Guy Watson used to be a management consultant. Although his job took him all over the world, he never really felt like office life quite suited him, or the suit for that matter. Watson grew up on a farm in Devon and one Christmas returned home from his office based life in New York and never went back. He leased some land from his father and set about growing vegetables organically without using harmful pesticides, which had been the cause of a hospital visit for his brother. That was 1987 and Watson began delivering boxes of vegetables to about 30 friends. He’s still delivering them today, although only figuratively speaking, because what is now Riverford Organic delivers organically grown vegetables to about 47,000 people a week across the whole of the U.K.

It’s an impressive feat, and Watson has been able to achieve this by a lot of hard work, and forming alliances with a number of other farms dotted around the country that has allowed his empire to literally grow, organically. He’s had numerous set backs along the way with vegetables overcome by disease, pests or weeds, but he said of the experience “The more you understand the eco system of the soil and your crops and how they fit together the easier it becomes”.

Riverford Organic came to MB’s attention after a traveling field kitchen landed at a city farm not far from our HQ. It would seem that not content with employing close to 300 staff and having a business empire worth millions, Watson is taking the Riverford way of doing things on tour in a yurt made by hand in Devon and pedaling mouth watering recipes made from his organically grown veg.

Another impressive feature of Watson and Riverford Organic is his overwhelming desire to make every aspect of his business as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. So much so, that a few years back the company entered in to a 2 year long collaborative project with the University of Exeter and the department of Trade and Industry to investigate Riverford’s environmental impact and how they could improve. They then set up a website to detail the findings, to let everyone know why the decisions they make regarding various issues have been made.

It’s pretty comprehensive and includes such things as trying to reduce landfill waste, the type of fuel their vans and lorries use, ingenious ways to keep the boxes of veg fresh while its waiting for the customer to return home from work, putting solar panels on their farm, improving insulation, changing the type of packaging they use, finding more efficient ways of using fridges and lots of other things. They’ve called it their ‘Sustainable Development Project’ and was largely started because they realized that sometimes good intentions aren’t always the best, and a bit of (or a great deal of in their case) research was needed to justify the decisions taken. One example of this was their decision to stop using degradable plastic bags, after research shoed that the best option in terms of energy, resource conservation and climate change is to recycle them into new bags. They also seem quite keen to instigate debate in the areas where their own practice goes against popular held views.

It’s all quite mind-blowing, the dedication Guy Watson and his team at Riverford have to not only providing a quality service and top notch produce, but doing it in a way that has the smallest amount of environmental impact as possible. The same can’t be said for many companies.