The Riverford Blog

 see the letter to the Daily Mail by Celia Gunn a credit munch worthy diet. Two energetic people, one week on organic food (including their Riverford vegbox): total expenditure on food £22.66.

We need to find new opportunities for communities to come together and flourish. The best community events are organised locally, involving a mutual, all-embracing hospitality. Spontaneity and even a touch of anarchy bring an event to life. This is what Tim Smit and his team at the Eden project are aiming for on Sunday 19th July with their ‘Big Lunch’. The idea is to get neighbours together to talk, eat, share and get to know each other. So how do we fit into this?

I hope you become one of those activists who will initiate local events and make 19th July the first of many Big Lunches. For those of you thinking of cooking something, we will be suggesting some seasonal recipes and offering the ingredients discounted in bulk boxes nearer the time. Read more

We seem to be doing pretty well with awards recently. First the Observer’s ‘Best Ethical Restaurant’ and now ‘Best Organic Retailer’ at the Natural and Organic Awards,sponsored by the Soil Association. Many thanks to all of you who voted for us. I like to think that we won for patiently sticking at what we know and, year on year, getting steadily better at it; for being the real McCoy, rather than a brand created in response to a market trend.

Our field workers have been braving the cold weather recently for which many customers thanked us. One thoughtful customer went as far as knitting hats and scarves to keep us toasty. Thank you Mrs Gibbons!

Years of growing vegetables for supermarkets in the UK taught me that the free market can be a harsh place for small producers. Distant producers are even more vulnerable. So is Fairtrade certification the answer? Can ethics be measured, certified and delivered via a free market to customers 3000 miles away who want to use their buying power to make the world a better place?

These are the questions I found myself asking last December in a small field of organic pineapples 100 miles north of Lome in Togo, West Africa. The first of the fruit was ready for harvest, the culmination of fifteen months of planting and weeding with only a mattock to help, and of ten years of planning, agronomy and organisation by the French company Pronatura. The field, one of the largest in this village, is the size of half a football pitch and the orderly rows are interspersed with termite mounds, papaya trees, palms, bananas and towering kapoc trees. The scene is well managed, harmonious and productive; organic farming at its best and in stark contrast to the intensive, large scale, foreign owned monocultures that are typical of export-oriented production in Africa. The goal has been reached: an organic, fair trade pineapple from small producers which can reliably meet the demands of an English supermarket buyer.

How 16p turns into £2.50

If all goes well…read more

cauliflower harvest

On 13 January 2009, the European Parliament voted to ban a large number of pesticides that have been used here and elsewhere in Europe for decades. The ban has angered conventional farmers in the UK who have argued that without them crop yields will plummet and the resulting costs of food on supermarket shelves will rocket. In response to pressure from the conventional farming community the UK Government argued against the ban.

At Riverford we have been growing vegetables organically, without reliance on pesticides for 20 years.

We have proved over the last two decades, as our soils and our skills have improved, that producing commercially acceptable yields in a way that does not require chemical inputs is achievable.

Why is the EU taking these steps now?

The human risk…
The environmental campaigner, Georgina Downs has recently won a monumental battle with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). She has spent the last seven years campaigning to make the countryside a safer place for people to live and enjoy. She grew up in West Sussex close to sprayed farmland, exposed to a cocktail of pesticides regularly applied to the land. The consequences of this exposure were severe impacts on Georgina’s health, including severe muscle wasting, leg pain and other chronic symptoms. The judicial review found that the government had failed to protect people, particularly rural residents, from exposure to pesticides. This judgment – against Defra – represents a significant breakthrough and has helped heighten the need for governments across Europe to take responsibility for protecting people from the risks that sprays present.

Wildlife implications…
Non organic farmers have become reliant on pesticides and soluble fertilisers over the last fifty years as they have been increasingly forced to cut costs and increase yields by greedy supermarkets. The implications of ever more intensive production have been huge. Wildlife on British farms has dropped as habitat and food sources have become more scarce. For example there were 25 native species of bumble bee populating the UK. Of these 25 species three are already known to now be extinct with a further five species under threat.

In contrast, organic farming has consistently been proven to deliver wildlife benefits compared with non organic farming, with numbers of birds, bees, spiders and invertebrates being higher on organically managed farms.

The long term…
A future for food and farming that relies on the use of oil hungry pesticides and fertilisers is wholly unsustainable. Last year, when the price of oil jumped to over $100/barrel, the costs of pesticides and fertilisers rose by more than two-fold. The price of oil has dropped again this year but everyone accepts that this is a short term trough. Inevitably as the world’s supplies dwindle, prices will rise once more to unprecedented levels – making the use of pesticides and fertilisers economically unviable.

The alternative…
We are really proud of the box scheme. We think it’s a great way to provide our customers with really good value, regionally produced, seasonal organic fruit and vegetables while making sure that the growers are treated fairly. It also helps us to cut waste through the chain – from the fields to the doorstep reducing our environmental impact and cutting out any unnecessary cost. And of course everything we grow and sell is organic, which helps to avoid risks to human health, protect our soils and support wildlife on our farms.

Ben worked all weekend and managed to get the last broad beans sown just before the rain came. The ground was still frozen in places making it a battle for the cultivators; not ideal sowing conditions and I would be feeling nervous were it not for the memory of our best broad bean crop ever being forced into a damp frosty seed bed. We now face the war of wits to keep the crows off the field until they are established.

Miserable in the fields this morning as we return to the normal warm, wet and muddy Devon winter. Beetroot bunches just too muddy to be acceptable for the boxes and all had to be hosed off in the yard. Very short of greens for the boxes; still feeling the effects of a poor growing year followed by a cold winter. Ongoing debate with the co-op members about what constitutes an acceptable green cabbage. Think we will agree to pay less and double up the small ones in the boxes rather than hope that they will grow on the field and risk losing them.

Off to France tomorrow to finalise the purchase of our farm in the Vendee and to look at the crop trials we are doing there. All being well we will be growing early crops there for the veg boxes next year. Didier, the retiring farmer, has become so enthused by the project that he is staying on as a partner.

In the final part of the BBC2 series, Jimmy Doherty travelled west to meet some of the region’s most innovative farmers. His final stop was here at Riverford to meet Guy Watson. We really enjoyed the programme and feel it raised some interesting issues. Did you see it? Let us know what you think.

If you missed the episode on television, it can be seen on BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d4d4g/, where it’s available until 8.59pm Tues 26^th Aug.