Looks aren’t everything, but ugly vegetables have long been judged on their appearance rather than their taste. Now the European Commission has scrapped rules preventing some oddly-sized fruit and misshapen veg being sold in Europe.

Marketing standards for 26 types of produce were dropped in a drive to cut bureaucracy. The new rules are expected to come into force on July 1, 2009 in what the EU’s agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel called ‘a new dawn for the curvy cucumber and the knobbly carrot’.

At Riverford Farm in South Devon, ugly veg has always felt accepted. The farm has been growing organic vegetables for 20 years and often fills its delivered-to-the-doorstep boxes with wonky parsnips or crooked carrots.

Founder of Riverford Guy Watson said: “Our customers are quite happy to buy irregularly-shaped vegetables. What they are after is fresh organic veg that tastes great and that’s what we provide. Shape has absolutely no impact on flavour.”

Riverford Organic Vegetables distributes more than 30,000 boxes of organic veg a week throughout the South, West and North West of England, South Wales and across London. The company has won several Soil Association awards including Organic Business Person of the Year for Guy, who was also pronounced the BBC Radio Four Farmer of the Year in the Food and Farming Awards.

In Dorset, boxes are delivered to around 2,000 doorsteps a week. Steve Millar and his wife Christine, who live in Corfe Castle, are the local distributors for DT postcodes and weekly deliver between 650 and 700 veg boxes.

Steve said: “We are based at the Holton Heath hub with Riverford’s veg boxes being delivered overnight and distributed the following day throughout Dorset. We deliver from Tuesday to Saturday now.”

As for how the credit crunch has affected sales at Riverford, Steve said: “Despite the recession, our customers bought as much veg in October 2008 as they did in October 2007.”

Guy Watson started organic vegetable production in 1987 and began by delivering his vegetables to local shops, including his brother’s farm shops in Devon. The vegetable box business started up in 1993 and the vegetables are packed at Riverford Farm and its sister farms. In South Devon, a co-operative which consists of 13 family-run farms is able, by planning the cropping together, to grow more than 85 varieties of veg to keep the boxes interesting all year. Sister farm River Nene Organic Vegetables delivers vegetable boxes to 8,000 homes across the East Midlands and River Swale Organic Vegetables delivers vegetable boxes across the North and North East of England.

Following the success of the first two sister farms, Riverford on Upper Norton Farm now grows and delivers to 8,000 customers in the Hampshire area and Riverford on Stockley Farm launched in September 2008 to grow and deliver to homes in the North West.

The emphasis at Riverford is to keep food miles down without compromising on quality, but Guy and his team judge that quality with their taste buds rather than their eyes.

Guy added: “Avoiding waste is one of our main aims, so we use ‘common-sense specification’ to decide which vegetables make it into our boxes. We very rarely reject a vegetable based on its appearance – it just wouldn’t make sense – so it’s great to hear that the European Commission is following suit.

“The way vegetables are displayed in supermarkets makes them look almost factory-produced. Some people seem to have forgotten that vegetables are something that nature has created, with all the variation that that brings. Our customers know what’s best for their families and that’s freshly-picked, great-tasting organic vegetables. And what does it matter if that vegetable is wonky?”

Visit www.riverford.co.uk to find out your nearest distributor or to order a box.