TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has provided insight into farming life and warned that this year’s harvest “will be catastrophic”.
It comes after the former Top Gear star, 65, said bovine tuberculosis had been found on his Diddly Squat Farm last week.
On Friday, in a post to X, formerly Twitter, he said: “It looks like this year’s harvest will be catastrophic.
“That should be a worry for anyone who eats food.
It looks like this year’s harvest will be catastrophic. That should be a worry for anyone who eats food. If a disaster on this scale had befallen any other industry, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) August 8, 2025
“If a disaster on this scale had befallen any other industry, there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
In response to a person in the comments section saying that drama makes good TV, he said: “Yes. But most farms don’t have TV shows to keep them going.”
Asked if the farm would be able to survive without adjacent businesses like Clarkson’s pub and shop, he said: “Not a cat in hell’s chance.”
In another response, he said: “Normal weather would help.
“It never stopped raining in 2024 and never started in 2025.”
Last Thursday, he wrote on X that a pregnant cow had contracted bovine TB on his farm near Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.
Cattle which fail a TB test, or animals that have inconclusive results for two consecutive tests, are classed as “reactors”, and must be isolated and slaughtered.
Asked in the comments of his X post about the prize bull called Endgame, which Clarkson bought recently for £5,500, he said: “His test was ‘inconclusive’.
“I couldn’t bear it if we lost him.”
Bad news from Diddly Squat. We’ve gone down with TB. Everyone here is absolutely devastated.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) July 31, 2025
Bovine TB is recognised as a problem which devastates farm businesses and is mainly spread through close contact when cattle breathe in droplets of mucus containing Mycobacterium bovis bacteria exhaled from an infectious animal.
Badgers can carry the disease and culling has long been a part of the Government response to the crisis, despite criticism from wildlife and animal welfare campaigners, such as Queen guitarist Sir Brian May.
The Government said in June it will not be extending the badger cull and retains its commitment to end the practice before the next election.
Oxfordshire is an “edge area” for bovine TB, meaning it is a buffer zone between high risk and low risk areas, so most herds are subject to six-monthly TB tests by default.
The every-day running of Clarkson’s farm is documented in a Prime Video series, which first aired in 2021, and brings to light common problems faced by British farmers.
Clarkson has become a vocal supporter of farmers and attended a protest in London against the Government’s move to introduce inheritance tax on farmland in November 2024.
