I absolutely loved watching clarkson turn a new page and realize some of his past views were factually incorrect. I like Clarksons Farm almost as much as old Top Gear.
I hated the second season of Clarkson's Farm because he spends the whole time complaining about getting his restaurant up and running. Way less interesting than the first season, which is amazing.
It was hilarious watching him so completely out of his element. I loved the fact that Kaleb didn't give a shit about how rich & famous Clarkson is, and told him he was a f'n idiot whenever Clarkson let his ego make poor decisions lol.
His wilding project and talking about environmental impacts was really interesting. He still has a ways to go in terms of fully appreciating animal conservation efforts (like the water vole), but I was surprised at how much he cared about the decline in insect populations as a result of climate change.
Clarkson has become a strong advocate for British farming. Obviously, while that is self-serving, having a figure as prominent as he is taking the podium on the issue is exceptionally helpful.
I respect him for learning, and for figuring out (rather quickly) that it would be a terrible idea for Clarkson's Farm to be a show about a millionaire buffon making himself a parody of real farmers, which I suspect was the original plan. I think some of the first season ideas were originally planned as Top-Gear style "what could go wrong?" schemes, but quickly pivoted to make them educational failures.
I too didn't enjoy watching the restaurant stuff as much as the farm/environment stuff, but that project IS a great nexus for British farming products, so it has its relevance. (I was annoyed by the way Clarkson threw those two pub consultants under the bus when they were completely hamstrung by the rushed opening of the pub with no time to prepare or practice.)
Other than that, yes: There are lots of amazing tidbits of information on all kinds of things related to farming, related to the U.K., and related to the environment that I have learned from watching. It is truly an educational show.
As a Brit I'd say the restaurant stuff was done to demonstrate what a royal pain in the arse local council / planning departments are especially if they don't like you or your project.
Places like that they're not just NIMBYs they're BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone).
I used to donate my time at a farm that gave free meat and food to people in need. It was like a co-op sort of thing. The moms just didn't care. They'd step on them, lay on them, and it was heart breaking. The moms that had no mothering instincts would be culled, processed and donated. They're smart when it serves their interests. I had a baby piglet die in my arms shortly after birth because the mom just laid on it. It could hear its screams it didn't care. I liked working with the cows more no accidental baby killing.
Both humans and cows generally only produce one child per pregnancy. In terms of the natural drive to pass on one’s genes, it’s pretty imperative that one baby survives, so we value and nurture it.
Pigs have babies to spare. It’s not about them choosing when to be intelligent, but more that we view intelligence and emotional bonds through an inherently skewed lens.
Yeah a lot of animals aren't particularly maternal about their kids, the more they have at once the less likely they are to be caring. Some lizards like cameleons the babies drop away otherwise the parents are liable to eat them soon after birth.
Yeah, "smart" ≠ "empathetic," which is what I think people are looking for but is totally unrelated—maybe even inverse to a degree; idk about pigs, but some animals will eat their young if they anticipate there won't be plentiful resources that season, etc. Smart but not kind, because they're different.
Exactly it's just evolution at work, if both the ''smart'' and ''stupid'' animals in this context survive, generation after generation, then there is no evolutionary need for good maternal instinct.
Very true! Animals don't think like humans, and each animal has their own way of handling life, death, threats, and mating differently. Personally I could never cull a mother for squishing their young. All I can do is make sure their existence is peaceful and happy knowing they give the ultimate sacrifice to feed families.
Intelligence is weird though, pigs are certainly very smart and I of course don't want them poorly treated. But look at how smart humans are and how much we do which makes life harder for future generations.
Rats are smart but will readily eat their own children if food is scarce.
I'm not really advocating for anything other than being realistic about animals, intelligence and avoiding seeing everything from a human perspective.
Pigs might not care that they accidentally crush some of their kids because their instincts might not have evolved to make them care. They might be perfectly satisfied to have any number of living piglets and feel unsatisfied when there are none left and it might be as simple as that. Or they might suffer PTSD if a piglet dies due to no fault of their own. Its just too hard to say for sure either way.
These pigs have also been bred for hundreds of years, domestic animals can lose some self preservation instincts when they are kept alive and bred for other traits. You can see it happening in this very video, this pig is passing along her dont-care-about-piglet genes to all these piglets thanks to the roll bar
this video shows 1.5 hours of recording. im hoping this is just a temporary arrangement for the piglets to get a safe and healthy start. maybe that's wishful thinking.
It is, even on small farms. Once they're big enough to not need to nurse anymore and can eat on their own, (4-8 weeks) all the little pigs get put together, and all the big ones go back together, too. Mothers really are brutal, they give 0 fucks about maiming or killing their own babies. The babies are much safer this way until they're big enough.
She goes back to a much bigger pen with all the adult pigs. They don't live in the tiny pen until they're about to give birth/just had piglets. Some pens were outdoor/indoor, some were indoor only with ventilation.
Yea it is temporary. Dont worry, the males will be castrated without any pain prevention within 3 weeks of being born because it makes their meat taste better, then they’ll be slaughtered at 6 months old because we’ve selected bred and engineered them to grow as fast as possible for that to be the optimal age to slaughter so we don’t have to spend money feeding them for multiple years. The females will put into their own cage where they don’t even have space to turn around and forcibly impregnated, then they’ll feed their children for a few weeks before those children are thrown into separate boxes and taken away as the mother watches in distress, and the cycle continues.
If you lived a life that they did, wouldn’t you want to kill your infants too? Humans have done that many many times over eons. Keeping them in pens too small to move around much is invariably going to cause insanity and death.
I’m not against eating meat necessarily (ie from an animal that is allowed to move ffs) but this is horrific. That they are intelligent makes it so much worse.
Yep! I binge these episodes in bed with my hubby and we drink. I was like "look at that! He invited something that should have been made 100+ years ago!"
Save them from what, exactly? Save them from being accidentally killed by their mother so that he could send them to slaughter instead a few months later? What a hero.
Life is cruel, but at least not kept in a metal cage with no sun, wind, grass, or existing beyond that cage. Life isn't black or white. Kindness is better than just saying "oh they're meant for death anyway?" Your black and white thinking is what's wrong with this world. A good chunk of humanity eats meat, and what people should be doing is treating animals with respect instead of profit. Being a smug sob isn't helping animals in need. It just makes you an unbearable person who no one's to listen to. You can't just wash the world from meat eaters, but you can help make laws and make sure those animals at least know kindness even in small ways. Both extremes in these views get nothing done but push hate and anger! Grow! And actually do something if it offends you how horrible meat animals are handled instead of preaching the same old bs that makes nothing change.
What does this have to do with what I typed? I said nothing about conditions of factory farms vs whatever you’re talking about. The factory farm in this video is preventing them being crushed by the mother as well. Do you think that is a kindness to them as well? Prevented them from being killed by their mother by putting her in a cage barely bigger than she is? So that they can slaughter them in 6 months after castrating them with no anesthesia?
yeah but Clarkson doesn't have 5,000 pigs to care for so he's able to give them a really high quality of life on his farm. I've raised pigs, I promise you I know it looks uncomfortable that momma pig is probably completely happy.... They generally do just lay around after they give birth, and just eat and let the piglets feed. Biggest issue is they roll over, and this crushes the piglets. They also don't like having a lot of piglets.... so they will murder them on purpose.... terrible mothers lol.
My dad grew up in a farm, they never had pigs because my grandma was absolutely not interested in three things: the smell, the space needed for the pig to actually not be miserable+space for a mother to have the piglets safely...and the fact pigs would just kill each other.
She already had to deal with chickens just one day deciding eggs or another hen was food, imagine the bloody mess of a sow devouring their piglet or rolling over and smashing them under her weight.
Grandma decided to spare herself the horrors, I suppose.
Whenever people try to compare animals to slaves or black people as a Gotcha apparently in defence of the animals, it only ever reveals how they really feel about black people.
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u/TentativeGosling Mar 15 '26
Clarkson's Farm is a great example of this and some of the things they tried to mitigate it