You vote. The agronomist has a veto. He has used it four times.
Live streams where viewers vote on a real farm decision — which field, which variety, which order to do things in. The votes are binding except when they are agronomically stupid, and somebody qualified decides which is which.
Why the veto exists and why it is published.
An audience vote on a farm decision is a genuinely good piece of television and a genuinely bad way to run a farm. Fifteen thousand people voting on a drilling date do not carry the consequences of a fifteen thousand pound mistake, and they cannot see the soil.
So Charlie Ireland holds a veto. He can overrule any vote, at any point, and the only condition is that he has to say why on camera at the time and it goes on the record afterwards.
A veto that is used quietly is a rigged vote. A veto that is used in public, with reasons, is the thing that makes the vote worth having at all — because it means the eleven decisions that were not vetoed genuinely were yours.
What is open to vote right now.
Three open questions. Every one of them is a decision that has to be made anyway, on a date that is already in the diary.
Which field goes into winter beans?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
Wheat variety for the barley block?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
What happens to the six worst acres?
Pick one. It costs nothing and wins nothing but points.
This is a vote, not a wager. Nothing is staked, nothing is won, no money changes hands and there is no market of any kind. It is not gambling and it is not designed to look like it.
The rules of a live vote.
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| What can be voted on | A decision that has to be made anyway, on a date already in the diary |
| What cannot | Anything involving animal welfare, anybody’s safety, or somebody’s job |
| Who votes | Anybody watching. No membership, no account, no charge |
| One vote each | Enforced as well as it can be, which is not perfectly |
| Ties | Broken by whoever has to do the work |
| The veto | Charlie Ireland, on agronomic grounds only, stated live |
| After a veto | The second-placed option runs, unless that is also vetoed |
| The record | Every vote and every veto published, with the reason and the outcome |
The four vetoes, and what they tell you.
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Twice for blackgrass.
Both times the vote wanted an early-drilled wheat in a field with a known blackgrass burden, because early drilling is intuitive and blackgrass is invisible on a camera.
Drilling that field in the third week of September rather than the third week of October is the difference between a manageable population and a field you spray off. It is the single most expensive mistake available on this farm and the audience walked straight towards it twice.
The audience has voted for early drilling every single time it has been offered, and it has been wrong every single time.
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Once for a variety with a disease score that did not survive this site.
A popular high-yielding variety with a septoria rating that works in a dry east-coast rotation and does not work in a wet Cotswold valley. The vote was reasonable and the answer was still no.
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And once because the vote wanted something done in the wrong order.
Rolling before the stones had been picked, which would have been fine for the crop and expensive for the combine four months later.
That one was the most interesting, because nobody watching was wrong about anything. They just could not see the whole sequence.
Nothing is staked and nothing is won
This is a vote. It is not a prediction market, not a sweepstake and not a wager. No money, credit or prize of any value attaches to being on the winning side, and nothing on this site takes payment. We are being emphatic because a percentage bar beside a question looks like a betting market and it is not one.
Every vote, and every veto, on the record.
With the reason given at the time and what actually happened afterwards.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
The cast page names every person and what they are actually responsible for, which is not always what the programme implies.
No. This is an unsolicited third-party demonstration build, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the businesses it describes.
