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Jeremy Clarkson urges Parliament to prioritise farming – and Boris Johnson is preparing a response-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro
He’s growing frustrated with local authorities.
Jeremy Clarkson has called on the government to prioritise farming (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has seen a message from Jeremy Clarkson about the farming industry and intends to respond, No 10 has said.
Earlier today, the broadcaster and TV presenter, 62, called upon the government to prioritise farming during the next meeting in Parliament.
Responding on Twitter, the official No 10 account said: ‘Thanks for this Jeremy, the PM has seen this and his response is incoming.’
Clarkson complained that farmers have been asked to diversify but are being prevented from doing so by local authorities.
The former Top Gear host and current presenter of Amazon’s The Grand Tour has become a campaigner for the farming industry after filming his television series Clarkson’s Farm.
The series follows Clarkson’s attempts to grow crops and look after livestock on Diddy Squat, the land he owns in the Cotswolds.
In a video directed at officials in Number 10 Downing Street, Clarkson said that the issue of local authorities stopping farmers from diversifying ‘needs addressing’.
When a farm diversifies, it branches out from traditional farming methods to expand its range of produce, increase its various functions, and potentially create more profits.
‘Hi, I am Jeremy Clarkson, and in the next Parliament I would like to see the government prioritising farming’, he said in the video.
‘We have been asked to diversify [but] when we try to do that the local authorities tell us we can’t.’
The outspoken Clarkson’s call for action comes shortly after he claimed in his Sunday Times column that he had been unfairly blocked from selling crayfish in his farm shop.
‘You go down to your own lake… haul in a net full of delicious morsels, and then sell them to passing families as a healthy snack,’ he wrote.
Clarkson and his right hand man Kaleb Cooper have been praised for shining a much-needed light on the tough farming industry in Clarkson’s Farm (Picture: Amazon)
‘Except I can’t do that because this isn’t a free country.’
The kind of crayfish found on Clarkson’s farm are non-native American crayfish, however, and cannot be trapped without the Environment Agency’s consent.
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This is due to problems caused by illegal crayfish traps, such as their negative effects on the crayfish population and the dangers they pose to other wildlife, including otters and water voles.
Trapping the crayfish without written permission is regarded as a potentially prosecutable offence, according to the government’s website.
Nevertheless, fans are grateful for Clarkson’s efforts, with one fan thanking him for ‘using his platform to make needed changes’.
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