This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
For those of you who, like me, have been enjoying Jeremy Clarkson’s rebirth as an agricultural knight in shining armour, you will have enjoyed the sight of his newly-appointed farm manager, Kaleb Cooper, facing off with 90s music legend Andy Cato of Groove Armada in a heated debate over the use of disc drill versus tine drills. The surprise encounter was brought about after Clarkson agreed to trial run a regenerative farming scheme set up by Cato with the help of radio presenter George Lamb which aims to bring life back into fields by allowing nature to tackle top-soil erosion among other things. It teed up a young Kaleb to deliver one of the best lines of the third series as they discussed the program with Cato’s tractor sat in idle: “Was you in a band? I can tell because you’ve left your tractor running at a pound per litre.”
Clarkson’s Farm has won plaudits since it first launched for raising awareness over the issues farmers face in order to remain operationally profitable. Local bureaucracy has been a particular focus of his ire, leading to the Environment Secretary Steve Barclay and Communities Secretary Michael Gove getting involved over extending permitted development rights to allow restaurants, cafes and shops to become part of the farm set-up more seamlessly. Kaleb even received an invite to Number 10 for the Farm to Fork summit, where he swapped out his traditional gilet and shirt for a slightly more formal gilet and shirt to discuss how to secure the UK’s supermarket supply chains which, as we all know, are about to come under renewed pressure owing to new import controls.
Now, it seems Clarkson has turned his attention to an issue that will make battles with the local council feel like a stroll in the park. Soil degradation or, put another way, the inability of land to grow food, poses a major threat to global food supplies. Research shows that a third of the world’s soil is moderately to highly degraded, and given that this is a non-renewable resource, that’s sort of an issue. Writing in The Times two years ago, Clarkson says his attitude to life up until now has been peppered with a sense that everything will be all right in the end. “I continue to run seven cars, six of which have V8 engines, because I reckon that in the nick of time a Munich-based boffin will invent a giant space-based vacuum cleaner that will hoover all the unnecessary carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and make everything normal again”. But this time, he says, “I can’t see that happening”.
Soil is not an inert medium. It is a living ecosystem that is essential to life. It takes hundreds and thousands of years to form an inch of topsoil, and many more centuries before it is fertile. Intensive farming practices threaten to speed up the destruction of all that, damaging the complex systems underneath. But a solution could have presented itself not thanks to a German scientist with a Bunsen burner but via a company founded here in Blighty by an electronic pop star and an ex-disk jockey, who are partnering with farms and supermarkets to produce abundant and affordable food in a way which protects and restore wildlife.
And I have to admit that I have been quite taken by it. Wildfarmed has created a commercially viable, attractive solution to one of the biggest issues currently facing farmers, and they’ve made it look effortlessly cool in the process. While there have been few reasons to feel patriotic recently, I can’t help but admit that the thought of George Lamb, one half of Groove Armada and a farm hand in a gilet fixing our most pressing food supply issues on a farm run by a petrolhead TV presenter has got me feeling a tinge of pride for the small island we call home.
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