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Every so often, two very different worlds collide in the most unexpected way. For more than 50 years, AFT Trenchers has been quietly designing and building trenching machines at our factory in Sudbury, Suffolk. Jeremy Clarkson, on the other hand, is quite possibly the least quiet man in British farming. Yet over the past eighteen months our paths have crossed twice: first at LAMMA, the UK’s biggest agricultural machinery show, and then again this June at Cereals 2026, hosted on Clarkson’s own Diddly Squat Farm in Oxfordshire.
Here is the story of how a Suffolk trencher manufacturer ended up with a walk-on part in one of the most watched farming programmes in the world, and what two days of Oxfordshire rain and mud taught everyone about the value of good land drainage.
A Surprise Visitor at LAMMA
If you work in UK agriculture, you will know LAMMA. Held every January at the NEC in Birmingham, it is the country’s largest showcase of agricultural machinery, technology and equipment, and AFT Trenchers has been a regular exhibitor for many years. You will usually find us in Hall 6 on Stand 6.956, surrounded by our tractor-mounted and excavator-mounted trenchers.
At LAMMA25, however, our stand had a visitor we were not expecting. Jeremy Clarkson, in the middle of filming for his Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm, stopped by the AFT stand with the camera crew in tow. It is not every day that one of the most recognisable faces in Britain wanders over to talk trenchers, and it caused quite a stir in Hall 6.
Better still, the visit made the final cut. If you are watching the latest series of Clarkson’s Farm, keep an eye out for Series 5, Episode 3, where our LAMMA stand makes an appearance. For a company that has spent five decades focused on engineering rather than showbusiness, seeing an AFT trencher pop up on one of Amazon Prime’s biggest shows was a genuinely proud moment for the whole team.
Why Clarkson’s Farm Matters to Companies Like Ours
It would be easy to dismiss the Clarkson effect as celebrity noise, but ask anyone in the industry and they will tell you the opposite. Clarkson’s Farm has done more to bring the day-to-day reality of British farming into people’s living rooms than almost anything else in recent memory. Millions of viewers now understand things that farmers have always known: that margins are tight, that the weather does not care about your plans, and that so much of farming is a battle with water, in the ground, on the ground and falling from the sky.
That last point is our world. Land drainage is one of those subjects that rarely makes headlines, yet it underpins the productivity of farmland across the country. Fields that sit wet drain nutrients away, damage soil structure, delay drilling and harvest, and quietly eat into yields year after year. When a programme like Clarkson’s Farm shows a field turning to soup, every farmer watching knows exactly what that means. We build the machines that help fix it.
Cereals 2026 at Diddly Squat Farm
Which brings us neatly to this summer. Cereals, the UK’s leading technical event for the arable industry, took place on 10 and 11 June 2026, and this year it had a rather famous host: the event was held at Diddly Squat Farm in Chadlington, near Chipping Norton. AFT Trenchers was there on Stand 515, showing our machines to farmers, contractors and drainage specialists from across the country and beyond.
Anyone who attended will remember one thing above all: the weather. The show was two solid days of rain and mud. Wellies were essential, umbrellas were useless and the ground churned into exactly the kind of heavy, waterlogged mess that farmers up and down the country deal with every wet season.
We will be honest: there is a certain irony in a drainage machinery manufacturer standing in a rain-soaked field. But in truth, we could not have asked for a better demonstration of why we do what we do. Nothing makes the case for proper land drainage quite like watching thousands of visitors squelch past your stand for two days. Every puddle was a reminder that well-drained land works harder, recovers faster and earns more.
Our stand had a fresh look for the occasion too, with a brand new pop-up tent making its debut, and centre stage went to the machine that has earned its reputation in conditions exactly like these: the AFT100.
The AFT100: Built for Days Like These
The AFT100 is our flagship tractor-mounted drainage trencher and one of the most popular machines in our range, trusted across agriculture, sportsturf and civil engineering. It is designed to cut clean, accurate trenches for land drainage schemes efficiently and reliably, in ground conditions that are rarely as kind as you would like.
For farmers, that means getting water off the land and into the drains where it belongs, protecting soil structure, extending the working season and safeguarding yields. For contractors, it means a machine that keeps working, season after season, backed by a manufacturer with more than 50 years of trenching experience. If Cereals 2026 proved anything, it is that British weather is not getting any more forgiving, and the case for investing in drainage has never been stronger.
Clarkson’s Farm Series 5 Episode 3 – Featuring AFT Trenchers 😊
(OK, only 3 seconds but still…!)
Credits to Amazon Prime (and thank you for featuring us!) pic.twitter.com/f6tGGqJidw
— AFT Trenchers (@AFTTrenchers) June 30, 2026
Where to See Us Next
The show season never really stops, and we would love to see you at our next events:
- LAMMA 2027 – 20 to 21 January 2027, Hall 6, Stand 6.956, NEC Birmingham
- BTME 2027 – 26 to 28 January 2027, Stand 144, Convention Centre, Harrogate
Come and talk to the team about your drainage requirements, see the machines up close and find out which trencher is right for your land, your soil and your budget. And if you spotted us on Clarkson’s Farm, do come and say hello. We are still talking about it.
Talk to AFT Trenchers
Whether you are planning a full field drainage scheme, upgrading sportsturf drainage or installing cable and pipe, AFT Trenchers has a machine to suit. Explore our trencher comparison table to compare models, or get in touch with the team in Sudbury to discuss your requirements. With over 50 years of manufacturing excellence behind every machine, we are always happy to help, whatever the weather.
