I’m known as The Black Farmer because there are so few of us in the UK. It’s one of the ways farming must change

In Defra’s most recent survey of England’s principal farmers and holders, 99.7% self-described as white. Photograph: Peter Cade/Getty Images

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.