Guy Watson

Guy Watson started growing organic vegetables in a field on his father’s farm in

1987, with a borrowed tractor and his now trademark determination to grow good

food, and share it. In 1993 he was delivering the first of his vegboxes from the back

of his old 2CV to 30 local homes. Word spread of this affordable, practical way of

buying flavourful veg, and now there are four Riverford sister farms in the UK, run in

conjunction with likeminded farming families: the original Wash Farm in Devon, plus

Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire. Together, the four sister farms deliver to

around 47,000 homes in the UK each week.

Throughout Riverford’s journey through the boom years of the organic marketplace

and beyond, Guy has always maintained that organic food should not be elitist, but

available to everyone. He puts his belief in the importance of sharing good food

down to his mother who was a fantastic cook who drew her culinary inspiration from

what grew around her and how the creation and enjoyment of wonderful, wholesome

food was an integral part of daily life. Meanwhile Guy’s father has ensured that Guy

and his four siblings have a deeply instilled desire to do something useful in their

lives, and as it turns out, nothing else made the grade but food and farming for any

of them.

Guy initially had a career as a management consultant in London and New York,

but exposure to international business life taught him a lot about the brutality of the

marketplace and the duplicity of my colleagues, but left him ultimately contemptuous

of the emptiness of a life dominated by greed. Above all it made him determined to

produce something genuinely useful and, where possible, to control the marketing;

a determination that was soon reinforced by first brushes with unscrupulous

wholesalers and then supermarket buyers once he headed back home to the family

farm to grow vegetables. Unsurprisingly making sure that farmers get a fair is

hugely important to Guy as a result. By dealing direct with farmers, agreeing prices

in advance and sticking with them means that they are able to stay in business,

keeping money in our rural economy and looking after our countryside.

Guy has spent a lot of time working with the charity Send a Cow, and Riverford

hosts visits from African farmers on the farm to help them develop their sustainable

farming skills. However, he is convinced that we can learn more from them than they

from us. Guy has also maintained strong local links in the local Devon community,

for example with the lunches Riverford makes for Landscove Primary School.

Guy has four children, none of whom have any interest in farming (so far!). He has

been named BBC Farmer of the Year in 2004 and 2012, and Riverford itself has won

many awards including Best Retailer in the Observer Ethical Awards 2010, 2011 and

2013, and at the RSPCA Good Business Awards 2011 and RSPCA Animal Hero

Awards 2013. Its restaurant the Riverford Field Kitchen won Best Ethical Restaurant

2009 and 2010 in the Observer Food Monthly Awards. Riverford’s first book, the

Riverford Farm Cook Book, was published in September 2008 by Fourth Estate

and won Best First Book 2009 and Work on British Food 2009 at the Guild of Food

Writers Awards. This was followed by a second book in 2011, Everyday and Sunday,

Recipes from Riverford Farm.

www.riverford.co.uk