I'm just too stubborn' Veg box millionaire with gift for going against the grain

Cardoons are a perennial crop - they keep coming back every year," says Guy Singh-Watson, as his dog Artichoke roots around the tall thistle-like plants for voles. "They would be a dream crop - if only people liked eating them."

- Damian Carrington

Cardoons, which Singh-Watson learned to love while snowed in on a Sicilian mountain, are not a typical vegetable. But then the Riverford organic veg box founder is not a typical farmer, despite still living just a few miles from the Devon farm where he was born.

Unlike most farmers, Singh-Watson says we need to eat less meat, that large-scale farmers should pay inheritance tax and that Brexit has been "a complete and utter fuck-up". He has opposed fox hunting, banned the badger cull from his land and supported the climate protesters of Extinction Rebellion. He once even voted for Jeremy Corbyn. When it comes to the challenges agriculture faces, he is the most brutally honest farmer in the UK.

Ploughing this lonely furrow has not limited his success. Riverford, now owned by its employees, had a turnover of £113m in 2023-24 and made a profit of £5.7m. His approach has made Singh-Watson a rich man: he sold his last share in Riverford to its 1,000 employees for £10m in 2023 and owns a 150-acre farm nearby.

In a long conversation outside the Riverford Field Kitchen restaurant, Singh-Watson talks about his family, the origins of his business and his recent diagnosis of autism. His parents, Gillian and John Watson, arrived at Riverford farm in 1951, both from colonial families returning home as the British empire faded.

"My parents wanted to do something useful with their lives, and at a time when there was still food rationing," says Singh-Watson. "They were Liberals all their life, in quite an old school, perhaps almost patronising way... They had a social conscience and believed that being wealthy and privileged came with responsibilities."

His father was always unconventional - and an "awful cook". Singh-Watson remembers cucumber stew at one meal.