Editor’s View: Clarkson and Cooper are a blueprint for change
Kaleb Cooper and Jeremy Clarkson © MAG/Phil Case Sprinkled liberally with outlandish flecks of showbusiness it may be, but there is plenty in the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm that will be recognisable to fellow farmers up and down the country.
Misery over fallen stock, helplessness in the face of bad weather and joy at the arrival of spring are all universal traits.
One more thing that will be familiar to many on multigenerational farms is the Labrador-like enthusiasm of one party for trying new methods or enterprises, set against the caution of another.
See also: Transition Live: Taking the risk out of farming
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More unusually in this instance (apart from the fact they are not relatives) is that it is the older Jeremy, not the younger Kaleb, whose metaphorical tail starts to joyfully thump the floor of the office at the prospect of doing things differently.
In this series, we see the country’s most famous farm contractor sometimes despair at his employer’s outlandish diversifications and witness his hackles bristle at the intrusion of Wildfarmed’s Andy Cato and his new methods of crop establishment.
I thought of the pair last week while at our Transition Live event at Cambridge University Farm, and wondered who it would have suited best.
With 500 people in attendance for talks, tours and exhibition stands, the event was built around furnishing attendees with inspiration and insight into how they could adapt their businesses to survive and thrive as area payments dwindle.
One discussion stage was built wholly around honing the profitability of food production, a second focused on other aspects of good farm business management, and a third on environmental income.
All this talk of change seemingly favours Jeremy.
If persuaded after asking a sharp question or two, his thinking cap would have been donned in the Range Rover on the journey home as he contemplated an agroforestry enterprise or other new income stream.
It is harder to imagine Kaleb sat in the audience.
Famous for being supremely happy to stay in his own parish, he is not, in my view, curmudgeonly in the face of change simply for the sake of it.
Rather, it is because he is one of the fortunate people in life who has found a career that he enjoys immensely and happens to be exceptionally good at.
In this he is not alone. I know there are plenty of you who simply want to be allowed to get on with the job you love rather than have to pivot to something else.
But it is in the pursuit of holding on to as much as possible of what we relish that some change is often necessary – unless you are in the fortunate position of comfortably surviving without area payments already.
Not doing anything differently is a choice in itself, and won’t always pay off.
That is why the blueprint of Clarkson and Cooper strikes a chord – we see in them a blend of talents that will find a way through all of this.
Enough guts to change, but enough caution to temper the wildest risks.
Hope to see them at next year’s Transition Live event.