Table Talk

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, AKA, The Black Farmer, is a force to be reckoned with. A child of the Windrush generation, he left Jamaica and moved to Birmingham where he lived with 10 family members in a two-up two-down. Nobody would have believed then that he would go on to become a wildly successful farmer and entrepreneur – nobody except him, perhaps. Key to his success has been his attitude, “you have to be audacious”, he tells Elisa Roche in this episode of the Career Conversations podcast series. Even as a young boy, growing up in an area he describes as “the pits”, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones was driven to do better for himself. Roped in to help his dad on his allotment, bought to supplement the family’s income, he soon found his calling: “I absolutely loved being on our allotment as a child because it was an oasis away from the misery I was surrounded by. “At the age of 11, I made myself a promise, that one day I would like to own my own farm.” But before he could achieve his dream, he had a