Guy Singh-Watson

speaker

51 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 22 May

Guy Singh-Watson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Food Programme · The future of our fruit and veg · 22 May 2026 podcast

I'm Guy Singh-Watson, organic farmer and vegetable grower and the founder of Riverford Organic Farmers.

Pretty much in my lifetime.

There used to be a lot of horticulture, especially around the coasts where there's protected from frost and so on.

They could grow early potatoes and cauliflowers in the middle of the winter.

But they're pretty much all gone.

So there's no one left to be upset.

British horticulture has become concentrated in the hands of really half a dozen major players who are the ones that have the supermarket contracts and pretty much everything else.

I'm exaggerating a bit.

But yeah, it's very, very difficult to buy in English new potato now.

You know, all those growers have gone.

I mean, to my mind, that's a tragedy.

It's a loss of a whole industry and a bit of culture and then all the socioeconomic benefits that go with having a sort of vibrant agriculture and vibrant countryside, whether that's in the pub or the church or the village hall or the local school, you know, all have suffered.

Well, we desperately need more diversity in our growing base, you know, in terms of scale of farms.

We probably need more mixed crops on farms and we need them to be spread out more around the country.

In terms of how you retain those smaller growers, I mean, I would love to see it be a condition of granting permission for a supermarket that they give over, I don't know, 10 parking spaces for there to be a local produce market in their car parks.

I think that should absolutely be a condition of them being there.

And I think actually it would even benefit the supermarket because people would like to go there because they like to actually see fresh produce that's not reptimpastic.

and ideally meet the farmer who grows it.

But, you know, we want to encourage people to eat more fruit and vegetables for, you know, for health purposes.

So I would suggest that high street greengrocers should be rate exempt.

Showing 1–20 of 51 · page 1 of 3