We look behind the agricultural headlines to examine their wider impact on farming 

When Jeremy Clarkson picked up his National Television Award (NTA) for ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ earlier this month, he described it as “a vote for farmers”. Speaking to reporters, the presenter said he believed the audience weren’t just voting for his show, but in support of farmers and growers and recognition of just how difficult their job is. It was a brief, off-the-cuff remark, but it crystallised something that seems to have been building since the series began in 2021. Namely that a mainstream TV audience has decided it cares about British farming. 

A comfortable win in a crowded category 

At the NTAs Clarkson’s Farm took the Reality Docuseries prize, seeing off a strong field that included ‘At Home with The Furys,’ ‘Stacey & Joe’ and ‘Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing’. These were all established, broadly loved shows with popular celebrities and loyal followings. When he collected the award Clarkson kept his acceptance short, thanking “everyone who makes this amazing show”. It was backstage, and in a subsequent post on X, that he offered the soundbite that was quickly picked up by the media. 

Awards shows are not, typically, referendums on public policy or the state of an industry. But Clarkson has now spent the best part of four series positioning Clarkson’s Farm as exactly that. It’s a documentary in sometimes chaotic and comedic clothing that uses running a 1,000-acre farm and his own real-life experiences to illustrate dwindling margins, bureaucracy and weather risk. And all in a way that The Archers or statistics alone never could.  

Winning against stiff competition suggests the format has cut through. Viewers aren’t just tuning in to watch Clarkson, they’re absorbing the harsh economic and emotional realities of farming today. 

The truth behind the soundbite 

For decades, farming’s relationship with mainstream TV largely comprised of a single Sunday evening show. Clarkson’s Farm changed that by being popular first and agricultural second. It arrived with an audience of Clarkson converts, already primed by Top Gear and The Grand Tour. It then used that appeal to show, repeatedly, the realities of farming and how easy it is to lose money, through no fault of the farmer. 

That’s the context in which “a vote for farmers” is more than a soundbite. It suggests the emotional core of the show. Namely sympathy for a genuinely difficult, precarious job rather than a by-product they tolerate just to watch their hero’s latest venture. For an industry that has struggled for years to get airtime for its own case, having a mainstream entertainment award as a statement of public sympathy is a significant, if unexpected, win. 

There’s other evidence to back up this sentiment. For three years on the trot, the ‘Farmer Favourability’ survey, which polls 2,000 members of the public, has ranked farmers and growers as the second most favoured profession in the UK. In fact, only nurses were more popular. The same research found that 92% of the public felt it was important that Britain has a productive farming sector. More than three-quarters of respondents said they trust British food more than food produced elsewhere in the world. Taken together, it suggests the goodwill Clarkson’s Farm taps into isn’t artificially manufactured by the show but reflects an appetite that was already there, for food that’s high-quality, proper animal welfare and a countryside that’s cared for. Often against a backdrop of extreme weather, unfair competition and economic pressure. 

There’s more evidence of this goodwill in this year’s Britain’s Got Talent result. Assembled by Clarkson from the farming community, the Hawkstone Choir won the hearts of possibly the largest TV vote of all. The fact a group of working farmers, singing about the pressures of the job, could win over a mainstream Saturday-night audience against professional dancers, singers and novelty acts suggests the appetite for farming stories isn’t limited to Clarkson’s Farm. Fittingly the Hawkstone Choir demonstrated their popularity by opening this year’s NTV awards. 

Clarkson’s own X Factor  

Of course, none of this exists in isolation of Clarkson’s own celebrity status and his very public recent campaigning. He’s been a visible presence at farmer protests against proposed changes to inheritance tax rules and regularly uses his newspaper column and public appearances to make the case that government policy underestimates the pressure on rural livelihoods. He’s also been candid, more recently, about revisiting his own account of why he bought his farm in the first place. Softening an old, cynical line about tax efficiency in favour of a simpler explanation. Whatever one makes of that shift, it fits a pattern: a public figure increasingly comfortable using his celebrity, deliberately, on behalf of an industry he wasn’t born into but has spent years embedded in. 

For farmers themselves, the immediate and practical value of a TV award is obviously limited. It doesn’t fix input costs, rural crime, climate change or supermarket margins. But visibility has its own currency, and Clarkson’s Farm has repeatedly proven itself capable of shifting how a mainstream audience thinks and talks about the sector. Another award, and another quote eagerly seized on by the media, keeps agriculture in a conversation it has historically struggled to get invited to.  

Whether or not viewers really did “vote for farmers” in any meaningful sense it doesn’t really matter. Enough people are watching, and talking about farming and the industry is getting much-needed airtime it wouldn’t otherwise get. That in itself is a huge win.