anything beyond building park benches.

I wouldn't trust them on that either.

$10,000 per bench and they use your money! Or $20,000 for a garbage can. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/22/san-francisco-cost-trash-can-struggle

One of my top reasons for loving the show is exposing the ridiculousness of the rules. The whole badger thing is insane.

But we all know the real star is Gerald.

A real-life Boomhauer.

Ah, one of the few British men i respect. The others obviously being his usual co-workers and a man in Scotland with a particularly offensive pug

Maybe Owen Benjamin, too?

i don't trust turpentine drinkers

Throw me in there while you're at.

I would say Mauler is a Welshman I have a lot of respect for, but he is friendly with Dankula so he may fall into there too

There will be a tipping point where farmers get fed up and stop producing food...

Or they're "replaced" which has proven throughout history to lead to a lot of starving to death.

If farmers said enough is enough, no more food at all, until we see some policy change. There's enough people that would do the food provider wants as well, otherwise... get the "here's why eating your children is bad" pamphlets to the printers.

The traditional mom-and-pop farms are disappearing, they're being bought up by Bill Gates and such.

The problem is that farmers are already actively being bought off.

The problems Clarkson is having this season are the result of the loss of subsidies from the EU.

Yes, everything would be better if we weren't distorting the fuck out of the food market.

However, as a farmer, as with any other job, you have to do the best you can within the incentive structures that exist.

King of your own castle vs. angry mob of peasants.

Saddest part is this isn't too far off from the HOAs and zoning regulations of America. It's really pathetic.

An HOA, while mostly abhorrent in behavior, is a private entity into with which one enters a contract.

I mean hes complaining that the government aren't giving them enough subsidies, not very free market

He's also trying to open a restaurant to make up for losing the government subsidies as one would in a free market but the government won't let him.

The thing is that farming is very unprofitable, in session 1, his total profit for a year's farming was £144 (173.72 USD as of typing this). Even with the good subsidiaries, he was honestly better off selling the farm from a financial perspective but he hasn't because he actually likes the life of a farmer.

Ideally farms should be sustainable without government support but it's unfortunately not the case and hasn't been for a long time.

Farmers need government intervention because in the free market there’s insufficient demand for checks notes …produce.

My father in law always used to say, "You never see a farmer on a bicycle," and while it's a bit unfair, it always made me laugh.

If you watch the show he clearly made such a small profit because he made a ton of mistakes when it comes to farming for the sake of entertainment on the show. He bought a massive and expensive Lamborghini tractor instead of buying or leasing a smaller, more affordable one. He bought all the equipment he needed instead of renting/leasing, he spent an absolutely insane amount of money that he didn't need to, and getting involved with all the sheep was just a money sink.

While that is true, something that led to the low profits was also outside of his own control, the weather for example.

The way I see Clarkson's Farm is that it's what would probably happen if you got the average Joe and put him onto a farm and told him to manage it. Obviously for the farmers that have been doing it for years will be able to get better profits but it's no where near what the average Joe thinks a farmer makes

Yea true, completely agree with that. Farming is not a very profitable industry. Almost nobody who isn't born into a farming family decides to be a farmer. It's a family trade. 100 years ago, 40% of the population were farmers, today that number is 4%. A big chunk of that is innovation and advancement in farming tech allowing much greater production with far fewer people doing it.

The lambo is not actually too big since he has a massive 1000 acre farm when the average is 250 acres. the main issue with it is it didn't have standard implements

Last year hay bails were at 115$ each from the years before’s 75$ so the lease would have risen significantly also because of this even the people who did do what you suggest had to sell out because their is no money in it anymore

Government good if it works in my favours/I'm in control

Love this show

You realize he is complaining about the EU subsidies going away right? He literally wants the government to keep the taxpayer gravy train going.

Source: just watched the episode.

You clearly haven't been paying attention to the series as a whole then. Government bureaucracy and laws make the subsidies necessary, because they can't even do basic shit like move a pile of dirt without paying for and applying for a license to do it.

No I have been. Jeremy likes to hate on the ridiculous regulations like the oxygenated fish tank run to the pub, and all that. But foundationally he is very much in support of subsidized farming. He is no libertarian.

British farmers self sabotaged in 2016 by overwhelmingly voting to leave the EU. They decided against their own self interest, why? Lying politicians more happy to ruin their own country by fueling xenophobic fires and concocting optimistic economic fictions.

concocting economic fictions

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is the biggest economic fiction of them all.

The EU applies big tariffs to food imports coming in from poor areas of the world, whilst giving vast subsidies to EU producers to suppress the artificially high prices this creates.

However even with subsidies, food prices are higher than if a global free market were able to operate in the European food market.

The Common Agricultural Policy had a budget of €408 billion for the period 2014-2020.

€408 billion to keep food prices in Europe high and African farmers poor. Thanks supranational government 👍🏼

Absolutely this every day!!!!