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It is truly delicious, both in taste and ideology. There's nothing I like more with my veg. than a bit of eco-politics and the newsletter that arrives with the box sometimes provides this. Guy Watson is the founder of Riverford Organic Vegetables, who now have over 30,000 customers in the south of UK in a unique franchise distribution system. He has kindly allowed me to reproduce this newsletter from my veg. box. as a guest article.
RIVERFORD ORGANIC VEGETABLES
This weeks box no. 239 Monday 17th October 2005-10-24
This weekend I should be in Rome speaking at an international agribusiness conference organised by the Harvard Business School. Or Should I? The big guns from Monsanto, Uniliver and a host of other multinationals will be there trying to figure out how to maintain or increase their hegemony over what the world eats and how it is produced.
There is an evolutionary theory that suggests progress happens at the fringes; species or races, which just about scratched an existence on the margins, are the ones that thrive and become dominant when a change in the environment means the giants' necks are too long or legs too short. The same is true of business; the giants in the centre find it hard to adapt, are inward looking and are bereft of originality. Things change (most notably consumers' opinions) and they tend to become too cumbersome and self-congratulatory to realise that the traits that brought success will soon bring extinction. Many recognise their limitations and go hunting for ideas either by gobbling up small companies, complete with brands and ideas, or by going to conference and listening to the freaks from the fringes.
I was invited to present a paper on Riverford and I am sure it would have been a fascinating experience and a real insight into some of the forces that shape our world. A wise aunt, on hearing one of my rants against Monsanto during our 1998 GM court case, used to counsel me not to demonise my opponents but rather to seek out to understand them. In the end I was put off by the bumf about the conference which made me appreciate just how wide the gulf was between my approach to food, farming and business and theirs; I don't have much interest in building bridges and would rather spend the weekend with my family.
It's a shame that so many of the cleverest people end up working for these companies thereby giving them an intellectual power to subsume all in their path. The box scheme and our way of connecting farmers with food lovers in a way which has resonance with the values of a growing minority, is something that I feel inclined to protect jealously. Unlike Green and Black's, Rachel's Dairy and numerous other pioneers in the organic market, I will never sell out. I am also acutely aware of the need to protect what we have created and resist the insidious, creeping compromises that mainstream business practices impose on the people with ideas.
Riverford farm is situated along the Dart Valley in Devon and deliver fresh organic vegetable boxes direct from the farm to homes across the South of the UK. We started organic vegetable production in 1987 and have become one of the country's largest independent growers, certified by the Soil Association.
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