CityLife

Organic champion Guy Watson takes on the big guns

Guy Watson, ethical businessman

GUY Watson is happy for me to dub him the Richard Branson of organic food boxes.

I’m sure he’s been called a lot worse by the supermarket big guns he has lambasted over the years for their crass manipulation of the British food industry.

Lanky, gobby Watson has a terrific platform to mount his attacks.

His Riverford Organics has expanded over 20 years from its original Devon base to supply a regular 70,000 customers from five sites, including Stockley Farm, part of Cheshire’s Arley estate.

 Gnarled turnips

With a background in management consultancy (as well as the family farm) and a flair for publicity, he is no cranky hippy with a few gnarled turnips and a dream to flog you.

But he is gobby. The moment we settle in Stockley’s visitor centre café he is tilting at the supermarkets for their reaction to the credit crunch.

‘‘Last autumn one big supermarket decided to take organic salad potatoes off the shelves. That had a terrible knock-on effect on the small suppliers growing those for them.

‘‘That November we made a plan for our box contents right through to spring 2010 and we intend to stick by it. We are an ethical business.’’

Crushed competitors?

Surely, though, Guy, by creating a national business of this size with franchisees promoting it you have, however inadvertently, crushed a few smaller competitors in the field (sic)?

‘‘A survey of 20 other box set providers found only one hostile and most felt by heightening awareness of schemes we were having a positive influence.

‘‘Some might try us and then decide to opt for their local scheme.’’Guy was speaking ahead of two evening speaking events at Altrincham’s splendid Hullabaloo organic café on Tuesday, June 9, and Wednesday, June 10.

When he talks about ‘‘respecting nature, learning from it, finding a more sympathetic way of living’’ you hope he won’t just be preaching to the converted

Health benefits

He was ready to address the inevitable questions that arise about organic food: benefits to health, freshness/carbon footprints, appearance/flavour, affordability.

Health: ‘‘When I was growing up our family farm, like most others, used loads of chemicals. As a teenager I got ill after getting careless while spraying sweetcorn, not wearing protection. My brother got paraquat poisoning.

''Agribusiness uses chemicals to grow our food, while neglecting the health of the soil. You should grow vegetables with the minimum disturbance to the soil, with no boundary between soil and minerals.

''An abundance of earthworms is the best indicator you are doing it right. The best growing material is often directly under hedges where matter composts and the soil is friable.’’

Affordability: ‘‘We estimate, buying with us you spend 10 per cent more than you would on equivalent, non-organic fruit and veg. With organic equivalents we are charging 20 per cent, occasionally 30 per cent less.’’

Freshness/carbon footprints: ‘‘The majority of our produce is local to our regional bases. When we used to supply supermarkets stuff would be trucked all over the place, often spending up to a week at the central stockists with diminished nutritional benefits.

''We can’t claim our customers receive veg picked the same day, but 48 hours old is the maximum from grower to customer. It is borderline immoral to fly in organic veg produce from across the globe.’’

Gooseberries at their peak

Guy is sceptical that we are really eating more seasonally than 15 years ago, though his more clued-up customers are savouring the current asparagus and broad bean season and anticipating the brief period when gooseberries are at their peak.

On the converse side, unreal expectations of being able to eat fresh local apples all year round are still rife.

 Appearance/flavour: ‘Thanks to supermarket policy, their customers expect perfectly round tomatoes and no skin blemishes on produce, apples that are uniformly sweet and crisp. For our customers flavour and texture are more important.’’

After 16 years of vegetable boxes and a rapid period of business growth in the late Nineties, early Noughties, the canny Devonian is glad business is just holding steady in these difficult times.

Best ethical restaurant

One area for expansion might be replicating nationwide The Field Kitchen, run by former River Café and Carved Angel chef Jane Baxter at the original Riverford Farm in Buckfastleigh, Devon.

The Observer Food Monthly recently rated it as Britain’s ‘best ethical restaurant’.

She has access there to Riverford’s only organic meat source (it can be ordered nationally).

‘‘Jane’s a great meat eater as well as a great cook, says Guy, who admits to cutting his meat (and fish) intake for ethical reasons.

‘We all eat too much meat – too much for the planet. Too much land is given over to providing crops to feed livestock. As I get older I enjoy veg more and more.''

With the quality on his doorstep, no wonder!

Riverford Organics in the north west, see link right.  Hullabaloo, 5 Kings Court, Railway Street, Altrincham, Cheshire WA14 2RD (0161 941 4288). The Riverford Farm Cookbook (Fourth Estate, £16.99).