Outline of Script for CCPP Crowd Source Funding Video
Introduction Karen Russon, President of Climate Change Permaculture Project
The heatwaves, droughts and floods that we read about in the newspaper, every day, have caused my husband and me to develop symptoms of anger, worry, insecurity, frustration, and depression. Apparently, there are so many people, who are experiencing the same thing, that the condition has been given a name—climate anxiety.
This motivated us to start a private operating foundation called the Climate Change Permaculture Project. The mission of the foundation is to create a critical mass of farmers who will adopt regenerative farming practices to reverse the effects of climate change and help to address food insecurity.
If you do a little bit of Internet research, you will find that former-Vice President Al Gore recently bought a 400-acre farm, outside Nashville, Tennessee, where he is doing exactly the same thing.
CCPP’s main activity is the Permaculture Incubator Programme (PIP)—like a small business incubator, only for regenerative agriculture. We have applied for government funding and written to private foundations for grants, to implement the programme, without success.
Therefore, we decided to move forward on our own. Russon Family Farms bought a four-bedroom house sitting on 2.5 acres of prime farmland where CCPP can implement its Incubator Programme (PIP).
The plan is to lodge four incubator programme trainees in the house and to subdivide the two acres, into four, half-acre plots which will be assigned to the trainees. The trainees will receive instruction in regenerative agriculture from a world-class permaculture expert (Peter Bane) and will put what they learn in the classroom into practice on their plots.
The trainees will sell their produce in the local Farmers Market. They will be encouraged to share their abundance with the local foodbank. The Soil Inventory Project, the same organisation that is working with Al Gore, will help us to measure the amount of carbon that we are able to sequester.
When we bought the property for the incubator programme, we pretty much maxed out our resources. But there are still things that need to be done for the incubator programme to be successful.
For example, we need a fence to keep the deer from eating everything that the trainees plant. We figure that’s going to be about US$10k. We need to drill a well so that the trainees can irrigate. That’s going to be another US$7k.
We also want to build a climate battery greenhouse. So, what’s this all about? During the spring, summer and fall, the trainees can grow food outside. A climate battery greenhouse would allow them to continue to grow food in the winter, too. Which means they will have revenue, year-round.
We are hoping to build this infrastructure during the summer of 2023. We will start recruiting PIP trainees in the fall of 2023. And we will launch the Permaculture Incubator Programme in the spring of 2024.
So here is where you come in, if you like we, are suffering from climate anxiety and you want to do something, but you are not quite sure what to do, we implore you to consider making a contribution to help us to pay for deer fencing, a well, and especially a climate battery green house. Thanks for helping us to help reverse climate change.