Who’d be a farmer? Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon is great entertainment but it also gives some indication of the stresses and challenges behind the farm gate. Would anyone who lacked the significant alternative income that Clarkson is lucky to have want that? Well, actually, yes.
I’m an entrepreneur who owns a farm, as opposed to hands-on running the small one I bought 25 years ago, but as I look around the industry, I’m struck by a significant fact: the very reason I can be known as the Black Farmer is because I am such a rarity that it makes me readily identifiable.
Because of what I do, people – many of them British minorities – often ask me how they can be farmers, how they can secure some land and set up for themselves. Don’t be surprised at that: among Britain’s minorities, millions have rural origins in lands abroad. It is a mistake to see people of colour as intrinsically urban – my own origins are in rural Jamaica. But when they ask me, I can’t really help them. There is no obvious route for them to follow, and there is precious little land they could possibly farm. This is the reality. In 2025, when Defra completed its most recent survey of principal farmers and holders in England, it found 99.7% of those who responded self-described as white.
I’m aware of the pitfall here. I know the danger these days of wanting to talk about diversity and being dismissed as woke. I’m hardly woke: in 2010 I fought a rural seat for the Conservatives. But in any other industry, that figure, 99.7%, would prompt some questions.
Here are the problems. If you are black or Asian or a kid from another minority in London, or Manchester, or Birmingham or Newcastle, where do you start? Your parents don’t own even an acre of land. You don’t have the network, or the knowledge that comes from growing up within or adjacent to a farming family and a farming community.
There is the ongoing and emotive debate about inheritance tax and whether farms should so easily be passed down from generation to generation. I’m among those who celebrate the families that have worked the same land year after year, decade after decade. That brings a knowledge and continuity essential to rural communities and our food supply. But as well as inheritance, we have to think about entry. People cannot resolve to make that commitment if they cannot see a way in.
How could that be different? Think about who owns the land. The National Trust, for example, is the country’s largest farm-owner, with more than 1,300 tenant farmers. Think about the Duchy of Cornwall, the crown estate, the Church of England. Universities and local authorities also control large tracts of land. There are people and institutions that could administer properly controlled programmes to allow those from non-traditional farming backgrounds to have a go. They could create starter farms and offer affordable tenancies. They could provide mentoring, pairing experienced farmers with ambitious newcomers, and give access to equipment. Maybe there could be targeted apprenticeships, allowing people to learn the ropes on someone else’s farm – a process that may lead to them owning their own farm. One might cite 28-year-old Kaleb Cooper on Clarkson’s farm, although in that case it is clearly the younger man teaching the older how it is done.
The supermarkets could play a role, as they wield enormous influence over British food and how it is produced. Why can’t they create routes for a new generation of growers, providing a sure path for produce to reach the public? That would be a move towards diversity with a clear economic purpose. Farming could do with new blood: people who question the traditions, people who know about different foods, cultures and business models – people who look at a field and can envision things that previous generations couldn’t.
I think back. I grew up in Birmingham and my first experience with the land was helping my father on his allotment. My route was defiantly non-traditional. I struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, joined the Parachute regiment and got kicked out, flipped burgers, worked as a chef and then produced cookery programmes for the BBC, which allowed me to buy a farm in Devon. Locals dubbed me “the Black Farmer”. I wish there were many more of us.
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I would never want to denigrate those who work so hard, and who may have toiled for generations to run their farms, produce the food we need and sometimes – if they are lucky, if the weather permits, if the stars align – make a profit. But I also want to be just as excited by the prospect of another black kid from Birmingham getting an opportunity, or a minority kid from a council estate in Manchester becoming the first farmer in the family.
Farming is key to the future, and the climate crisis is forcing us to think fast and hard about crops, water, soil and what we do with them. Old timers, new thinkers – we need both.
