Sprouts take a battering in 2012 The day we meet, Coker is one of four rain-soaked souls whose silhouettes stand out against the grey Devon sky as, bent double, they hand-pick sprouts at a furious pace. It's the last day of picking before Christmas, and the race is on to harvest as much of the remaining crop as possible, to be cleaned up, packed into Riverford boxes and served up at tables around the country. The weather is unrelentingly miserable but Coker, dressed head to toe in mud-splattered waterproofs, is letting nothing dampen his mood as his two dogs race round the field chewing on leftover sprout stalks. His small four-person team, which includes his wife Mary Lou, will get through a ton of sprouts by the end of the day. "We thought the last day [of picking] was a few days ago," he says cheerily, "but they wanted a few more tons." Growers such as Coker are taking every ton they can get after the wettest summer weather in 100 years ravaged many other crops this year. Plants sitting in water-logged fields have been starved of nutrients and developed fungal diseases. Delicate crops such as lettuces and salads have been a complete write-off. Even the sprouts, members of the relatively hardy brassica family, have been hit and yields are down substantially on 2011. "Last year we had sprouts this high," Coker says pointing to his waist, as we wade through a muddy field where a variety called Helemus brushes our knees. But he swiftly adds: "We've had some crops this year that are total failures, so having something we can pick is quite good." Mention the weather down the road at Riverford's headquarters at Wash Farm, where Coker's sprouts are sorted and boxed, and you'll get a thunderous response from Guy Watson, founder of the £42m-turnover organic vegetable box company, which employs about 700 staff. "It really has been a hellish year," says Watson, who started delivering boxes to 30 friends in 1993 and now has about 40,000 regular customers. "We've had difficult springs or autumns but this year is in a league of its own," he says. Watson expects crop yields to be down "more than a third" as a result of the disastrous weather. Organic farmers are at a particular disadvantage, he says, because conventional crops would have "the hell sprayed out of them" to get rid of fungal diseases and slugs. He still expects Riverford, which has four farms, some 70 franchisees and a restaurant on its Devon site, to make a profit this year. But the vegetable part of the business, which also offers products from Stilton cheese to turkeys, won't be able to take the credit. "On our growing side we have made a thumping loss," says Watson, before grumbling, half-mockingly, about how his brother has sold "unbelievable" quantities of mince pies. Riverford has this year had to import more organic products than usual from abroad to meet year-round demand for seasonable products such as tomatoes. "There wouldn't have been anything in the boxes otherwise," says Watson. Watson's family has been farming the land in this heavenly spot of Devon - so divine it used to belong to the Church of England - since the early Fifties. His siblings run dairy farms while he, a self-confessed "left-leaning anarchist," chose to carve out a niche for himself in organic vegetable farming. Twelve years ago, Wash Farm was still supplying the supermarkets with products such as lettuces, but in 2001 Watson decided to plot a different path for the business, after he "had it with the supermarkets." "It was a rich list of humiliation every time you had to speak to them," he says. The organic vegetable industry boomed between 2003 and 2007 as consumers, fed on a new diet of celebrity chef programmes, latched on to companies such as Riverford and its rival, Abel & Cole. Since the financial crisis, which saw many shoppers buy their vegetables from budget chains such as Lidl and Aldi, growth has been harder to come by, although box schemes last year bucked a downturn in the wider organic market. Watson isn't complaining. The Oxford-educated farmer says: "I made two million quid one year. They were actually bloody miserable times. In 2013, as well as hoping for better weather, Watson will debate where to take the company next. IT is a challenge, he says, while he had always planned for the business eventually to become stakeholder-owned - which could be done either through a bond sale or selling equity to customers. In the meantime, nothing is going to stop Watson or his growers from enjoying the fruits of their labour over the festive season. So if Coker has a penchant for sprouts with fish and chips, what is Watson's preferred recipe? Earlier in the day he ate a couple of sprouts raw. "They were all right, actually," says Watson. I'll have to see if I'm erupting later.