The FarmED Podcast: Guy Singh-Watson, Founder of Riverford

Oct 30, 2025

This episode of The FarmED Podcast is recorded on location, at Baddaford, Guy Singh-Watson’s farm in Devon. Guy, founder of Riverford, has been dubbed ‘the most brutally honest farmer in Britain.’

Here, Guy talks to Alex about how he finds regenerative agriculture a ‘difficult subject, because I absolutely welcome the sort of broad church approach that has drawn in farmers who, for whatever reason, felt antagonised by organic’ admitting that ‘we got it wrong somehow. We did alienate a lot of conventional farmers, the farmers who really we should have been getting on board.’ 

But it’s the ploughing vs glyphosate argument that he wants to see more openly discussed. He explains why he hates the term ‘food poverty’ and why his mission has always been to produce food ‘that's accessible and affordable by all,’ whilst also being fair to producers and the increasing challenges of that. He also talks about his wrangles with the supermarkets, why he is anti-commodity, why we should all eat less meat and how his hopes for the future, for ‘size and specialisation’ replaced by the mixed farming model. 

Listen to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch the whole episode on our Youtube channel. 

0:00:02

Alex: 

Welcome to The FarmED Podcast. Today, not at FarmED, we are at Baddaford Farm with our guest today, who is a farmer, founder of Riverford, and The Guardian recently coined you as the most brutally honest farmer in Britain. It's Guy Singh -Watson. 

0:00:20

Guy: Hi. 

0:00:21

Alex: You alright? 

0:00:22

Guy: Yeah, I'm good. 

0:00:23

Alex: Yeah, we're joining you on a lovely sunny day down here. 

0:00:26

Guy: Yeah, no, we're fine. But actually, its been the wettest September on record,  after about the driest summer since 1976. So yeah, no, we're lucky today. 

0:00:36

Alex: Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about your journey, how you got to be where you are. So do you think you could tell us a bit about where you started and how it got you to where you are now? 

Guy: Yeah. Well, my parents were farmers. They started farming at Riverford just after the war, tenant farmers. And I was the last of five children, always wanted to be a farmer. Went off to university, studied agriculture at Oxford and came back to the farm and it quickly became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to farm in partnership with my brother Oliver who runs the main bit of the farm. 

So I left and I did have two years as a management consultant which definitely wasn't me, though I did kind of enjoy it for a bit in London and New York and then came back to the farm and having renounced my claim to the tenancy, I had to do something on my own. And yes, I started growing organic vegetables. And I've never looked back, really. I feel myself really lucky to have found my thing, really. And after 40 years or whatever, my passion for growing vegetables just seems to keep on growing. 

0:01:52

Alex: So, was Riverford organic before you took it on, or...? 

0:01:55

Guy: No, my dad definitely had leanings in that direction. I mean he was quite an intensive farmer really we were even a demonstration farm for ICI in the 1960s and but I think increasingly through the 1960s and 70s and he read Rachel Carson's Silent Sprin, I think he more and more felt that he was farming in the wrong way and became interested in the health of the soil and more in the environment and so on. So he wasn't an organic farmer but he was leaning in that direction and when I wanted to start farming organically, you know, he was very supportive. 

0:02:32

Alex:  So Riverford Organics is what we're talking about here. 

0:02:35

Guy: Yeah. 

Alex: So that's, is that, would you say that's a typical CSA, Community Supported Agriculture model? 

Guy: No, no, definitely not. I think through the 90s and then the noughties, I think we were viewed by many in the kind of organic community as being almost indecently commercially successful. And I think I was also pretty abrasive in my approach to things. And so I think we were viewed with quite a lot of scepticism. 

0:03:04

So definitely, you know, it was, you know, a pretty conventional business. And I didn't start farming. You know, I farmed, started growing organically because I thought there was a market. I had been a management consultant, remember? You know, we were looking for growth markets, and I thought it was a growth market. Or at least that's what I can remember up here. I suspect down here there was maybe something guiding me in that direction. But my,  the desire to produce food in a way which is sort of sympathetic to the environment has just grown and grown over the years to the extent that I just really couldn't countenance doing it any other way today. 

0:03:44

Alex:  So there was never a point where you thought, I could go full commercial, full conventional with this? 

0:03:53

Guy: No, I don't think so. I mean, and I did view, you know, the organic rules as being an obstacle, I suppose, initially. And then increasingly as years went by and I realized I could find solutions to the problems, you know, without reaching for a chemical container, I guess I became more and more committed to it. 

0:04:21

Alex:  And you've been quite specific about labelling yourself as organic and not, say, regenerative. 

0:04:27

Guy:  Yeah. 

Alex: I read an article a little while ago about your views on regenerative agriculture, or at least the term is regen agriculture. What are your thoughts on that? 

Guy:  Well, I find it a very difficult subject, because I absolutely welcome the sort of broad church approach that has drawn in farmers who, for whatever reason, felt antagonised by organic, you know, and in a way that there is that sort of division in this country that I don't see elsewhere in the world. 

So we got it wrong somehow, I think. We did alienate a lot of conventional farmers, the farmers who really we should have been getting on board and, you know, benefiting from their skills. I think the organic somehow, I don't know whether it was our objection to GM crops or the fact that there were a lot of very wealthy people who got into it and wanted to preach to everyone else. I don't know somehow we managed to annoy a lot of people whereas the whole regenerative movement has been very successful in being inclusive but that brings with it that you know you can be as inclusive as you like and you know in the end you come up with a question what does this mean and and I'm afraid I think regenerative…I mean let's be honest you know over 90 % of acres farmed in a regenerative way are certainly, you know, for growing arable crops are sprayed off with glyphosate. 

0:05:57

You grow a crop and you may well spray it off with glyphosate afterwards. I mean, when I see a field dying slowly after being sprayed with glyphosate, I, um, I actually feel it in quite a visceral way, the anguish of that death. And now, increasingly, we know that it's affecting soil life as well. So I find it really difficult to square. I mean, I don't know whether spraying with glyphosate is more damaging or less damaging than ploughing. I think it very much depends how you plough, when you plough, to what depth you plough, how frequently you plough. 

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that, but what I find annoying in the regenerative movement is the complete absence of that conversation. I mean, we need to discuss that, you know, whereas, you know, I've been going to Groundswell, I didn't go this year, but there is an absence, it's almost like a kind of conspiracy of silence that people will refuse to talk about it. And it's at, you might say it's ducking the issue, I'm sorry, I think it's dishonest. And so I do have a bit of an issue with it. I know there are lots of, you know, farmer that are regenerative and organic and probably are going way beyond, you know, what I do in some ways, I welcome that, but the sort of definition of regenerative that's been adopted by the large the Pepsico and Danones and Unilevers of this world is not one that I would be happy farming with. 

0:07:30

Alex:  So it's the sort of, the greenwashing side of things is a bit concerning?

Guy: It may be better than conventional agriculture, but it does feel a bit like greenwashing to me. I mean I do accept that you know to grow the amount of food that we you know consume in this country particularly grains and to do that in an organic way you know without a huge change in our diet would be very very difficult possibly impossible um so uh you know I do acknowledge the need for it what I struggle with is the absence of the debate particularly around the use of glyphosate.And around there being a whole farm system actually you know I don't think you can go and farm and grow regenerative wheat for uh Wild Farmed for instance one year and then you can be farming conventionally the next and for a couple of years using whatever you want and then the next year you can be um regenerative again and that just seems like a nonsense to me we have to be talking about a whole farm system we have to be talking about you know a continuity over many years otherwise well for me anyway it has no credibility 

Alex: and do you think if the regenerative farming had more guidelines along the lines of organic and sort of things you have to stipulate. You certainly have to meet certain regulations. 

Guy:I mean, I completely understand why people are resistant to that. And I have heard people argue at groundswell that we're in the early stages, we need to keep the doors open, and a definition will emerge over time. You know, I can see that argument. It just still feels like it's sort of ducking the real debate to me. But that is not to say that any attempt to get a conventional farmer to farm better, to respect the need to maintain healthy soil and so on, is absolutely to be encouraged. I am irked by less well-informed members of the public saying, oh no, we don't buy organic, we buy regenerative because we think it's so much better. 

0:09:53

And then you ask them, well, what do you mean by that? I've done this to a whole audience and asked them to put up their hand if you know what glyphosate is. And only about a quarter of them will put up their hand when you tell them that most of the food they're buying regeneratively is dependent on the use of glyphosate. Most of them are absolutely shocked. 

0:10:10

So, to my mind, if your farming system and the extra price that you're trying to charge for it does not withstand the full scrutiny of a well-informed customer questioning it, then you're skating on thin ice, I think. 

Alex: We’ve mentioned glyphosate a couple of times so far. Could I ask you to explain a little bit about what that is and why you are so opposed? 

Guy: Okay, well, I mean, glyphosate is a herbicide which I think was patented by Monsanto in around about 1970, perhaps. And it's a systemic herbicide, so you can spray it on an actively growing plant and it will absorb into the plant and it will be translocated right down into its roots. So you can kill really persistent weeds like docks and couch grass in a way that no other herbicide will. So it's an absolutely fantastic chemical in many ways. And if you're trying to establish trees and keep them weed free for three years, it's absolutely wonderful. 

0:11:19

Alex: It must have really, really changed the game when it came in. 

0:11:22

Guy : Yeah. And it does mean. One of the problems I've struggled with as an organic farmer is over-cultivating the soil in order to control those perennial weeds. And you know the land that I took on was absolutely infested particularly with docks, but we've had real problems with creeping buttercup to lesser extent couch grass and they're absolutely you glyphosate is absolutely brilliant at controlling those weeds however you know it is almost certainly carcinogenic and it has, we were taught at university in the 80s, I was taught that it had zero mammalian toxicity and it was instantly rendered biologically inactive on contact with the soil, well both those things have turned out to be anything but true so. But I'm still not saying, I'm not sure that I would support an absolute ban on its use. I mean, a lot of countries in Europe have put a lot of restrictions on its use. You know, as I've said, for forestry. There's an acre of beech trees up there, which I weeded for three years by hand, and I really would not want to do that again. And any idea that anyone is going to commercially establish trees, doing that is just ridiculous.  And to my mind, using a tiny amount once in a 150-year cycle, that seems like a pretty justifiable use of it, to be using it as a pre-harvest desiccant of wheat. And as a result, almost everyone in the Western world having urine, having glyphosate in their urine, is just moronic. 

0:13:01

To put our health and our environment at jeopardy for such a marginal benefit of being able to harvest faster, maybe a little bit earlier, it just really seems tragically idiotic to me. 

0:13:20

Alex: So it should be within our toolkit of things we can use, but not necessarily the first thing you grab for?

Guy: If I was going to argue with a conventional farmer about how they could improve their farming, you know, for the soil and for the environment, I don't think banning glyphosate would be at the top of the list, you know, for me. I mean, you know, I think the neonicotinoids  would be much higher up, for instance. But it is, you know, grossly overused and I think that does need to be curtailed. I think we could use a quarter of as much of it and it probably not have much impact on productivity in this country. 

0:13:58

Alex: How come you say neonicotinoids would be higher up on your list of concerns? 

Guy: Well, because of the devastating effect that they've had on pollinators. Again, for fairly marginal benefit. I think it's completely inexcusable. The evidence is incontrovertible. And yeah, no, I think they should just be banned, as they are in Europe.

Alex:  Fair enough. So you've spoken a lot recently in a few places about food security and food poverty. I was wondering if you would be willing to talk a bit more about it with us now. Because I think in the article I read, I'm sure you had an issue with the term food poverty. 

Guy: Well, I do have an issue with food poverty. I mean, we just have a problem with poverty in this country. You know, when people are spending 10 % of their income on food down from 30%, I don't know, fifty  years ago, I mean, how much cheaper do we want it? Why do we talk about food poverty? Why don't we talk about rent poverty? 

0:15:02

You know, most poor people will be spending twice as much, if not three times as much on their rent as they are on their food. I mean, why aren't we talking about that? I mean, and I do also get really annoyed when you think, and if you are going to use the term food poverty, you know, don't look to farmers because farmers, you know, when you spend your money, um you know food is uh you know roughly 10% of GDP but you know farm incomes are less than 1% of GDP so you know clearly the price of food is a reflection of what happens after the farm gate, mostly um rather than prices that farmers charge. And I got extremely annoyed post the outbreak of the Ukraine war and fertilizer prices going up and everything, fuel prices going up and everything, and that being used as a reason for food retailers, supermarkets mostly, putting their food prices up when a tiny fraction of that. I mean, during those years when food inflation was running in the teens, maybe up to 20%, and most agricultural prices were, if they went up, 5%. And the supermarkets just pocket the rest. I don't think Tesco's ever made as much money. 

0:16:22

Alex: So would you say that is an issue of education in terms of people's understanding of where this food comes from and how they can perhaps better themselves or understand the system better? 

G: No, I think it's a question of market power. Supermarkets have the ear of governments. and they have a tremendous, you know, dominance. Six major supermarkets, buying from tens of thousands of farmers, and, you know, they have all the market power, they are the best negotiators, and farmers have suffered as a result, you know, with an ever-falling share of the share of the food pound, you might say. 

0:17:03

I mean, when I started 40 years ago, and if you're selling to a multiple, you might expect to get 40 % of the retail price. I think we're down to about 25 now. For most things, it varies by product, obviously, much higher for me. But it, you know, why is that an inevitable problem. I mean why should we always be getting less and I would say as a result,  forced to farm in a way that I think a significant number of farmers know is wrong and would like to farm differently but they just can't afford to. 

0:17:39

Alex: And do you think, so that this sort of commodification of these different aspects of it, the food itself, taking advantage of the farmers, and do you think, do you consider yourself to be quite anti-commodity in that sort of sense? 

Guy: I suppose so. I mean, I could see when I came back from my spell as a management consultant, I could see my father was producing a white commodity that got taken away in a tanker every day, and he had absolutely no, you know, he was obviously a price taker, not a price maker, and I didn't want to be in that position myself. So you know, after early brushes with supermarkets, you know, we decided to focus our attention on a direct-to-consumer model, you know, where we controlled the relationship with the customer, where we could tell our story, and it stopped being a commodity. It was, you know, bought on more than just its cosmetic appearance, but, you know, actually, when I did those first deliveries, God, In 1993, I delivered my first veg box. And I remember on the first round, going round, you know, and actually people really did care about, what they tasted like and how they'd been grown and, how we we’re looking after the environment. 

0:18:54

And price wasn't everything. I think we need to be careful that we're not, establishing... Anyway, I think we need to be mindful of trying to keep the cost down. I do not want to be a niche food producer. I don't want to be artisan. 

0:19:15

I want to be producing something that everybody can afford that's accessible and affordable by all. And I know some of our prices today draw that into question. And some of our co -owners have actually, that is stated in our founders' wishes that we should be affordable and accessible to all. And it is becoming questionable. And we are having to look at our business model. And we've been very uncompromising in how we do things. 

0:19:44

And paying the voluntary living wage, sharing the profits with the co -owners, using, we're quite soon, well, we're about 70% electric vehicles, delivery, using compostable packaging, all these things really add to the cost of getting a veg box to someone's store and supporting smaller producers but producers who we feel are farming in the right way, who are often going beyond the rules of organic. That does,make us more expensive and I think we need to be very wary of that and just be, I would hate to be, we got to the stage where we put all our effort into sort of justifying the price. And I want to tell the story. I don't want to be squeezing every grower. We're going to have some hard negotiations this year. 

0:20:35

We more or less ask our producers every year in October, you know, what do you need to grow this crop next year? And they tell us, and there may be a bit of negotiation, but unless it's really ridiculous, that's what they get paid. The price is set, the volume's set, and, for the next 18 months, and that's how it works. I think we are going to have to push back a little bit, actually, and just make sure. And it may be that, if you're not in the best situation on good soils and so on, then, I don't know how much we can support people to continue. You've got to be reasonably efficient and you have to have a reasonable scale of production. 

0:21:15

There is no place, I'm sorry for some people to pick up potatoes by hand or carrots or onions or beetroots or whatever, there are machines that do all that stuff really well and the product is just as good and we have to move with that. 

0:21:30

And indeed, most of our potatoes are now grown by, someone who is able to do that, some of the crops have moved to specialist producers, which is not ideal, I mean, fennel, we've always grown fennel, and celery actually, but it is really hard on our soils with every producer, the smaller producers that we have, no one has managed to produce that wonderful succulent fennel sort of stuff that comes out of Italy through the winter, and they're more expensive and it's not good enough well I'm sorry then probably you shouldn't be growing the fennel and and the same with the celery we don't grow ourselves anymore and celeriac actually. So I think I'm going on too much about this so you can edit some of this out.

Alex: That’s all good

Guy: I'm probably digging a hole for myself as well.

Alex: I think that's an important point. I think part of that, do you think, falls on the... Because as a consumer, obviously, it's fantastic to walk into a supermarket and you can buy avocados year round or tomatoes out of season, strawberries out of season. But is it perhaps we have to also come to terms with the fact that in our country we can grow certain things and should perhaps move back towards a time where we would have been able to grow certain things and would have eaten certain things at a certain time of year rather than constantly all the time because we can. 

Guy: Yeah, and we do, you know, with the storytelling in our marketing, we are always celebrating what's in season. I've got to write the newsletter this afternoon and it will be about the squash that we're harvesting at the moment. and um you know we will really encourage people to eat lots of squash between now and well the butternut and so on up to Christmas and then after Christmas the crown prince and so on which will store a bit and then we will have butternut from the southern hemisphere available you know through the spring and summer but we won't be pushing it. I won't be writing about it. It will be there if you want to buy it um and uh I mean, maybe some people might say that's too much of a compromise. Actually, I think it is for butternut squash. I don't think we should sell it out of season, certainly out of the European season. 

0:23:44

We're constantly debating how much to compromise. I mean, when we don't sell those, the big sellers, the avocados, which are in season from Spain at the moment, and they're absolutely wonderful, but when they have to come from Central America, actually, as a matter of fact, if you do look at the carbon emissions, they are very similar. because shipping is such an efficient way of transporting them. Apples, we don't sell New Zealand apples anymore, despite the fact they are the best apples in May and June, but the carbon emissions of 800 grams per kilogram are just too high. So we won't sell anything that has carbon emissions of more than 400 grams per kilo, and that will probably drop to 300 quite soon. 

0:24:29

So we're trying to just pragmatically reduce the environmental footprint of what we sell whilst hanging on to our customers and whilst still running a viable business. And I think with apples, they're a fruit we can grow here in the UK, quite a lot of. We can do. I think people are getting better at storing them. I mean, the quality starts dropping off from March, I would say, of a stored crop. Yeah, but I think soon as the soft fruit and the stone fruit season starts in Europe, we have some absolutely fantastic stone fruit producers in France and Spain. 

0:25:12

And at that point, I think it would be quite good to live without apples for a couple of months and then celebrate the first discovery that are picked, late July, August. That would be wonderful. When I find the Argentinian and Chilean Gala, which I really wish we didn't sell. But it would hit us quite hard. Our sales would drop. And actually, it's interesting. My brother runs a farm shop. And he says, as soon as he gets onto the English apples, and this is the reality, I don't know why people want to buy those Gala. They are sweet and crunchy, I suppose, but they're really dull to my mind. But he says when he moves on to the English, his Apple sales fall by about half. And that's to a relative, I would say his customers are pretty well-informed, thoughtful people. 

0:26:13

I don't know how much people even are conscious of the season, really. We could probably do more. I think we could do more. We do quite a lot to celebrate the seasons, but I think it would be a fair criticism, you know, that we could do more, actually. It's so easy to slip into. I think those Galas, they're absolutely consistent. You know, they're all the bloody same. It's really easy to run a business selling them, and the temptation to the commercial team, who  all have their challenges to meet their sales and so on. Yeah, we're walking a tightrope, I think. And I think we did make the decision not to sell New Zealand. I think perhaps we should make the decision not to sell Chilean and Argentinian garlic. Though then again, if you look at the carbon emissions, they are not as bad as you would think. Yeah, because they come by sea. They would be about 300 grams per kilo. 

Alex: And you talk about compromising with your growers and talking about bartering for prices and that sort of thing. That's still got to be a more preferable system from their point of view, surely, than having to deal with supermarkets. I mean, you told a story not too long ago, if you don't mind my asking, about when you were first getting started and someone from a supermarket that I don't know whether I should name or not, making you an offer for them that you turned down. Is that right? 

0:27:36

Guy: Yeah. Well, I don't mind naming them. They were Sainsbury's. And we had made an arrangement. They'd come down,, their technical guy and their organic guy, actually, had come down and, yeah, we'd agreed that really I needed 18p to have a profitable business, but 15p a head was the absolute minimum. And I think we were about four weeks into the season and they said, they're going on promotion, you're going to get paid 6p. At which point, it was just the end for me. I said, well, I wonder what the newspapers are going to say about that. And I did get my 15p. And they did, to give them credit, they did buy them for the rest of the season. But that was obviously the end of my relationship with that particular buyer. And, you know, that was fine because the veg boxes were taking  off at that point.  And that was the end of it. But yeah, most farmers don't have that luxury of being able to say no. I mean, mostly they just have to accept it. And yeah, you know, that has driven all small businesses and I’d say medium -sized producers out of business. I mean, there are no other markets. There are very little wholesale markets. There is not much else. 

0:28:51

So unless you can produce at their lowest possible cost, which means at a huge scale usually, and it means making whatever compromises you have to make, then you're going to lose that contract. 

Alex: Let’s take a turn then for the slightly controversial here. Not that you're necessarily shy of the controversial, but you have some opinions on the amount of meat that we eat as well.  I know that a lot of farmers might be thinking slightly differently on these lines than you, but what are your thoughts on that? 

Guy: Yeah, well, yeah, I'm the son of a dairy farmer, my brother and sister are dairy farmers, my other brother is essentially a butcher, all my neighbours are livestock farmers, this isn't, you know, isn't really vegetable territory around here, so I'm quite invested in the livestock industry. However, I mean, the evidence, you just can't argue with it. I think we eat about 1,600 grams of meat per person per week. It's just way too much. I mean, you know, if we are going to live sustainably, I think it's probably better to take a planetary view. 

0:30:01

But if you live sustainably on this planet, we've got to cut that by two thirds, probably. And our consumption of eggs and milk and cheese and butter as well. And one can argue about I know people will come up with figures that would argue that ruminants grazing grassland and the grassland if well managed regeneratively is um sequestering as much carbon as a rainforest or more carbon than the uh equivalent enteric emissions of methane and so on are but I'm sorry I've read the papers it doesn't add up I just don't believe it, sorry Patrick Holden, I mean the evidence just isn't there. And yeah, so we've got to eat less meat. And I know there is land which is unsuitable for growing arable crops, though we are growing arable crops on a lot of those, vegetable crops on a lot of land that people would say was impossible to grow on. 

0:31:07

And actually, developing a farming system, we are finding crops that do pretty well on it. I mean, strawberries in particular do very well on our land. But the real problem is grain. You know, how do we produce the amount of grain that we consume in an environmentally acceptable way? And I have to say, it's bloody hard to see how we can do without fertilisers and possibly glyphosate and without eating a hell of a lot less meat. And of course, livestock are part of our rotation. 

0:31:44

Though actually, we use almost no livestock manure on this farm. We're using all compost. And I have seen that dramatically improve our soils and allow us to grow vegetable crops where I wouldn't have thought it was possible. But there's not enough organic matter around for everyone to farm like that. That is the truth. So yeah, I don't know. 

0:32:11

I don't think, I hope I have never said that I thought organic had all the answers or was the only answer. I am open to the idea that a judicious amount of nitrogen applied in the spring, not grass, but to cereal crops. Everything we do, every time we plow the soil, we are causing damage. And if you're causing damage, you want to get the maximum for it. So, environmentally, it could be better than accepting half the yield and the reality is if you're going to grow wheat organically in over the lifetime of say a six-year rotation your production of wheat is going to be somewhere between a third and a half and I think probably close to a third so you need three times as many acres to do that. And at the same time as we're trying to leave space for nature, that's quite a difficult question. 

0:33:10

I mean, is it better to be more intensive and leave some land for a bit of judicious rewilding? I'm not a fan of larg -scale rewilding of lowland Britain, but I think creating some corridors through it and so on probably would be a good idea. If there's so much pressure to produce that food, that that becomes impossible, that's not great either. So I'm not a purist. I'm not a purist. And I don't think organic has all the answers. 

0:33:39

I think the grain, I think for vegetables, I wouldn't want to grow them any other way. But for grain, I think there is still quite a big question mark about, especially, you know, we can reduce our need for grain by not eating, by feeding our ruminants grass, essentially, and probably by not eating as much pork and chicken, though I know a lot of papers suggest that pork and chicken is a lot less damaging to the environment than beef and lamb. But I still think we've got to get used to a more plant -based diet. I'm not a vegan. I'm not a vegetarian. But I have, over the last 10 years, probably halved my meat consumption. I don't feel I'm giving anything up. I'm going to struggle with butter. 

Alex: So let's go for a big question then. I apologize. I'm just going to throw this one at you. Yeah. How do you think the system should change? How do you think we could... what directions could we all as individuals and on a bigger scale as a society, what directions can we move in to make more of a positive change? Both for the health of ourselves and the systems and for the planet and soils? 

0:34:47

Guy: Okay. 

0:34:48

Alex: I'm just adding more things to make this question bigger and bigger now. I apologise. 

Guy: I do think it's really important that people know where their food is coming from and how it's produced and that that is told honestly. And that is not easy, because you could say the same about how your car is produced, whether you should get an electric vehicle. There's so many things to be informed about. And it's so incredibly complex that most people are really making decisions. 

0:35:21

I think most people, and the work that the Food, Farming, and Countryside Commission have done, I think demonstrates pretty well that people, most people, 70 % of people, according to their figures, I think, are happy to pay a bit more for their food for it to be produced in the right way. But how do you know it's being produced in the right way? I mean, when, Tesco's market their intensively raised chickens as willow farm chicken, and it used to have a, I think they've changed it, but it used to have a picture of a chicken walking across a field on it. I mean, most people just don't have time to go and do the research to find that actually that chicken is produced by a subsidiary of … big grain trader, international corporation… It’s escaped me. Anyway, for Tesco's, you know, in vast houses, it's absolutely destroying the River Wye catchment, appalling animal welfare,conditions. 

0:36:21

That is the reality of how that chicken, which looks like it's produced on a family farm, and wandering out across the fields. How do you, how is that customer going to make that decision? 

0:37:14

Alex: So do you think, you're saying it's more on the shoulders of the governing bodies, the supermarkets, to make sure they're making the right choices? For people? 

Guy: Well, yes, but let's be honest. I mean, Tesco exists to serve its shareholders. That's how capitalism works. And they will do whatever is in the interest of their shareholders. And if it's cheaper to sell a chicken and spend the money on marketing to give the impression that it's spent its life wandering around the field, that's what they're going to do. That's how capitalism works. And the only way you're going to address that is by making duplicit, mendacious marketing illegal. So that it is illegal to mislead people regardless. You may not actually be telling a lie in a legal term. However, to put a chicken in a field when it's been raised in a barn, I think that should be illegal. 

0:38:12

If you are wilfully misleading people, that should be illegal. And that would make it much easier for farmers who are farming in a different way to differentiate themselves. You know, in my sector, there is almost no branded vegetables on the shelf, tender stem broccoli being an exception, there may be one or two others, but it's starting. So a supermarket is essentially buying a commodity and then, selling it at a premium, Tesco's finest or whatever, I don't know what they're selling it under now, but yeah. You know the farmer who is producing a premium product needs to somehow be identified as doing such and the reality is that 90 % of our produce is sold through those big six multiples. Possibly more and there is no alternative for most farmers but I think it is really really important that the tiny amount that is left that is sold through farm shops, through box schemes, through a few shops that are honest about where it actually comes from. I mean, that sector is incredibly important because what's happening is that the industry is becoming so concentrated and so scale-driven that there will be no opportunity to do it any other way quite soon actually. There won't be the machinery available to farm on an intermediate scale, there won't be the skills available to do it, the land will not be available. That is happening, you know, terrifying. You know, it's already happened with chickens. It's already happened with pigs. It's happening really quickly with dairy now. You know, my father milked 20 Ayrshire cows. I mean, now, unless you've got 200, you're probably on the way out. And rapidly, that is becoming 400, 500, 2 ,000. I mean, this parish used to have dozens of dairy farms. And there are only two now, each milking over 1,000 cows that very seldom go outside, that is becoming and that will be the only way that we know how to farm. There'll inly be the genetics for cows bred to thrive on maize silage and imported soya that will be the only way to farm and that's what really scares me, is that we're losing the skills and the infrastructure to support any sort of intermediary scale farming. 

0:40:44

Alex: Yeah. Get big or get out. 

Guy: Yeah. And big doesn't have to be bad, but it almost always is. You know, there are arguments, you can be a large-scale dairy farmer and that may enable you to have an anaerobic digester and capture some of that methane. That would be good. But, I mean, normally, you know, big is bad. Those big dairy farms around here, they're all growing maize, some of it over half an hour's tractor drive away. It's been hauled in, the slurry's been hauled out. Those fields have been absolutely devastated. It's a disaster, the soil structure. That doesn't happen on in a small scale farm and just inherently if you have a smaller scale and and it's not just scale actually it's specialization, those two trends of scale and specialization so there are very few mixed farms around here. Either your combinable crops or your sheep and beef or your dairy I mean that's mostly what it is and if you're dairy you're just dairy that's all you do uh so you know it used to be, when my father took on the tenancy in 1951, you know, they were making cider. He had sheep. He had chickens. He had dairy. He grew his own grain. You know, we grew a few vegetables. It was a proper mixed farm. And with that, with that mixed farming comes diversity, which is what nature thrives on. Nature hates monocrops. And yeah, so unfortunately, you know, scale and specialization is almost always bad for the environment. 

0:42:19

Alex: So there's lots of, you've mentioned a couple of times about how these sort of... movement back towards a smaller system, smaller farm, smaller scale, with higher skills living on land. Is that something that you're hopeful for and optimistic about? Is that something you're seeing and it makes you feel like it's moving in a positive way? 

Guy: It's something that I really, really want to see, you know, I'd like to see at least it slowed down the trend towards scale and specialisation and ideally reversed. I have some reservations about it. I mean, here at Baddarford, we grow 50 acres of vegetables, but we also have five other businesses, mostly fairly small-scale businesses where I rent them the land and the buildings. We kind of cooperate a little bit, but mostly they're running independent businesses. And I love that model. You're giving access to land to people who wouldn't have it. There's a real sense of community. They're very sort of supportive of each other. You know, socially, I would say it was a very rich environment. 

0:43:16

And with all those different things, I think also comes  environmental diversity and richness as well. It's a struggle. You know, the smaller scale ones, intensive horticulture is, is really bloody hard to produce food at those prices that people are expecting to pay and, make at least minimum wage. Anyway, that is difficult. And so I do have, on my bleaker days, I do worry that I'm just helping them to fail slowly. But it's just a lovely place to be. 

0:43:59

And actually, two out of those five businesses are doing really, really well. Definitely, one produces seeds and one produces plants for gardening. So they're not um yeah selling a sort of food at the price and they're not competing with other food producers but the ones producing food are finding it hard and one of them's doing okay um it's I don't know. Do we have to even reinvent the model such that maybe people do? 

0:44:30

We had a grazier here who just loved looking after sheep, but, you know, he made his money doing another job. I mean, that's quite a common model in mainland Europe, part-time farming. I think really most of us want to see farmers being able to make a proper living, doing what they want to do, but it's not easy, and I'm not claiming to have the answers at all. 

Alex: But you're hopeful for a move towards that? 

Guy: I am! OK, the hope comes from... We have so many people come and want to work here. You know, young, bright, really bloody hard-working people. We have a fantastic team working on the farm, who I think are probably learning quite a lot from all sorts of backgrounds. And,  that's a really rich thing. So people want to do it. You know, a lot of them are training in regenerative agriculture. We have the Apricot Centre down the road, which has been a fantastic asset. 

0:45:27

So we've had quite a lot of their trainees, one of whom is the farm manager now. And, it's been fantastic to see them develop their skills and confidence, and really grow on the farm. And then the other end, there are a lot of people buying food, who want to support what they're doing. So those things, they should come together, and you should have a thriving industry? I think if you take the definition of regenerative, where it's regenerative of people, as well as the soil and the environment generally that that would be wonderful but instead we have I would describe it as market failure where people are buying commodity foods because they don't know what they're getting. If people went and saw how that willow farm chicken was raised they would never eat it again That is the truth of it. So you have a market which is thriving on dishonesty. 

0:46:34

And I think I'd describe that as market failure. I think if you were to go back and read Adam Smith's definition of a free market, I think perfect information is part of it. And we don't have that. 

Alex: So more honesty about it, putting together those people who are interested, who want those products, who want that going the right way, and the people who are doing that and want to do that. Lovely. Fantastic. Well, I think we'll probably wrap up there. The sun is directly in my eyes. But thank you so much, Guy, for inviting us down here to have a look around and chatting with us. And thank you guys for tuning in. Do check out future episodes. If we like what we're doing, give us a little bit of a like, a little review, some stars or not. And check us out on social media. And thank you again, Guy.