Riverford Organics

-AT a time when family-run farms are struggling, the Watson family seem to have hit on a winning formula, with three linked businesses, all selling direct to the public.

Their farm, which began the conversion to organic status in 1984, has been in the family for a little over 50 years and, unusually, it supports no less than four Watson siblings.
The best-known part of the business is Riverford Organic Vegetables, run by Guy Watson and winners of six Soil Association awards (see story elsewhere on these pages), which grows organic veg and employs up to 100 people during the summer harvest season.

The Riverford farm shops, at Staverton, near Totnes, and Kitley, near Plymouth, are run by Ben Watson. Although not exclusively organic, they operate a colour-coded labelling system, where green means the product is organic and blue means it's produced locally, and Riverford know the producer, although it does not meet Soil Association organic requirements.

Brother and sister Oliver and Louise are "custodians of the farm land", on which they keep a 250-strong dairy herd. They also operate a pasteurisation and packaging plant, preparing the milk which is sold through their farm shops, the veg boxes and other local retailers.

It's fair to say that Riverford has played a significant part in bringing organic produce to the region, both through the farm shops and the box scheme, which now delivers selected seasonal produce to 4,500 homes a week, across the Westcountry.

Such is the demand for organic veg that the Riverford operation cannot meet it alone. They grow 40 per cent of the veg box contents, and another 40 per cent is grown by other local farms, who have formed the South Devon Producers Co-Operative (for which Riverford are the sales agent). Of the remaining 20 per cent, half comes from other UK farms and half is imported, primarily to add variety to the boxes during the winter, say Riverford.

The South Devon Co-op is a success story in itself, providing as it does a guaranteed outlet for local growers, the majority of whom are small family-run mixed farms - exactly the type which is under threat.

There are still opportunities for local producers, incidentally - they do not have suppliers for organic beef or lamb, for example.

Riverford's Deidre Makepeace told Connect that Riverford are keen to spread the 'local food' message and every veg box carries a newsletter, with details of which farms and growers supplied the contents.