We’re generally people who like to “do it” rather than talk about it, however we have been persuaded to explain our motivation. We are not about more hectares, or more polytunnels and growing systems. Haygrove’s reason for being is:
- To create opportunities for great people, particularly those who have drawn the short straw.
- Move minds as to what defines a great business.
These self-set challenges are based upon belief that:
- Ignoring the billion people who are at the bottom, now holding smart phones with near-free internet, could be the biggest mistake our children suffer. In this newly connected transparent world the challenge to us all to provide each other genuine opportunity to improve our lot, whatever it is, is becoming increasingly vital (frustrated people smash windows).
- We have a planet into which all sensible people are saying we must stop pumping carbon.
- Working just to earn money, dominate a sector, or gratify ourselves, seems to pale in relative importance in the face of these realities. How we live seems critical, but also useful impact seems excitingly more achievable.
How does a medium-size business really make any difference?
In the last 30 years, the vast majority of the world has chosen to organise itself around money and business. Governments, particularly western, have become blown left and right by social media. Business has become the vehicle of human organisation, the stability, the employer. It therefore needs to be designed and to lead the world in a more rounded way.
Our dream over the next twenty years, with help, is to be part of a gathering wave of examples, of a new type of small and middle-sized businesses, who choose to measure themselves across a ‘Triple Bottom Line’ of Profit, People and Planet. Businesses who raise the bar to the traditional. Businesses who incorporate to their core, deliberate development opportunity for people less fortunate than most of us, and deliberate benefit, rather than cost, to our grandchildren’s planet. Such that the very definition of ‘what is business?’ becomes renewed.
Labour intensive horticulture is a wonderful industry to lead change, not only because it feeds us the most healthy food but because it operates at the coal face of all these issues. It employs the often much poorer, in large numbers seasonally with the understandings required by this, and sells to the more wealthy. It is a Robin Hood industry. It lives daily in the teeth of the volatility of climate change, trying to understand nature, having to adapt immediately to survive and prosper. It is real.
We are excited that useful impact is worth trying for as the total transparency about to come will be a huge force for good. Consumers will be able to vote with their fingers online, and smart staff and customers will ask for it.
If you have read this far, thank you, and please join us.
Our Goals
