A spoken YouTube announcement by Richard Perkins (uploaded Nov 27, 2019) describing his planned 2020 European regenerative agriculture film tour, called the Unsung Heroes. He plans to travel in a self-contained truck from May until October 2020 to document profitable regenerative farms across Europe, publish long-form (~1 hour) videos on YouTube for free, offer trainings (1–10 day) and seek farm recommendations via regenerativeagriculture.info. He requests participants willing to share detailed operational information (including finances and challenges), aims to build a supportive network, and is fundraising approximately €20,000 to cover costs.
Questions this video answers
Richard Perkins (uploaded Nov 27, 2019).
May until October 2020.
Approximately €20,000.
regenerativeagriculture.info.
From 1 to 10 days.
Chapters
What's up, YouTube? This is a quick video to announce the 2020 European Tour regenerative Agriculture tour that I'm embarking on, also known as the Unsung Heroes. We've been working super hard to build up our farm over the last years and it's been exhausting farming and farming people. And I really want to take a break during the summer season whilst other farms are active and in production to go and document what a lot of our participants have gone off and started as well as any other regenerative agriculture projects out there. And this serves to give me a little bit of rest. But, but there's a lot of benefits going to come from this tour and one of the benefits at home is something that Johanna's been feeling is the need to build up more local resilience in the workforce here. And so she's trying to assemble a team of particularly other people with children because life is very different when you have children, obviously, and we have a lot of people passing through here. But it's been hard to attract people who are able to be engaged more long term. One of the flaws of our business is that we're training people to leave and go off and start their own farms. And so Johanna's had this desire for more long term stability, which I've had too, and I think it's great for her to step more into the central leadership role of the farm. It's something she's been wanting to do. She's often behind the scenes and so it's really, it's coming together as we address our changing holistic context. Now the aim of the tour is to travel across all of Europe. I've kitted out my truck to be a self contained living and studio space. I've been installing drawer systems so that I can cook and eat and I have a power system and a bed and I have an awning so that I can have space in the rain. And I want to travel simply and not take up too much time of the people I go and visit because they're all going to be busy farming. So I want to be a self contained unit. And really the aim of the project is to shine the light on all the people around Europe doing amazing work that don't get the exposure from a platform like ours can give them. And so the aim is to really highlight people engaged in profitable regenerative agriculture all over Europe. And then we will make all of that available freely on YouTube for you. And it's going to be an epic adventure. I'm going to be traveling from May until October next year and I'll also be offering trainings along the way if people want to contribute. Now, I've really become aware in the last couple of years just how impactful our work at our farm has been and I really want to go and see some of that. I want to see and highlight and promote the people doing awesome things. There's also a space on the website that I've launched today. It's in the links below. It's regenerativeagriculture.info so there is a space there where you can recommend farm projects via a contact form that you think I should go and visit. Now, I've got to be really clear. It's important that people are willing to share the sort of details that make this stuff useful. We want to talk about finances, we want to talk about challenges and problems and that's been the focus of our channel the whole time, keeping it real and giving dense information to people who can benefit from that. And so if you're up for speaking in English and sharing that kind of information, we can help promote you to a huge platform. With the videos I've done in the past with people like this, they've had views from 10,000 to 150,000 views. And so this is a great way to promote what's going on in Europe. A lot of people are looking over to America on YouTube, etc. But we have so much going on here in Europe and we have such varied cultures and economies and nuanced ways of doing things. I think this will bring an unprecedented amount of information available freely to the world. I'm going to be doing long form videos, like, you know, an hour long at each farm perhaps, and really documenting all plethora of sizes and scales and different enterprises, anything that fits the bill as part of regenerative enterprise. So I know who I want to visit, but I want you to also contribute with farms that I should visit around Europe. So use the contact form in the links below. Also, you're welcome to invite us to do educational programs. Now, there's some information about that on the website and if you invite me, I will coordinate with you and give you more information about what to expect and all the details of hosting a training. It's a great way to bring a spotlight to your place as well as earn some income and build networks locally. I'm going to be offering anything from one to ten day trainings from any subject that is listed there on the website all the way through to Farm scale, permaculture design trainings. And it's a unique chance to invite me to your farm to run a training because it's very rare that I leave in the summer from our farm and so that's going to be shaping and dictating the journey I take around Europe. But I'll probably be starting from home and traveling the Nordic countries before circling around Europe, making my way back up this way. At the end of the year, if you want me to visit your site, I'll be self contained, but it's nice if I can park my truck and camp overnight there. And I'll be trying to coordinate over the winter to create a logical journey to see as many farms as I can next summer. So do get involved with the project. We're going to try and keep everything free on YouTube. So I will be doing some fundraising. There's already donation buttons on the website and I need to raise about €20,000 to cover just the costs. Now, our YouTube channel doesn't earn very much income. We have stuck to our guns with that by not playing the YouTube game. We are just focused on getting good information out and not creating glitzy content and clickbait titles and we want to keep it that way. I know that our viewers appreciate that and so it's unlikely that this will cover the cost. It's partly why I'm going to offer trainings on the way. Some people have already been asking about consultations. I recommend you host a training instead of hiring me to consult because it's a much more affordable way to have me there and many other people can benefit in the process. So it's a much better way to do things so you can get in contact about that too. I'm hoping it'll be a social journey, so, you know, I'm looking for people who might want to travel with me through their country and act as a bit of a host, as well as learning and meeting people in the network. I'll be doing that organically as I go, depending on my schedule, etc. So do be in touch if you think your farm should be highlighted then, or someone else's farm should be highlighted. As long as they meet the basic criteria of an active, profitable, regenerative agriculture site, then that's what we want to film and we want to be in touch with you. So do get in touch through the forms below. That's it for today. Just wanted to announce that and leave that there so that people can get in contact and I can start building this route. But I'm super excited to be able to cover around and see your farm and help lift your profile. And one of the big aims of the project is to create a network between everyone so that we have a network of support and resources that's really up to speed with all the amazing work going on. And I think people will be absolutely shocked just how much amazing stuff is happening. So thanks, everyone for doing what you do, and I'm excited to hear from you. That's going to be it for now, and we'll see you in the video soon.
