This is honestly one of my favorite interviews that I’ve yet done and I’ll tell you why. In this interview I got to talk with one of my heroes in the regenerative farming world, Richard Perkins. Many of you probably already know Richard and Ridgedale farm from all of the amazingly informative videos and seminars he’s put out on YouTube. I came across Richard about 8 months ago and nearly binge watched all of his material online. In just a few short seasons, Richard and a small team have taken a severely degraded small farm in northern Sweden at 59 degrees north from mediocre mono-crop production into a profitable diverse and regenerative permaculture site that produces veggies, eggs, broiler hens, and much more, with longer term plans of food forests and perennial systems beginning to mature.
Now I almost never go over an hour in my interviews unless the subject matter is really good, so the fact that this one is just over an hour and 20 should tell you something. Richard starts by explaining why it’s so important to bring back small mixed production farms all over the world and then jumps right into practical and actionable information by going over the 7 tenants of regenerative agriculture that he’s outlined as the most important aspects to aim for. We also talked at length about how to solve the farm cash flow problem by finding alternative models and markets to sell to, how to intensify rather than merely grow your farm enterprises, how to holistically develop key ecosystems on the farm by building soil, and a whole lot more. This is definitely an interview you’ll want to listen to with a notebook on hand, and don’t forget to check out the links to some of the projects we mention in the interview in the show notes on the website.
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