Farming on the edge: Climate, crisis & collective resilience with Guy Singh-Watson

What does climate resilience really mean when the land beneath you is being washed away?

In this riveting episode of the Climate Resilience Podcast, host Phil Emonson is joined by one of the UK’s most influential voices in ethical agriculture — Guy Singh-Watson, founder and CEO of Riverford Organic Farmers. Sharing raw insights from the field - from soil loss and water stress to the power of collaboration and honest storytelling - Guy and Phil explore the realities of farming in a changing climate - and what true resilience looks like beyond the buzzwords.

Tune in as we explore:

• The cost of climate unpredictability on real farms
• How cooperation — not competition — can drive true resilience
• And the critical role of trust and transparency in the food system

A must-listen for anyone passionate about food, farming, and the future of our landscapes.

Thank you for listening to this episode. 

For any comments, questions or insights please contact phil.emonson@jbaconsulting.com.

Visit our website jbaconsulting.com
or follow us on LinkedIn JBA Consulting | LinkedIn

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting. I'm Phil Emmonson, and in this podcast series, we unpick some of the complexities, the challenges, and the opportunities on the topic of climate resilience with some inspirational thought leaders. Today I'm joined by Guy Singh Watson. Guy is the founder of Riverford Organic Farmers, a pioneer of ethical organic farming and one of the UK's most regarded voices on food and farming, landscape and environment. He's a former BBC farmer of the year. Over the past three decades, he's transformed not just the way vegetables are grown, but the way people think about what they eat, from field to fork. He's a farmer, entrepreneur, and environmental campaigner who believes passionately in stewardship over exploitation and in building resilient living landscapes that can weather the climate crisis. So today we'll explore his journey from conventional farming to regenerative principles and ask what it really takes to grow food in an age of floods, drought, and ecological crisis. And we'll also look at what does resilience truly mean when the land itself is under pressure. Guy, there's the introduction. Welcome to the Climate Resilience Podcast. It's great to have you on.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

I'm glad to be here. Super good stuff. Well, look, let's let's dive in. Um lots of areas I'd like to sort of talk to you about, I suppose, today. But the first the first theme then is what's it like to be a farmer at a time of of climate crisis. So in your career, you would have seen farming practices change quite a bit. What what changes have you seen and what impact have these had on on landscape and farming?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Well, I mean, climate change has arrived a lot faster than uh I think many of us expected. Um and you know, we see we're impacted by unpredictable, you know, what would have been described as freak weather events, but I don't think they can be anymore, really. So, you know, that tends to be intense periods of rainfall, periods of drought, uh, and and we're having to adapt our farming practices, you know, to deal with that. And you know, probably the biggest single thing. We we're in South Devon, quite steep slopes, up to 25% slopes that we're growing vegetables on, you know, intensively cultivated ground. And the risk of um uh pretty catastrophic soil loss is is is high. I mean, so high that we have had to take some fuels out of production and we've had to take measures to reduce risks quite a lot, which has added to costs. So it's here, and then you know, drought, you know, we're having to build more reservoirs, think more carefully about about water. You know, you can get so far with looking after soil better and building organic matter and moisture uh retensitiveness, but uh yeah, you know, when you've you if you've had a long period without rain, you know, that'll only get you so far. So yeah, no, I think we're having to adapt quickly. And you know, and I see this with farmers all over the world. I mean, we're lucky in the UK, particularly in the southwest, we you know we have a very kind, mild, uh, you know, and previously fairly predictable climate, but uh I still think it's a lot easier than you know the other area I've experienced in is East Africa, where you see the consequences are yeah, well, life-threatening.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it and and as we speak, we're just coming to the end of a very warm spell. We've had a pretty dry spring this year. So even, I mean, just talking about where we are at the moment, are are you finding pressures on the farm at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Um, actually, you won't hear a farmer say this very often, but it's been an absolutely fantastic year. You know, we had a long yeah, basically it stopped raining at the end of March. Um, and we had a long dry period, which enabled people to prepare the ground, get crops sown in absolutely ideal conditions. Uh, and then we've had uh at Easter we had 75 mil of rain in in a week, you know, which nothing too catastrophic in terms of downpours, and then it was dry again, and a few weeks later we had another two inches over a couple of days. So basically, you know, it's been a pretty perfect year, I would say, for most farmers. Um, you know, very easy to stay on top of the work and and so on. Yeah, so so far, so good. So good, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

And a lot of a lot of sunshine as well, which I'm sure has been helping.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, right. Record levels of sunshine and you know, long dry periods. So, as organic growers, you know, that tends to mean lower, lower disease risks, you know, happy crops and fight off fight off the disease better than you know when it's constantly cloudy and wet. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

This this might be a strange question, actually, so early on in the conversation. I I might normally finish with something like this, but given what you've just been talking about in terms of the changing climate and it what sort of what's ahead of us, what it might it might be quite a gloomy outlook, I suppose. But but actually, what what gives you hope? Because there are a lot of challenges that farmers face with the the uncertainty of the climate. So, what gives you hope?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Um well, nothing much around the climate. I mean, I'm not people who think you know get excited that we'll be able to grow grapes in this country. And well, I mean, I have planted walnuts and hazelnuts and so on. So I suppose that is in prediction of climate change. But um the biggest, I don't think really we don't know what to expect, but we know that there are going to be more extremes and there's gonna be more unpredictability, and when it comes to farming, there's nothing good in that, I'm afraid. So, you know, the reality of the situation that we face doesn't give me much hope. Our you know, wisdom and willingness to deal with the challenges and make the intelligent decisions, uh, you know, when we look at it collectively, whether a national level or an international level is, you know, severely lacking. So I don't have much hope there either. I mean, the public give me hope. I mean, that but the public, all the research I read, really want to see change that and they are prepared to make some sacrifices for that change, but they desperately need some leadership for that to actually happen. And and again, I'm afraid that is lacking. So I think we're being failed by our institutions, really.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So you've used the phrase uh adaptation there a few times, uh, and adaptation goes hand in hand with with resilience. Um, we we talk about how they are interchangeable a lot at JBA and and rely on each other. We can't build resilient um you know resilient communities or resilient farms or resilient landscapes unless we adapt. And we need to see those adaptations at uh at a policy level, at a leadership level, in a community level as as well. And and so, in the context of adaptation, then I'm really interested how we can build and create climate resilience landscapes. Um, so how do you think farms can work together to create benefit and resilience beyond their own individual holding or boundary?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Uh I think being able to share best practice and and what is recognized as best practice is definitely evolving. Um, but being able to learn from your neighbours um is can help you to be a better farmer and uh can help you to be a happier farmer. I think there is a sort of mental resilience as well that one can be easily dragged down by um, especially when you're in the fields on your own a lot by by what's happening and the challenges of farming and the challenges more broadly facing our planet. And I I think working together and at least being able to share that is is very important. So I did actually found a cooperative, oh god, 25 years ago of organic growers in in South Devon, which I think has been uh you know tremendously sort of helpful. And I I think probably the actual mutual support is in some ways uh the most important part of it. And then more recently, I have uh on the farm where my wife and I live now, we have essentially made it into a collective. So there are there are about eight businesses here working quite closely together, working in their own very specialized fields. And I think that works well. I guess more broadly, I mean, clusters, you know, we're being encouraged to form farm clusters to work on things like, you know, catchment-sensitive farming and and and so on. Um and provide, you know, to produce wildlife corridors. There's a project in our valley to introduce beavers, which is so far um, you know, which you have to get everyone on board with. Not everyone is, some people are quite concerned about it. I've just started a project to put some uh large wooden turbines up on a ridge that would be working with a couple of neighbors and actually working with the whole community, and the energy would be sold into a local energy users club, you know, what's not used by Riverford. Um, so yeah, you know, I'm I'm a big fan of working together in all sorts of ways. Um and I really want to live in a collective world where people cooperate rather than the idea that we, you know, that we're always competing with each other. Um, I don't think has served farmers very well.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I again collaboration working together is a is a very common theme from guests on the on the podcast. Uh thinking about this a little bit more. Um, I was listening to your Desert Island Discs episode that you did. Uh it was from a few years ago now. This is a 2018, I think, something like that. But in it, you spoke about how you um obviously you you you're you're unable to grow tomatoes sort of all year round, and and you you import them, I think, from from Spain. Um so in in terms of sort of that in more international collaboration, different practices, how how do you go about that? And what what have you learned from more sort of further afield collaboration?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Um, well, I am a pragmatist. I mean, I would I would love it if we were all happy to eat, you know, seasonal, whatever's in season. Yeah, um, but I that's just not going to happen. I mean, we could eat a lot more seasonally than we do, but uh I just wouldn't have a business if we didn't have tomatoes available, at least most of the time. Uh and the the season in the UK without using fossil heat in greenhouses, which in most cases means burning fossil fuels, is about 10 weeks if you're lucky, sometimes only eight. Uh so the rest of the year we are importing from Spain, from Andalusia, for instance, from and there are a couple of tomato growers down there who we've been working with for 20 years. And similarly, at the moment, we've got a lot of stone fruit coming in from um mostly from northern Spain. Actually, so we do have a group of about 30 growers, mostly from Spain and Italy and southern France, uh, who allow us to maintain a reasonable variety of vegetables um in our boxes um throughout the year. Uh, and that would be very, very difficult, you know, with just a solely UK-only policy. And I think it was got over 20 years ago, we did a study with X to University, and you know, uh heated glass to produce long season tomatoes and is just environmental insanity. I mean, even if you are using combined heat and power, it still doesn't stack up. You know, in the case of peppers, it was 10 times more carbon intensive to produce them over a long season in the UK than to import them by truck from south of Spain, for instance. Um, so yeah, we we work with those growers to try and come up with the most sensible environmental policy to maintain a reasonable range of vegetables um throughout the year. Um, but an absolute key part of that is telling the story to our customers and and and building their trust in us so that they will support us sometimes if there are problems, or sometimes if we don't have the availability that they would have in a supermarket, or sometimes if we're more expensive, actually, because sometimes to do things in the right way does cost a bit more. And so being able to tell the story of Butround the Food in an honest and authentic way, because there is a tremendous amount of out there, greenwash, you know, people telling you all sorts of stuff that just isn't true. Uh, that has been a pretty critical part of Riverford's success over the last 35 years. Um, I'd say I would say it was absolutely critical to our success and where we are now.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

And and and and with I'm just going to pick up on this theme here because it's one that fascinates me. Um this idea of storytelling and and and trust. And actually, there is a the the way in which you tell that story. So so everything everything you've just told me there is is probably rooted in data, the science behind it with X to University doing the study. There's probably some quite technical, let's face it, quite dry evidence that sits behind that. It's probably for the for the purist. But um actually the the way that you can tell that story in a way that is relatable and that's passionate for your end user um goes a long way to then building that trust and that and that recognition, brand, that brand recognition. Um, how have you gone about that over over time? You know, what what what sort of techniques have you found for for storytelling? It's an interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Well, my I mean, a story has to be told in a compelling and reasonably simple way. I mean, I write a newsletter every week, it's 400 words. You know, you have to be pretty concise. You can't give every last caveat and detail within that, but there has to be enough solid information to sort of indicate to our customers that we have actually done the thinking so that they do, and then on our website and in various things that have been published, there if they want to go deeper, they can do. So if you want to go in and into our website and find out the exact detail of our supply contracts with our customers, you can. You our exact carbon footprint, you can. The exact reason why we use the packaging that we do, you know, you can go and find it there. But you know, a tiny, tiny minority of people are going to actually do that. But I do think it's important that it's there and that you are doing it in an authentic way. Um, well, it's important for just for me personally, actually. I mean, that I see so much greenwashing out there, and I unfortunately, you know, people have very busy lives, and these are very nuanced issues. They're the very seldom simple answers. You know, to go back to the heated glass thing, you know, local is best has been the um, you know, the story throughout my adult life. Uh, and and it's very difficult. So that was absolutely questioning and intuitive belief that most people have. Uh, and we have done that, uh, and uh, you know, we don't sell anything from heated glass. Uh, as far as I know, we are the only people to have taken that stance, despite the fact that it's irrefutably environmentally insane. In fact, were you to heat a glass house to 20 degrees centigrade, which is what a tomato requires, uh, and you start planting them in January, and it's single glazed. I mean, were you to do that in your home, it would actually be illegal to build that home. It wouldn't build building regs. Yeah, you have 100% glazed with single glazing, and that's what everyone's doing. And and uh, you know, it is complete environmental insanity. Yet people continue to do it. It's even subsidized by our government. I mean, so sometimes it can be a bit, I mean, fighting for what is the real truth, which is often not an easy story to tell, you know, can be a bit frustrating. And I'm afraid there are way too many brands out there who just know perfectly well that no one, very few people will go and do the detail. Um, so they will just sell a uh something that just sort of ticks the quick boxes, you know, that phrase with cognitive misers, I'm afraid it is true. So, you know, the whole regenerative thing that's going on at the moment, you used the word earlier. Yeah, I almost stopped you because it completely drives me nuts. I mean, regenerative means nothing, you know, unless you're prepared to define in some detail what you mean by the term regenerative. Regenerative as an aspiration, you might say, well, even there, nobody's agreed. I mean, does it re include human beings? Is it just the environment? You know, it's a word that means nothing, but it's been used to sell some very expensive products and by some very dubious people.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

No, it's it's it's so interesting hearing you talk so passionately about this, and that the this sort of phrase then that's become uh uh ubiquitous. Um, it's arguably overused. We are experiencing something similar with the word resilience, because everybody's talking about building resilience to climate change. It is a bit of a buzzword in the sector, but um very few are taking the time to say, well, actually, let's just, as you've just said, well, let's just define what this thing actually means. Let's just let's just think well, because actually, if you think about the word resilience, it means different things to different people, to different organisations, and in different contexts. And and I actually I find that really interesting. I thought, you know, that the fact that we've all got this different interpretation of it. And you were talking about uh mental resilience earlier, you know, the the the need for mental resilience as a farmer to sort of keep you know keep pursuing this during all the many challenges. Um you've uh spoken in the past about um, and I quote here, agriculture that works with nature, not dominate it. Um and you know, working with nature and nature-based solutions play a really important uh role in the way that we think about how the landscape can more naturally support the management of flood risk, for example. So how then thinking about thinking about this term resilience, you know, what does climate resilience look like from a farmer's perspective?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Um well, I mean, um I would I I haven't actually written a definition, but I would, you know, resilience. You know, were the climate to shift, were it to become 50% wetter, 50% drier, were it to um, you know, have intensive periods of rain, that you could a resilient system is one that could carry on, you know, without too much loss of productivity or loss of soil, or you know, without, you know, given and with those changes, you know, one that is just it is completely reliant on it being absolutely as it is, you know, lacks resilience. So uh I you know, I mean, I could talk about you know what that means for us practically if you like. Um uh okay, I will.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Well, no, I was I was I was just I was I was just thinking there that uh you you mentioned the word productivity, um and and and clearly as as a farmer, you know, productivity is so important for you, you know, you are producers, you um you you therefore I think need to strike a balance between um the responsibility, the stewardship, the custodian of the land. And you sort of hinted at this earlier, and and maintaining that degree of productivity. How do how do you strike that balance? That must be a really um interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I mean, it is, and uh, you know, in the you know, market-based neoliberal system that I've spent lived my entire adult life under, there is very little space for someone to take a holistic view. I mean, you have to you you're you as a farmer and probably any business is constantly pressurized to do what is profitable and what's profitable in the short term. Uh and for farming, you know, you've absolutely got to be thinking in the long term. I mean, if you're thinking about your soil, you know, building a stable structure with high percolation rates so you don't get run off. Uh, and if you do, that you've got good crumb structure on the surface that the aggregates don't break down and get washed away and so on. So, you know, in order to do that, you have to really look after your soil, you have to, you know, add organic matter, not cultivate it in the wrong conditions, cultivate it as little as possible, probably. Maybe think about how you're cropping it. You know, we're on my farm, we're going to really trying to grow as many perennial crops as possible. I think that's a big challenge. Um, uh, I see when I go to East Africa, there are many more staple starchy perennials than we have in our temperate um latitude. So it is more challenging. But I think trying to move from a system of agriculture that requires creating a seed bed every year, which is inherently incredibly vulnerable, you know, you're just stripping off all the protective layers of vegetation and leaving it bare and subject to whatever the weather throws at it. That is something that is always going to be risky and particularly risky on our steep slopes. So trying to move away from that, reduce the amount of cultivation, try and grow as many perennial crops as you can, try and keep the areas as small as possible. So if water does start moving, it hasn't got, you know, our worst soil loss happened in a field where we had a 400 metres from the top to the bottom. Uh, didn't lose much at the top, but by it got to the bottom in one 20-minute thunderstorm, we lost an inch of soil. And you know, it would have taken millennia to generate, probably. So, yeah, so just yeah, trying to make sure that it is if the freak things happen that that that your the soil will stay in the field. I can't remember, Phil. Have I answered your question? I've I rambled on a bit.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Um I think I think, yeah, I think you have. I think well, there were sort of two interwoven questions, to be fair. I think we we had that question about what what resilience is, and I think you've you've you've certainly answered that for sure. And then we would the the the sort of second part of that was I suppose how you strike that balance between uh being a custodian of the land and being a producer. And I think what you're just talking about there about taking the long-term view. Um, I think that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

You know, we so I mean yeah, you're inevitably making compromises. I mean, businesses, you know, farms are businesses, you know. We have if we if we can't make a profit, we're not going to be here for very long. Um, and trying to temper the need for profit where they need to be yes, long-term custodians, is a very difficult thing to do. I mean, there are farmers who are just interested in the money and really don't care, but I think they are the minority. And I think most farmers, given a bit of encouragement and a bit of commercial space, you know, would you know want to be good custodians of their land.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Guy, we've covered we've covered so much in um in the last half hour. It's been a really super conversation, um, a really honest conversation. Um, and and I I've really enjoyed going down little um avenues that I perhaps didn't expect the role of storytelling and trust and how you engage with your your customer base, which was really interesting. Um, Guy, really appreciate your time and and thank you for for coming on the podcast. Um and so we've we've reached the end of our time today. As always, if you've enjoyed listening, then please hit the subscribe button so you're ready for the next episode when it lands in a month's time. Till then, thanks for joining us. I'm Phil Emmonson, and you've been listening to the Climate Resilience Podcast brought to you by JBA Consulting.