In 2019, you can have whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want it. Do those with money in their pockets feel truly empowered, free to express themselves and defined by their buying choices?

Retailers work themselves into a frenzy to keep up with ever more ‘demanding’ customers – spiralling closer to each other in a race to the bottom. What is sold to us as choice is really passive consumption, directed more from without (through brand, marketing promotions, and availability) than chosen according to our intrinsic values.

Consider a spectrum where one extreme is, say, a market with stalls of unpackaged, irregular, seasonal food, sold by people who produce (or at least know and care about) what they are selling, where human relationships are part of the shopping experience – and the other extreme is the aisles of Asda and Sainsbury’s.

The vast majority of food retail is clustered at the soul-sapping end of the spectrum, wrecking our planet, our health and our society in a way that few of us, offered full information or any meaningful alternative (both conditions of an effective market) would choose.

The choices we are offered are the ones our model of highly centralised, large-scale, dehumanised retailers can control and profit from.

Sadly, authentic, healthy, unadulterated food, produced with sensitivity for people, animals and the environment, is very hard to make money from. Such food is out there, but too often hidden behind noisy brands with deep pockets to market themselves. It all makes me so mad I have even written a poem about it alongside the co-owner who edits this newsletter.

During September we are running a campaign encouraging people to ask difficult questions and make informed choices about the food they buy. As part of this, we hope to hear what inspires you, our customers, to choose organic veg boxes.

Why #IChoose Riverford

There are three ways to help us spread the organic word. Share your reason on Instagram, or in our new Facebook community Riverford Tribe, using the hashtag #IChoose. Or, look out for our #IChoose veg boxes, designed for you to write your reason straight onto the box and pass it on. Find out more at choose.riverford.co.uk/ichoose.