I fully expect Jeremy Clarkson to have never baked a loaf of bread in his life.
I’ll occasionally bake a loaf of bread, here in my home kitchen. I can’t do it with only wheat flour, I need water, salt, sugar and oil as well. So I have to pay my municipal waterworks, a salt miner, a sugar beet farmer, a rapeseed farmer, a wheat farmer, and whatever you call a yeast maker, plus their adjacent industries (I don’t by sugar beets, I buy refined granular sugar, etc) and multiple truck and train drivers who move all of those goods in their various states of manufacture around the continent.
Then I’ve got to bake it, I have an electric oven so now the local energy concern gets their cut. It’s that, or get a gas oven and cook with natural gas (fossil fuel methane), or misuse my backyard grill and cook with fossil fuel propane, or get out my axe, fell a tree and build a fire, which is labor intensive on my part.
Sometimes, watching Jeremy’s Farm, there’s an amount of “I didn’t think it would take this much knowledge or skill.” Because jackasses like me with 40 square feet of vegetable garden and some packets of seeds from the home center manage to make food. How hard can it be to scale that up to hundreds of acres? Modern farmers need a bachelor’s degree, you need to know about plants and animals and soil and all manner of shit to be a farmer. “Put seeds in ground, plants grow.” Yes, but actually no.
Sometimes it’s “He’s still The Orangutan from Top Gear.” He buys a tractor that’s way too big and then struggles to drive it, lol.
A lot of times it’s “I don’t think rich TV man actually understands how society works, people have just done shit for him his entire life.”
His show is entertainment, so he has this character who is semi- incompetent in everything. Yeah, he has this personality also, but not 100%. And some of what he does is just idiotic. The tractor is just him I’m that role.
But the show highlights a lot of important aspects. The skill of farming, the sheer amount of effort, the risk and how much you get for all that risk and effort.
For me it’s a missed opportunity that the farmers didn’t integrate the chain up like many stores have done down. That is buy the mills, bakeries and stores. Why can the grocery chains so it, but not the other way around?
Exactly. What he never ever does is underplay what real farmers do. He’s also using this platform to speak for them, and British farmers are largely supportive of his efforts in shining lights on problems they face every day.
But some people online hate the guy and have made their mind up before even bothering to read or try and understand.
His show is entertainment, so he has this character who is semi- incompetent in everything. Yeah, he has this personality also, but not 100%. And some of what he does is just idiotic.
The thing about playing a bafoon-ish, semi-incompetent character that uses racist encoded jokes, promoting a lifestyle of the bored rich elite is that at some point you have to come off stage and out of character.
When Clarkson comes off stage, he punches people in the face because he didn’t get his din-dins or writes opinion pieces with racist encoded jokes and illiberal positions.
Even in the UK, we would call most American bread “fortified dough”, like a sweet/pudding, not bread. I bake occasionally and it’s flour, water, salt and yeast.
So I have to pay my municipal waterworks, a salt miner, a sugar beet farmer, a rapeseed farmer, a wheat farmer, and whatever you call a yeast maker, plus their adjacent industries (I don’t by sugar beets, I buy refined granular sugar, etc) and multiple truck and train drivers who move all of those goods in their various states of manufacture around the continent.
The good news is that, thanks to economies of scale, all of these consumer goods are incredibly cheap by unit weight.
The bad news is the we’ve privatized so much of the agricultural infrastructure and stuck so many middle men in between you and the raw labor that produce these useful goods, that the margins on cost are enormous.
How hard can it be to scale that up to hundreds of acres? Modern farmers need a bachelor’s degree, you need to know about plants and animals and soil and all manner of shit to be a farmer. “Put seeds in ground, plants grow.” Yes, but actually no.
The beauty of industrial farming isn’t in simplicity but yield. Nitrogen fixed fertilizer and modern irrigation and combine harvester mean a handful of professionals can do the work of thousands of amateurs.
But if you don’t actually know what you’re doing, or employ someone who does, all that investment is wasted.
I fully expect Jeremy Clarkson to have never baked a loaf of bread in his life.
I’ll occasionally bake a loaf of bread, here in my home kitchen. I can’t do it with only wheat flour, I need water, salt, sugar and oil as well. So I have to pay my municipal waterworks, a salt miner, a sugar beet farmer, a rapeseed farmer, a wheat farmer, and whatever you call a yeast maker, plus their adjacent industries (I don’t by sugar beets, I buy refined granular sugar, etc) and multiple truck and train drivers who move all of those goods in their various states of manufacture around the continent.
Then I’ve got to bake it, I have an electric oven so now the local energy concern gets their cut. It’s that, or get a gas oven and cook with natural gas (fossil fuel methane), or misuse my backyard grill and cook with fossil fuel propane, or get out my axe, fell a tree and build a fire, which is labor intensive on my part.
Sometimes, watching Jeremy’s Farm, there’s an amount of “I didn’t think it would take this much knowledge or skill.” Because jackasses like me with 40 square feet of vegetable garden and some packets of seeds from the home center manage to make food. How hard can it be to scale that up to hundreds of acres? Modern farmers need a bachelor’s degree, you need to know about plants and animals and soil and all manner of shit to be a farmer. “Put seeds in ground, plants grow.” Yes, but actually no.
Sometimes it’s “He’s still The Orangutan from Top Gear.” He buys a tractor that’s way too big and then struggles to drive it, lol.
A lot of times it’s “I don’t think rich TV man actually understands how society works, people have just done shit for him his entire life.”
His show is entertainment, so he has this character who is semi- incompetent in everything. Yeah, he has this personality also, but not 100%. And some of what he does is just idiotic. The tractor is just him I’m that role.
But the show highlights a lot of important aspects. The skill of farming, the sheer amount of effort, the risk and how much you get for all that risk and effort.
For me it’s a missed opportunity that the farmers didn’t integrate the chain up like many stores have done down. That is buy the mills, bakeries and stores. Why can the grocery chains so it, but not the other way around?
Exactly. What he never ever does is underplay what real farmers do. He’s also using this platform to speak for them, and British farmers are largely supportive of his efforts in shining lights on problems they face every day.
But some people online hate the guy and have made their mind up before even bothering to read or try and understand.
The thing about playing a bafoon-ish, semi-incompetent character that uses racist encoded jokes, promoting a lifestyle of the bored rich elite is that at some point you have to come off stage and out of character.
When Clarkson comes off stage, he punches people in the face because he didn’t get his din-dins or writes opinion pieces with racist encoded jokes and illiberal positions.
You don’t have your own yeastmonger? Shame. Only way to go really.
that sounds like a d-tier supervillain
sugar?
Yeast needs sugar to eat in order to fart out carbon dioxide and make bread less dense.
Most white loaf bread recipes start with “dissolve sugar into warm water, add yeast, allow to proof until thick and foamy.”
Most American white loaf bread recipes…
Even in the UK, we would call most American bread “fortified dough”, like a sweet/pudding, not bread. I bake occasionally and it’s flour, water, salt and yeast.
that’s crazy
Proofing yeast is crazy to the Brits. If you say so.
The good news is that, thanks to economies of scale, all of these consumer goods are incredibly cheap by unit weight.
The bad news is the we’ve privatized so much of the agricultural infrastructure and stuck so many middle men in between you and the raw labor that produce these useful goods, that the margins on cost are enormous.
The beauty of industrial farming isn’t in simplicity but yield. Nitrogen fixed fertilizer and modern irrigation and combine harvester mean a handful of professionals can do the work of thousands of amateurs.
But if you don’t actually know what you’re doing, or employ someone who does, all that investment is wasted.