\u201cCardoons are a perennial crop \u2013 they keep coming back every year,\u201d says Guy Singh-Watson, as his dog, Artichoke, roots around for voles among the tall thistle-like plants. \u201cThey would be a dream crop \u2013 if only people liked eating them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cardoons, which Singh-Watson learned to love while snowed in on a Sicilian mountain, are not your typical vegetable. But then the Riverford<\/a> veg box founder is not your typical farmer, despite still living only a few miles from the farm where he was born.<\/p>\n Unlike most farmers, Singh-Watson says we need to eat less meat, that large-scale farmers should pay inheritance tax and that Brexit has been \u201ca complete and utter fuck-up\u201d. He has opposed foxhunting, banned the badger cull<\/a> from his land and supported the climate protesters of Extinction Rebellion<\/a>. He once even voted for Jeremy Corbyn. When it comes to the challenges agriculture faces, he is the most brutally honest farmer in the UK.<\/p>\n Ploughing this lonely furrow has not limited his success. Riverford, now owned by its employees, had a turnover of \u00a3113m in 2023-24 and made a profit of \u00a35.7m. He has also been awarded farmer of the year by the BBC twice.<\/p>\n But how did Singh-Watson come to follow this path? In a long conversation outside the Riverford Field Kitchen restaurant, he talked to the Guardian about his unconventional father, a mother who made good food the beating heart of the farm and revealed his autism, diagnosed formally only recently.<\/p>\n Cucumber stew<\/p>\n Gillian and John Watson arrived at Riverford Farm in 1951, both from colonial families returning home as the British empire faded. \u201cMy parents wanted to do something useful with their lives, and at a time when there was still food rationing,\u201d says Singh-Watson.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were Liberals all their life, in quite an old-school, perhaps almost patronising way \u2026 They had a social conscience and believed that being wealthy and privileged came with responsibilities.\u201d This was not a given, he says. \u201cMy father\u2019s family were absolutely hideous \u2013 the worst sort of rich, wealthy twats and racists. But he made something better from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Guy Singh-Watson with a handful of borlotti beans at Riverford Farm. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n His father was always unconventional. \u201cHe never really wanted to do things the way other people did and was always experimenting with different things \u2013 we were the first people to have a combine harvester in the village. Then he got into pigs in a big way. He was always building different housing setups for them, most of which didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n The farm did, like most others, intensify, embracing pesticides and fertilisers. \u201cThen, in the 1970s, reading Rachel Carson\u2019s Silent Spring and through his own observation, he was starting to question farming intensively.\u201d<\/p>\n Singh-Watson says his father was an \u201cawful cook\u201d, remembering his cucumber stew at one meal. His mother had a degree in agriculture and wanted to farm, \u201cbut those were chauvinist times and she was just the most amazing cook\u201d. She made bread and hams, and grew herbs, but was also an experimenter. \u201cShe was making kombucha in about 1980,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Guy in the field c. 1986 harvesting and moving some of the first organic veg grown at Riverford Photograph: Riverford.co.uk<\/p>\n \u201cMy mum didn\u2019t survive to eat in the Field Kitchen<\/a>,\u201d he says. The Riverford restaurant, now celebrating its 20th year, is the most exceptional part of the business in his opinion. \u201cIf she had, I think she would have absolutely loved it. It was very much based on that experience of growing up in a busy farmhouse with a big, long table, where the whole family and half a dozen people from the farm would come and eat together: great food from really good ingredients, mostly from the farm.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I was unemployable\u2019<\/p>\n The Riverford organic veg business began in 1986 when Singh-Watson returned to the family farm for Christmas after giving up a management consultancy job in New York. \u201cI had decided by then that I was unemployable, that I really couldn\u2019t work for anyone else,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m just too pigheaded and stubborn to ever work for anyone else. I also knew I wanted to be outside.<\/p>\n Guy Singh-Watson at Riverford Farm. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cPeople seemed to be talking about organic vegetables and I thought, there\u2019s an opportunity here,\u201d he says. He started with three acres. His short business career had taught him that controlling the access to market was key and in 1993 he decided to deliver the veg direct to customers in an old yellow Citro\u00ebn Dyane.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was definitely a plan, and also an emotional thing, that no one was going to fuck me over like I was fucked over by supermarkets and their very unpleasant buyers,\u201d he says. The break came when he told a Safeway\u2019s buyer where they could stick their measly 6p per lettuce<\/a>. Since then, Riverford has gone from selling only veg from its own farm to founding a co-operative of south Devon organic farms in the late 1990s to today, when it works with more than 100 suppliers in the UK and Europe to fill its boxes.<\/p>\n Singh-Watson got a formal diagnosis of autism in April. \u201cIt made me feel all the more that I don\u2019t have to live by other people\u2019s rules,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m different \u2013 so what? I find it really difficult to understand how people are able to just lie so easily, and to serve their own ends.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites fossil fuel and chemical company boards covering up evidence of harm. \u201cI mean, who the fuck makes those decisions, knowing that they are fucking the planet for their children.\u201d He said the autism diagnosis had helped him understand why this upset him so much and why he had never needed the approval of others: \u201cI don\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n But Singh-Watson says he has softened with time and the help of therapy. \u201cI was definitely like, \u2018I\u2019m going to say this because it\u2019s true, and I don\u2019t give a fuck if you find it offensive\u2019. But I try not to do that now because offending people gratuitously is just stupid and childish really.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Just eat less meat\u2019<\/p>\n Singh-Watson may believe he has softened. But for many years he has been an iconoclastic voice among farmers. Take meat: most British farmers reject calls to eat less red meat to reduce damage to the environment and people\u2019s health. Singh-Watson says eat good meat but less often: just 5% of what Riverford sells is meat. He had shared an organic chicken with eight people the previous evening: \u201cI probably won\u2019t buy another one for a month.\u201d<\/p>\n Guy Singh-Watson in the agro-forestry field at Riverford Farm. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cI spent a lot of time looking at the evidence on [the impact of meat] and it was overwhelming,\u201d he says. \u201cTen billion people can\u2019t live sustainably on this planet if we are eating anything like the level of meat consumed in a western diet. The only answer is we just eat less meat, dairy and eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[Some cattle and sheep farmers] will tell you that that grassland is sequestering as much carbon as a rainforest \u2013 it\u2019s absolutely fucking tosh but it doesn\u2019t stop them saying it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Singh-Watson\u2019s parents were livestock farmers, and his four siblings all work in meat and dairy businesses. \u201cI love seeing the cows and sheep in the fields, and I\u2019m not a vegan or vegetarian,\u201d he says. \u201cI just think we should try harder to eat less meat and to farm in a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Emotive tosh\u2019<\/p>\n That approach has made Singh-Watson a rich man: he sold his last share of Riverford to its 1,000 employees for \u00a310m in 2023<\/a> and owns a 150-acre farm nearby.<\/p>\n So his support for the Labour government\u2019s move to end an exclusion from inheritance tax for farms worth more than \u00a31m once again put him at odds with his peers. In January, he called protests against the tax change \u201cemotive tosh\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy starting point is that we desperately need to raise tax revenue to rebuild our country and rich people, the ones who have been the beneficiaries of all the growth the last 20 years, are the people who should be paying it,\u201d he says, although he says he would have set the threshold higher than \u00a31m.<\/p>\n Under the new rules inheritance tax will be levied at 20% \u2013 half the standard rate \u2013 and with 10 years interest-free to pay. \u201cThat is a pretty major concession, and if you give your land to your children seven years before you die, they don\u2019t pay inheritance tax anyway,\u201d Singh-Watson says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re a farmer owning a farmhouse and 200 acres of land, you\u2019re going to be worth at least \u00a33.2m \u2013 that puts you in the top 1% of wealth in this country,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re farming 500-acres-plus, and you\u2019re worth \u00a310m, you should pay the whole fucking lot \u2013 forget the 50% discount. You should just pay your tax like anyone else. They are immensely wealthy, and though they are relatively poor in terms of income, they do have options. You can sell a field.\u201d He says the children of parents owning a family pub, bakery or brewery may be just as invested in their business as farmers, but do not get any tax breaks.<\/p>\n Guy Singh-Watson with artichokes. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Singh-Watson also backs a wealth tax: \u201cThe rich need to pay their share to restore the services that are wanted. That\u2019s why I\u2019m a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the easiest way to get money out of the farming sector would be to capture the 100-fold increase in land value when planning permission is granted to build houses on it,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t see why the farmer should be the beneficiary of that. Maybe they should get double the agricultural value, but the rest of it should go into the public purse.\u201d His rough estimate of how much that would raise when the government\u2019s target of 300,000 new homes are built is \u00a310bn \u2013 25 times more than the inheritance tax changes.<\/p>\n \u2018Crawling back to Europe\u2019<\/p>\n Of all the positions he has taken, opposing Brexit brought him the most hate, he says. \u201cBut just about everything that I said has turned out to be true: it has been a complete and utter fuck-up. How can anyone argue anything else? Now we\u2019re having to crawl back to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n He excoriates the rise of Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK. \u201cThis alliance between the working poor and a load of rich rightwing toffs has been the basis of fascism for a century. How can we still be living it out? I find it really upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n Singh-Watson says he usually votes Liberal Democrat or Green: \u201cBut when I was registered in London for a bit, when I was living with my wife there, I actually voted for [local MP] Jeremy Corbyn. I\u2019m unsure how I feel about him now.\u201d<\/p>\n He says the EU\u2019s common agricultural policy was \u201cappalling\u201d, but with farming making up only 1% of the UK\u2019s GDP, was not a justification for Brexit by itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest problem with Brexit is just how incredibly disruptive it has been,\u201d he says. \u201cBusinesses mostly want government to piss off and leave them alone with a stable [regulatory] environment, whether that\u2019s workers\u2019 rights, environmental legislation, trading agreements \u2013 they just want a stable base, and I think Labour have done better than the Tories on that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Riverford Field Kitchen. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Singh-Watson has no time for the National Farmers\u2019 Union, by far the loudest voice for agriculture in the UK: \u201cI disengaged with the NFU a long time ago \u2013 all they seem to do is want to protect the status quo.<\/p>\n \u201cThey represent the older, richer, more conservative farmers,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there are a lot of young people who have a much more radical approach to farming but who don\u2019t have access to land. I want to hear their voices, but I think they\u2019re completely unrepresented by the NFU.\u201d<\/p>\n Expensive luxury?<\/p>\n A common critique of the kind of organic veg Riverford supplies is that it is an expensive luxury, affordable to relatively few people. The real problem, counters Singh-Watson, is low incomes and supermarket profits.<\/p>\n