Guy Singh-Watson

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2018

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Guy Singh-Watson is an organic farmer and founder of Riverford, a major British supplier of organic vegetables through a box delivery scheme. Born in 1960 and the youngest of five children, his parents became tenant farmers in Devon in 1951. He describes himself as "a proper little farm boy", and spent his free time outside, clambering up trees, catching rabbits, rearing his own pig and helping on the farm. Severely dyslexic, he disliked school, but thanks to an aptitude for performing well in exams, he won a place at Oxford University to read Agricultural and Forestry Science, graduating with a First. He briefly joined the family farm, but left to become a management consultant in London and then New York, returning to the farm in 1986. He started cultivating vegetables on three acres of land with a wheelbarrow and a borrowed tractor, and found his niche, moving from three to 18 to 50 acres quite rapidly. Initially, Guy sold to supermarkets, but became convinced that there must be a better way of getting his produce to customers, and set up a veg box scheme in 1993. His company now delivers to around 50,000 homes a week and had a turnover of £56.7 million in 2017. Guy has four grown-up children from his first marriage and an eight-year-old step-daughter from his second marriage to Geetie Singh. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Hello, I'm Kristi Young.
0:05.0	Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item
0:12.0	that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
0:16.0	For rights reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast.
0:22.0	You can find over 2,000 more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Discs website.
0:30.0	Music
0:49.0	My cast away today is the farmer and entrepreneur Guy Sing Watson.
0:54.0	The founder of Riverford Organics, his veg boxes packed with everything from krujets to kardunes,
1:01.0	nope me neither, are delivered to more than 50,000 British homes every week.
1:06.0	He's proved what some thought impossible, that a multi-million pound food business can be built on seasonal and sustainable produce.
1:15.0	But then he likes to do things his way.
1:17.0	In the mid 80s, he quit a high-powered job in Manhattan and travelled home to Devon to begin working three acres of land,
1:25.0	with nothing more than a wheelbarrow and a borrowed tractor.
1:28.0	His first 30 vegetable boxes were sold to his mates out the back of an old 2CV.
1:33.0	Now, he has an annual turnover of almost 57 million pounds.
1:38.0	But then just maybe he had a genetically modified advantage.
1:42.0	His parents began as tenant farmers in the early 50s and now every single one of his four older siblings are back home working the same acres.
1:51.0	The Devon soil it would seem is pretty much in their bones.
1:55.0	He says of farming organically, in this business you're trying to learn and manage an ecosystem.
2:01.0	It feels right to farm in harmony with nature.
2:04.0	I don't want to dominate and replace it with something of my own need.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.