Jeremy Clarkson says Clarkson’s Farm’s seventh series is not guaranteed after wrapping series six, leaving 35 to 40 crew without work and underlining how fragile a single media income stream can be for a farm business.
Jeremy Clarkson has told journalists that the future of Clarkson’s Farm is uncertain, just days after filming wrapped on the show’s sixth series. Speaking at the Royal Television Society London Convention on Tuesday 29 September 2026, the 66-year-old broadcaster said: “We wrapped season six of Clarkson’s Farm final yesterday, and season seven is kind of, ‘What are we going to do?’”, according to the Daily Express.
Why it matters to your farm business
Clarkson’s Farm has done more for the public image of UK farming than any advertising campaign could buy, and it has turned Diddly Squat into a case study every diversification adviser points to. But the story this week is not about the farm shop queue. It is about what happens when the production behind a media-led diversification stops, or shrinks. Clarkson told the RTS crowd that 35 to 40 crew members from the show are now out of work, and that these are people “sitting at home thinking, ‘How are we going to pay our mortgage?’” That is a direct read-across for any farm business that has built a diversification around a single contract, a single buyer or a single platform: when the commissioning stops, the jobs and the income stop with it, often with little notice.
Our analysis of which diversification enterprises actually pay keeps coming back to the same point: the returns that hold up over several years are the ones with more than one income stream and more than one customer. A farm shop, a glamping site or a wedding barn that depends on one TV show, one supermarket contract or one subsidy scheme is carrying concentration risk, whether or not the business plan calls it that.
What it means in practice
Clarkson was blunt about the wider pressure on his industry too. He said: “I know a huge amount of producers that I’ve worked with over the years, really, really clever people, decent, sensible, hard-working people, who cannot find work in the industry.” He linked this to broadcasters moving to a “fewer, bigger, better” commissioning model as social media erodes traditional viewing, and floated the idea that UK broadcasters, “the whole lot of us; BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel Four, Channel Five”, could end up consolidating onto one platform. He used gardening television, and Monty Don’s exit from Gardeners’ World, as an example of a genre already being squeezed, arguing: “Anyone can do a gardening thing on social media or cookery. It’s very difficult to make a television show work unless you’re cooking on the Moon or you know, doing something incredible.”
For a farm business, the lesson is less about television and more about labour and skills exposure. The same concentration risk shows up on the ground: our report on a Cornwall beef farm that planted 4,200 trees found that labour, not capital, was the binding constraint on diversification plans. A farm that builds a tourism, media or events sideline around one or two skilled staff is exposed in exactly the way Clarkson describes: when the work dries up, those people and their experience leave the sector, and they are hard to replace when the next opportunity comes along.
What to do now
Treat any media, events or single-contract diversification income the way you would treat a single-buyer grain contract: useful, but not the whole plan. Keep a written note of what share of turnover depends on one relationship, and what the business looks like without it for a year. If you employ staff specifically for a diversification enterprise, check their contracts and notice terms now, not when the contract ends. And if you are weighing up a new enterprise on the back of farming’s current media profile, our coverage of the McKinsey global farmer survey and what it means for UK farm tech spend is a useful companion read on how farmer sentiment and media attention do not always translate into reliable income.
Is Clarkson’s Farm series 7 confirmed?
No. Jeremy Clarkson told the Royal Television Society London Convention on 29 September 2026 that a seventh series is undecided, saying: “season seven is kind of, ‘What are we going to do?’”, as reported by the Daily Express.
Has Clarkson’s Farm filming finished?
Yes. Clarkson confirmed filming on series six wrapped the day before his RTS appearance, saying: “We wrapped season six of Clarkson’s Farm final yesterday.”
How many jobs are affected?
Clarkson said 35 to 40 crew members from the production are currently out of work while the future of the show is decided.
The takeaway: Clarkson’s Farm has shown what farm diversification can look like on screen, but this week’s news shows what it looks like off screen too, and any farm business leaning on one media or single-contract income stream should know what the balance sheet looks like without it.
Photo: HawkstoneOfficial, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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