Deep Seed - Regenerative Agriculture
Mar 17, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min · 15 segments
**What happens when a farmer publicly admits that modern agriculture might be broken?** In this episode, British farmer **David Wheatley** joins the Deep Seed Podcast to share the unfiltered reality…
David WheatleyGuest
Raphael EsterhazyHost
Then Covid hit and the prices of everything rocketed sky high and I did go into like a downward spiral of depression and financial difficulty.
I think we lost £100,000 a year over three years whilst selling everything we've got as well.
I ended up filling my whole house full of peonies and doing TikToks basically in desperation TikTok was taking off during COVID so I thought we'd give it a go and a couple of the videos done alright and it gave me a little bit of motivation to like carry on I sold over a hundred thousand stems of peonies direct to the consumer in the post for four times more money than what the supermarkets paid
My name's David Wheatley, and sometimes people don't take me seriously.
I grow peonies, and peonies, each variety, only lasts for two weeks picking.
And 50% of the flowers will probably be picked in two to three days if it's hot.
To get them at their best, you want to have them while I'm picking.
I can store them for three to four weeks in cold storage, but they're always best when they're freshly cut.
Back in 2020, during COVID, David decided to start posting videos on social media to save his farm.
He needed to connect directly with potential customers to sell his produce.
And after that was quite successful, he decided to continue posting almost every day over the last few years.
He has now hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, and tens of millions of people have watched his videos.
I really love the content he's posting because it's so raw, honest, unfiltered.
David is sharing his everyday struggles on the farm, the successes, the challenges, the failures, all of that in a very honest and natural way.
But today we have a long format conversation where we get to know David better.
his problems and struggles and the solutions he's coming up with to solve them and his vision for the future.
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Then Covid hit and the prices of everything rocketed sky high and I did go into like a downward spiral of depression and financial difficulty.
I think we lost £100,000 a year over three years whilst selling everything we've got as well.
I ended up filling my whole house full of peonies and doing TikToks basically in desperation TikTok was taking off during COVID so I thought we'd give it a go and a couple of the videos done alright and it gave me a little bit of motivation to like carry on I sold over a hundred thousand stems of peonies direct to the consumer in the post for four times more money than what the supermarkets paid
My name's David Wheatley, and sometimes people don't take me seriously.
I grow peonies, and peonies, each variety, only lasts for two weeks picking.
And 50% of the flowers will probably be picked in two to three days if it's hot.
To get them at their best, you want to have them while I'm picking.
I can store them for three to four weeks in cold storage, but they're always best when they're freshly cut.
Back in 2020, during COVID, David decided to start posting videos on social media to save his farm.
He needed to connect directly with potential customers to sell his produce.
And after that was quite successful, he decided to continue posting almost every day over the last few years.
He has now hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, and tens of millions of people have watched his videos.
I really love the content he's posting because it's so raw, honest, unfiltered.
David is sharing his everyday struggles on the farm, the successes, the challenges, the failures, all of that in a very honest and natural way.
But today we have a long format conversation where we get to know David better.
his problems and struggles and the solutions he's coming up with to solve them and his vision for the future.
