I was a big football fan for a long time before I got to know any footballers. It soon became clear to me that they didn’t really understand what football fans go through. Conversely, I also realised that most football fans haven’t got a clue what footballers go through. I reached a similar conclusion when I worked with farmers. I didn’t understand what they were all about, and vice versa.
The scales fell from my eyes a year ago when I spent some time filming with a hill farmer called Emlyn near Dolgellau. I’d done a lot of walking in this kind of country and thought I had some understanding of what went on, but it turned out there was almost no assumption I’d made about his life and work that was anywhere near the mark. And it took making a television programme to educate me.
It’s weird, because farmers, unlike footballers, are physically all around us. I suppose this feels less true if you live in the middle of a big city, but that city will itself be ringed by farmland. I grew up right on the edge of the West Midlands conurbation and still spend a lot of time in the area. I know the fields, woods and hills intimately. But I know the farmers not at all. Our lives don’t intersect. They’re usually only visible from a distance, in a field, on a tractor probably, working away doing something I don’t know about. I’m interested enough to ask but rarely seem to get close enough. I don’t know how to lean in.
It is quite possible for a non-farmer’s only engagement with a farmer to consist of the latter telling off the former for straying off a footpath or having their dog off the lead. Other than that, you might see them on the television protesting about something. This alerts us to the challenges they’re having making the numbers add up as they produce our food. But the danger is that the only kind of farmer we ever see is a grumpy one, which paints a false picture. And so the chasm between us widens.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
