If birth is turning the first furrow, Riverford turns 40 this month. Having quit a lucrative, if morally bankrupt, job as a management consultant in NYC in 1985, I came home to spend the New Year at Riverford – the tenanted Devon farm where I had mucked out pigs and pitched bales ever since I pulled on my first pair of very small wellies. To this day I cannot explain what guided me as I ploughed the only fertile, level field on the farm to grow organic vegetables within a stone’s throw of the house I was born in. Pig-headed independence rendered me unemployable – I needed to be outside to stay sane; the casual brutality and dishonesty of the business I had experienced left me determined to create some real and honest value from my life’s labours. Having recently been diagnosed with autism, I can now appreciate that I was lucky to be able to create an environment that suited my neurodiversity.
With little research and no real plan, one day I hitched an antiquated plough to a borrowed tractor and turned the first furrow that would lead to 40 wonderful years of veg nerdery and radical business. I had a lot to learn; about organic farming, veg growing, business, and myself, and a lot to prove – to myself, my father, and the world. I observed, matured, and spent countless hours working up and down rows of veg doing tasks many would find tedious but which gave me ample space to consider the world I wanted to live in and my role in shaping it. How could we farm with nature rather than against it; what really motivated and fulfilled staff and enabled them to fulfil their potential; how to contain the chaos without killing the spirit; how to grow a really good strawberry without pesticides; how to tell the story and engage customers; how to manage it all with fairness to all.
After 25 years of exponential growth I had a better idea of what I wanted to achieve and the answer came in recognising what I was good at and what I wasn’t. Sharing my dreams, and load, led to Riverford becoming employee-owned in 2018 and me returning to the fields – campaigning for smaller farmers in
the UK and East Africa. At 65, I’m far from done and will spend the rest of my years hoping to demonstrate that human nature is rooted in compassion, not competition. 40 years on, our customer community is living proof: none of it would have been possible without your support.
Image of Guy loading veg box deliveries into his Citroen, in the early days of Riverford.
Our News from the Farm posts come from Riverford. They are the digital versions of the printed letters which go out to customers, every week via Riverford’s veg boxes. Guy Singh-Watson’s weekly newsletters connect people to the farm with refreshingly honest accounts of the trials and tribulations of producing organic food, and the occasional rant about farming, ethical and business issues he feels strongly about.
0 Comments