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Regenerating Rural Economies with Jenni Harris of White Oak Pastures
243 Plays7 months ago
For those who have followed regenerative agriculture anytime over the last three decades, this week’s guest needs no introduction. Jenni Harris is the Director of Marketing at White Oak Pastures, a six-generation farm in Bluffton, Georgia that transitioned from conventional to regenerative agriculture in 1995 (long before it was cool) and have laid the path for scores of farms to follow suit.
They have even gone so far as to found the Center for Agricultural Resilience, which educates, empowers and equips individuals & organizations on the benefits of resilient agriculture.
It’s a remarkable story and one - as Jenni explains - that other agrarian locales around the country can emulate, while accounting for the unique factors that make up each local environment.
In this episode, we cover:
- How Jenni’s search for community led her back to Bluffton and her family farm
- The history of Bluffton, and the work they’ve done to restore and revitalize the town
- The origin story of White Oak Pastures and how her dad, Will, saw the need to transition to regenerative practices that improved animal welfare, restored local ecosystems, and created a new stream of income for the farm
- The difficult financial realities of farming today, and how they’re working to make White Oak Pastures financially sustainable into the future.
- The threat to US regenerative farmers posed by “greenwashing” multinational corporations and lax policies for labeling imported foods
- What they’re doing to support more US farmers in transitioning to regenerative practices that are tailored to specific localities.
- What’s at stake for the world if we don’t transform our food system
- And much more...
Learn more about White Oak Pastures here.
Follow them on Twitter and Instagram.
More about Jenni:
Jenni Harris, Will's middle daughter, is a member of the fifth generation of the Harris family to tend cattle at White Oak Pastures. After living on the farm her entire life, Jenni went to Valdosta State University and earned a degree in Business Marketing, graduating in 2009. She remained intimately involved in the family business throughout her studies.
After graduating, Jenni set out to learn the industry. She moved to Atlanta where she interned at Buckhead Beef, a SYSCO company. She put in time in every department, from shipping and receiving to the cut shop, and was later hired to work as a sales associate.
In June of 2010, Jenni returned home to Early County to work for White Oak Pastures full time. As the Director of Marketing, Jenni spends her time focusing on the balance of ecommerce growth and wholesale relationships. Jenni is the proud mother of Jack and Lottie Harris and wife of Director of Specialty Products, Amber Harris.
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.
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Transcript
Bluffton's Agricultural Roots
00:00:01
Speaker
So I think that what has happened in Bluffton is just a textbook example of what could happen in any rural community anywhere in the United States. Farms play such a crucial role because most of those communities evolved as agrarian communities.
00:00:18
Speaker
You know, there's no meal in Bluffton, no manufacturing plant. We don't make solar panels. Bluffton was established on agriculture, and it's so special to see it reestablished on agriculture. But truthfully, I think that that can happen anywhere and everywhere. It's just the food system has to be given a chance.
Agrarian Futures with Emma and Austin
00:00:48
Speaker
You are listening to Agrarian Futures, a podcast exploring a future centered around land, community, and connection to place. I'm Emma Ratcliffe. And I'm Austin Unruh. And on the show, we chat with farmers, philosophers, and entrepreneurs reimagining our relationship to the land and to each other to showcase real hope and solutions for the future.
Regenerative Grazing at White Oak Pastures
00:01:17
Speaker
Welcome, Jenny, to Agrarian Futures. We're so excited to be talking to you today. We're both huge fans of white oak pastures and the work that you guys have done. To get us started, could you just tell us a little bit about white oak pastures and why regenerative grazing and your practices are so important?
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, so thanks, Emma. Thanks, Austin, for having me. It's people like you who take interest in folks like us that ultimately will move the ball down the field for all farmers. I think the more we can get together and talk about the things that work and don't work, if we can save somebody some heartache, let's do it.
The Charm of Bluffton, Georgia
00:01:54
Speaker
So my name's Jenny Harris, and I'm a member of the fifth generation of Harris's to raise livestock here at White Oak Pastures.
00:02:03
Speaker
and beautiful, hot, sunny, humid Bluffton, Georgia. A little bit about Bluffton. The population is actually 103. So very, very, very tiny town. Emma, you've been a couple of times. You know what I'm talking about. No red lights, no convenience stores, no dollar generals, just more livestock than people.
Regenerative Livestock Methods
00:02:23
Speaker
But at White Oak Pastures, we pasture raise grass-fed cattle, goats, sheep, and then hogs, rabbits, and poultry. And we do so in a model that we have learned to know and define as regenerative and holistic. And we process those on the farm and then keep the lights on and keep our staff paid by selling all those meats either direct to consumer through our online store, through our general store, or
00:02:52
Speaker
through one of the few grocery stores that we sell to here in the southeast or along the east coast. And I would say having been to Bluffton that you guys do have a small convenience store now that you guys run.
00:03:04
Speaker
So my dad purchased the entire block that the general store sits on in 2015 for $10,000.
Revitalizing the Herman Bass Store
00:03:12
Speaker
Only in Bluffton can you buy a whole city block for $10,000. But what sat on it was the town's general store. It's called the Herman Bass store.
00:03:23
Speaker
It operated for probably 60 or 70 years, constructed in the 1800s and closed down, I guess late 1800s and closed down around 1950. It was a true place of commerce and pretty sad to see it go. It was in pretty dilapidated and disrepair.
00:03:43
Speaker
And my dad said, you know what this needs to be? It needs to be our general store. Our farm needs a store. And my wife and my sister and my brother and all, we all looked at each other with the home, this thing. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great. This beats the hell out of sticking up a red iron 10 building on highway 27. This embodies what our community is. And I was like, oh, yeah, run down and ugly.
00:04:09
Speaker
And he had a vision and I can absolutely say with 100% support now that he was right. We got in there and with some skilled carpenters really fixed it up and it's exactly what you would expect from a farm. It is truly a general store and we're proud of it. It's got houses, our restaurant, in addition to the things that we make and produce at White Oak Pastures.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, and it seems like the story of void of pastures has been a lot about revitalizing this town that had been in this multi-decade decline. Could you talk a little bit about the history of
Industrial Agriculture's Impact on Bluffton
00:04:44
Speaker
Bluffton? You mentioned that it's currently 103 people, but you talk about the last hundred years and what it was like then and the history since then up till today. And also, if you could intertwine that with the history of your farm and how it relates, because I know that those two histories
00:04:59
Speaker
and how you used to produce and how agriculture used to be is very much tied to the history of Bluffton as a town. Yeah, sure. I'll take a swing at it. So back before rural communities became dried up ghost towns, they were what some called the backbone of America. And I still like to think that they are. So I grew up, I was born in 1986. I'm currently 37 years old. And when I was growing up, my two sisters and I
00:05:29
Speaker
We're pretty much the only kids in Bluffton. There was one other family who also had three daughters and they were a good bit older than us. So the youngest one and my oldest sister kind of settled in as playmates, but not really a whole lot of community and children around. And I swore that I would never live in Bluffton.
00:05:49
Speaker
I didn't want to raise my family if I was blessed enough to have one in a place where there was really no community. I grew up watching TV saved by the bell and the secret world of Alex Mack where kids skateboarded in the cul-de-sacs and rollerbladed down sidewalks with streetlights. I thought, man, that is awesome. Having kids to play with that you're not biologically kin to, that's what I'm talking about.
00:06:18
Speaker
I'll get to the bluffing part here shortly, but just to finish my personal journey, I graduated high school in a class of 16 people, four girls, 12 boys. So very, very small school and knew that I did not want to go to college locally. I wanted to move away. I wanted to move out from my parents and I did. I went to Valdosta State University and graduated. I still was not in a position to really want to come home.
Jenny's Return to Bluffton
00:06:45
Speaker
So I moved to Atlanta and thought that
00:06:47
Speaker
I mean my god if i can't find community in atlanta one of the most populated cities on the east coast then you know it's just not for me so i moved to atlanta and i had a really great time but in constant conversations with my dad i was jealous about what was happening in bluffton and more on that with regard to
00:07:06
Speaker
the evolution of white oak pastures, but I lasted about a year. My dad's rule was you have to work off the farm for a year before you return home to call your dad your boss. So I did just that. I worked off the farm for a year and I didn't tell him that I was returning home. I just kind of showed up with my stuff because I knew he wouldn't let me. And so showed up with myself and I've been here ever since. So that was June of 2010.
00:07:33
Speaker
The town of Bluffton, though, is a pretty unique one. It is located on the high ground in between the Chattahoochee River and the Flint River. It's also located at the base of where the Appalachian Mountains go subterranean. So if you drive south of Atlanta, 20, 30 miles up the road, it's really hilly. Those are sort of the very not noticeable foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And it's flat as a marble here. You could roll a marble for a mile, but it's
00:08:02
Speaker
Fortunately, thousands of years of runoff and topsoil have settled because this is indeed the high ground. It's said that it's never to flood along Highway 27 because it is a lot higher than other places.
00:08:18
Speaker
And so that's conveniently where our farm is located. We straddle Highway 27 with about a thousand acres that my dad inherited. He's the fourth generation of, and then another thousand acres that we've been blessed to acquire over the last 15 years in farming this way. Bluffton served several thousand community members. It was a trade center for something like 15,000 families.
00:08:44
Speaker
back before World War II.
Post-WWII Agricultural Shifts
00:08:47
Speaker
We know that post-World War II agriculture changed dramatically. Agriculture became centralized, it became commoditized, and it became industrialized. So much so that post-World War II, the A and B students moved away to urban centers to get jobs with suits
00:09:06
Speaker
and coats and ties. Mamas and daddies wanted their babies to be doctors and lawyers and financiers. And the C&D students, like my dad, they stayed home to farm. And as a result, there's just been a tremendous amount of talent lost.
00:09:25
Speaker
in these rural areas because there are not very many opportunities for those entrepreneurial, spirited folks to settle in and express their creativity. Bluffton currently has 103 people in it. Most of the working age folks work at White Oak Pastures. The rest of the folks that live there are beyond the working age.
00:09:48
Speaker
And we like to think of it as a pretty little town. There's not a whole lot to do, but it's quiet. It's got all you need with regard to the staples. You can get some really great beef and chicken and lamb. And we have a thirsty Thursday every Thursday, so games and beer and whatever else a person could possibly want. And I couldn't be happier to have my wife and our two children here in this community.
00:10:18
Speaker
So Broughton went from a thriving city, declined massive brain drain with the industrialization of agriculture. And then in the early 90s or early 2000s, thanks in large part, I think, to the decision of your dad to convert the farm back from
00:10:34
Speaker
industrial model towards what it is today regenerative multi species grazing it started a pretty dramatic reversal and is now a small but beautiful and in some ways very dynamic town can you talk about that transition.
00:10:50
Speaker
Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. In the mid-90s, my dad really fell out of love with commoditized agriculture. My granddad fell victim to chemical fertilizer, growth hormones, and steroids, subtherapeutic antibiotics, confinement feeding, and that was the model that he and everyone else were rewarded on.
00:11:13
Speaker
having a grass-based different type of product is probably not one that would have survived easily in the food production landscape that happened post-World War II. So in
Sustainable Farming Transition
00:11:23
Speaker
the mid-90s, my dad made the decision not necessarily to change the production system over to regenerative ag or sustainable ag or any of those other sexy words that we've
00:11:34
Speaker
gotten used to now, but he started marching away from the things he didn't like. He talks a lot about animal welfare being the canary in the coal mine. He was selling calves, weaned calves, particularly one year, and the soccer truck came to pick those calves up. Dad was part of the team that loaded them up, and he talks about how he thought
00:11:58
Speaker
I've raised these animals and taken such great care of them to see them loaded up with the ones on the top of the trailer urinating and defecating on the ones on the bottom. It just really doesn't seem like what I ought to be doing. It doesn't seem like really great animal welfare. And so he slowly started to change our production system. First, giving up chemical fertilizer. My granddad used ammonium nitrate every year on every acre since like 1945.
00:12:27
Speaker
The story on that is an interesting one. Before that time, chemical fertilizers just weren't readily available to farmers, and if they were, they weren't really affordable. But my granddad talked about this fish fry that was being held in Bluffton, and a chemical salesman was going to come and show them what the new era of farming was going to look like.
00:12:48
Speaker
And the salesman was smart. He knew that nobody was going to come. Farmers don't want to be told what to do. Nobody was going to come, but they coupled it with a fish fry. And if there's anything that farmers love, it's a damn fish fry. So the fish fry is what drew in the crowd. But my grandfather went and the salesman took ammonium nitrate and put it in a pattern on the ground. You walked out and a
00:13:10
Speaker
applied it to the ground and said, all right, I want everybody to come out here after the next rain, two or three days. And I want you to look at this pattern. It'll be a noticeable difference. You'll be able to see exactly where I put this ammonium nitrate. And they were like, ah, yeah, give me some more fish. And so my granddad did it. After it rained, he went and checked it out. And sure enough, the grass was taller. It was greener. It was just a completely different color.
00:13:34
Speaker
And he was sold hook, line, and sinker. He knew that, holy cow, I could have my whole farm look like this. And so from that year on until the mid-90s, we used chemical fertilizer on every acre every year. Little did we know that in enforcing the monoculture of grass that he thought he wanted, Tifton 85 grass, he was killing the naturally occurring flora and fauna in the soil.
00:14:00
Speaker
So when my dad decided to walk away from that, it was a pretty painful process, but he had the intestinal fortitude to keep going. And today our land went from less than a half a percent of organic matter in the soil to over five percent here in the coastal plains, which is a pretty significant number. Yeah, because it's kind of like going off of drugs.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, he talks about it being truly a situation where he felt withdrawal. He came to realize that chemical fertilizers were sort of like peeing in your pants to stay warm. Short term is a great strategy, but long term, it's not really a good idea.
00:14:38
Speaker
And Jenny, I've heard your dad talk about how the profitability is more challenging right now today than maybe it was when he was just doing cow-calf or when in the early days of being able to sell the Publix and being able to sell the Whole Foods with very, very little competition in the American grass-fed beef space.
00:14:59
Speaker
And that it is more challenging today with more competition and that the profitability can be tighter. And something that I would wonder as a farmer who's much smaller is, well, if white oak pastures with however many employees you have now and the notoriety and the infrastructure that you have, if they struggle to make a significant profit, how could a small farmer possibly make a run at it?
00:15:27
Speaker
What would you have to say to a small farmer who's coming at you with those kind of questions? I'll say that our profitability sucks. This is a business of very high risk, lots of regulation. There have been years, specifically the last three years, where there's no profitability. The numbers are red, not black.
Profitability Challenges at White Oak Pastures
00:15:47
Speaker
That's a pretty scary thing too. But the answer is,
00:15:50
Speaker
Every business is so incredibly unique. The more I've learned about this business, the hard times that we've experienced is, if we hadn't done this, then we wouldn't be carrying this debt. We grew incredibly fast. Because of that success that we experienced very early on,
00:16:09
Speaker
But because we weren't as diligent as we should have been with regard to analyzing the financial impacts of what we were doing, every farm and every scenario is different. Your labor is going to be different. Your access to things is going to be different. We're in rural Southwest Georgia, where there's not a tremendous amount of demand for grass-fed beef. Generally, the largest customer base that supports us is three hours in Atlanta. It's up the road.
00:16:37
Speaker
We have a tremendous amount of expense just in getting what we do to the people who want it. And so I don't think that you can say, oh, White Oak Pastures is super successful, so I will be too. Or, oh man, White Oak Pastures had some really crappy years, so I am also. It's so unique to where we are, what we have to work with, the debt we took on, and the terms that we accepted that debt at.
00:17:03
Speaker
Then you guys being at the forefront of the grass fed beef movement, not just doing beef, but doing every kind of livestock that you can possibly imagine just about. You guys have seen the evolution of it and you've seen other players try to catch up and some doing so in a good way.
00:17:20
Speaker
but others, especially large players, trying to cash in on a good movement and trying to sell off their product, whatever it is, whether it's beef or chicken or something else, as better than it is.
00:17:36
Speaker
So can you tell me a little bit about that? Maybe how you've experienced that in different categories, whether that's beef or chicken, and what you guys are doing about that in order to educate your customers on what's really going on, both on your farm and then what's being offered and how it's not maybe as rosy as it's portrayed as being.
00:17:57
Speaker
Good question.
Meat Industry Centralization Issues
00:17:58
Speaker
The centralization of meat has occurred and now there's something like four big packers that control something like 85% of the beef that we all get an opportunity to consume. That's just a really scary statistic for me and I think a lot of others. Those big multinational corporations have bought beef brands, grass-fed beef brands, and absorbed them into their ecosystem.
00:18:25
Speaker
to basically green wash the movement. We call that green washing and it's selling product with really high attributes and not actually having those attributes. A good example would be free range chicken. You use the word free range chicken or cage free eggs and you put those words on a label and then your logo just so conveniently has a grassy knoll with a white fence and a red barn with chickens outside.
00:18:54
Speaker
And the consumers led to believe that those birds are free range. They're outside, roaming, pecking, grazing, eating bugs and grubs in the soil. And in reality, we can all look up what the definition of free range is, and it has nothing to do with what that picture looked like. That's a green washed product. We certainly have experienced it in some of the wholesalers that we no longer work with. Dad said he felt like window dressing for some of them.
00:19:21
Speaker
It definitely is alive and well, but I'll say that probably the worst thing that's happened is that in 2015, country of origin labeling was rescinded.
Country of Origin Labeling Concerns
00:19:31
Speaker
I can look in the back of my shirt, y'all can too, and it'll say product of Bangladesh or Vietnam or whatever it is.
00:19:38
Speaker
But for whatever reason, that level of traceability in the meat industry was just no longer valid. It was no longer needed. And we all know that it was because of people, lobbyists with suitcases full of money that just kind of made that go away. But no longer post 2015, was there any need to have traceability to the country of origin that the meat was produced? So today, you made a point, Austin, where you talked about how you had heard something where dad said we were really profitable. There was no competition.
00:20:07
Speaker
And I'd like to say that I don't view another farm, a domestic farm, another farm in America doing what we're doing. That's not competition for me. That's another independent food system which is vital to our nation's food supply. Competition for me is imported product showing up on retail shelves labeled as product of the USA when the animal never
00:20:30
Speaker
walked a step on American soil or breathed a breath of American air. And for whatever reason, the allowance of those meat products to be put on a container ship, shipped to the United States, ground, repackaged, value add in some way, and that become a product of the USA, that's where we have really seen a lot of struggle. We've lost some traction with regard to our wholesale volume.
00:21:00
Speaker
And we certainly lost margin. It's been a really challenging experience. The light at the end of the tunnel though is that supposedly in January of 2026, there's a new rule that says that anything that's labeled, processed and labeled on January the 1st, 2026.
00:21:19
Speaker
What's in that package? If it was not born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States, it can't bear product of the USA seal. That, I think, is not the answer that we all wanted. We want mandatory country of origin labeling. If it's a product of Canada or a product of Mexico, we want you to have to put product of Canada or product of Mexico on it.
00:21:42
Speaker
That would be best case scenario, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. I think it will really impact things positively, not only for us, but other farmers trying to do what we do.
00:21:52
Speaker
And Jenny mentioned there that you don't see American farmers who are doing things the way that it should be done, not greenwashing, but actually raising livestock like they should be as competition.
Training New Farmers
00:22:04
Speaker
And that's one thing I think that really where White Oak really stands out is not only have you taken your business and run with it and grown it and be able to serve a lot of people,
00:22:14
Speaker
but you've also opened up the operation. You do education and you do all kinds of things to get more people on board. Can you share a couple of those ways that White Oak Pastures as a organization is trying to get more people into farming?
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely don't see people doing and not even exactly like us. If you are an independent farmer and you finish on grain or you're really pumped about why you or whatever, I'm your biggest fan. I appreciate the fact that you're willing to do something different that doesn't feed into the commoditized, centralized, industrialized agricultural model. I believe that there is no right answer. There is no perfect food system. All we can do is the best we can in mimicking nature.
00:23:00
Speaker
What are we doing about it? My dad founded a 501c3 called the Center for Agricultural Resilience in the fall of 2021. That was done specifically to help train other farmers. For us at White Oak Pastures, we've had an internship program for probably 10 years or so.
00:23:22
Speaker
And the amount of people that we can train is just a fraction of the people who apply. We routinely get 20 to 30 applications of people who want to come here and work for 12 weeks.
00:23:38
Speaker
Just to see the way we do it, but because of housing limitations, you know, there's no apartment complex or dorm that we can stick people. So we're limited at the amount of people we can train to who we can house, but that's founded.
00:23:53
Speaker
the Center for Agricultural Resilience, or CFAR for short, to really project that and give corporations or high net worth individuals the ability to donate funds specific for and specific to training other farmers. Emma, I think you came to a CFAR class, didn't you?
00:24:10
Speaker
I did. And it was incredible. I mean, it was, I did the one where it's like a two day introduction and you walk through all the different units that white oak pastures, the beef operation, the poultry operation, the slaughterhouse, the marketing with you. And you really get like a, what was to me, a deep dive to you guys. It's a very high level intro class, but of the operations. And I mean, what struck me was just like how complex it is. I mean, it's.
00:24:37
Speaker
truly a full-fledged business that is just as complex probably as a large Coca-Cola plant or Coca-Cola in general. It's running so many different units that have to cooperate and work together. When you compare it to your dad in the early 1990s before he transitioned to this model, it's just striking the difference in complexity and skill sets that it's working with.
White Oak Pastures Business Operations
00:25:05
Speaker
well and i appreciate that and you know the the only way we're able to do that is to meet multiple times a week all together rushed back here for this call we have a management advisory team and that's you know peer nominated managers you know from production to processing to
00:25:23
Speaker
distribution, marketing, there's probably 12 of us. We get together and we talk and we say, here are the problems, here are the things we've got coming up, here are the opportunities, how can we all help? Our weeks are full of meetings and it's because we're truly a food system. We receive, we produce, we ship. It is a lot of different layers and components that have to work together to ultimately produce something that the consumer demands.
00:25:53
Speaker
Consumers don't necessarily demand cows and pigs and sheep. They demand beef and lamb and pork. And so we as farmers have to use we as processors to turn animals into meat and then meat into shippable products that can be consumed and enjoyed to whoever wants to support it. And so there's a tremendous amount of complexity there.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's what's so apparent to anyone that would visit White Oak Pastures is there's this perception I think among the public that a farmer is old white man probably with a tractor and that's it.
00:26:31
Speaker
And you guys are really changing the paradigm of what a farm is. And in a way, it's going back to traditional methods of working with ecosystems. But at the same time, it's very modern and innovative. It's a business using best practices and processes and everything. Yeah. You know, in that business aspect of it, back when we were successful and profitable, we kind of got to turn a blind eye to the business side. There was enough cash that it didn't really matter.
00:26:59
Speaker
when country of origin labeling was rescinded and we saw such big decreases and we lost some customers along the way that didn't align with who we were and what we want to accomplish. It was a sobering reckoning that, oh my god, is a business. Shit, we got to run this like a business. At the end of the day, there's got to be enough revenue coming in to pay for the expenses going out.
00:27:23
Speaker
And that's been something that we've all kind of refocused on with Cole's help. Cole's been a huge part of that. And I've probably learned more in the last two years than I have in the last 20. Jenny, the history of white oak pastures is really well-documented and it tells such a great story. I'm curious to hear from you as the next generation that's taking it over.
Jenny's Vision for Regeneration
00:27:44
Speaker
What is your vision for the next generation, the next number of years where white oak pasture is heading going forward from here?
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I am a mother of two kids. I have a seven-year-old son named Jack and a two-year-old, almost two-year-old daughter named Lottie. And I'm the aunt of two really great nieces, Hattie and Hayston, and one really great nephew, Harris. And I think it's going to be my job just to not fuck it up, just to work really, really hard.
00:28:16
Speaker
to keep it a viable business so that they'll have the opportunity, not the obligation that I had in my early 20s. I really believe that there are more and more people that are interested in regenerative agriculture and getting a front row seat with how their food is produced.
00:28:37
Speaker
I think that from a planetary perspective, we can all agree that commoditized industrialized and centralized agriculture is doing a tremendous amount of harm. And that if we continue it, we won't have much to share or gift our children to inherit. So I think that my one year, my five year, my 10 year plan is first and foremost to remain a viable business from a financial perspective. It's to,
00:29:04
Speaker
continue to operate in a way that allows consumers to be a part of it and it's ultimately to train others to create their own food systems wherever they are you know regenerative agriculture is not highly scalable. Scalable agriculture we already have.
00:29:21
Speaker
mass-produced food. But regenerative agriculture is replicatable, and there's no reason that there can't be a white oak pasture or two in every agrarian county in the United States. And it's up to those of us who have established that to share and to help others do it, because ultimately all ships will rise with the tide. We're probably headed for a pretty nasty awakening with regard to our health, our soil's health,
00:29:50
Speaker
And I'm not gloom and doom. I feel like I'm on a train headed 150 miles an hour towards a brick wall. Either we can bust through it or we're all going to die in the process. If we continue at the rate that we're going, we've just been so extractive with regard to our planet that the very idea that there'll be anything left for our children is kind of silly.
00:30:14
Speaker
Everything changes when you have kids. You can be selfish for so long and then you pop out a kid or two and you're like, oh shit.
00:30:21
Speaker
So it sounds like that you guys have really as a business invested a lot into innovating in your systems coming from where you were in the 90s to where you are today. All that you have done there on the farm, there's been a lot of growth over the last let's say 20 years, but that the future looks less like continuing to grow and continuing to expand and more like
00:30:44
Speaker
We need to make this a long-term sustainable business so that we can have stability and resilience and that the resilience of the farm will translate then to resilience in the community and for your kids and their kids and next generations to come.
00:31:01
Speaker
And then also, let's get more people on board with this. Let's get more farms and let's replicate the successes that you've had and be able to save them from making the same mistakes as you did so that they can then create resilient, sustainable, long-term farms in their regions and in their communities.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, you summarized exactly what I said. The goal for us is to not process or raise another 25 head a week or 50 head a week. Selling more pounds of beef or pork or lamb, that's not the goal.
00:31:37
Speaker
The goal is to maintain what we have, but to ultimately shift consumer demand and help support farmers to fill it. Because I truly believe that if consumers had more access and more education to the types of products that they have the opportunity to consume, their decisions would be different.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, if you wanted to keep growing forever, that would make you like the centralized, commoditized, industrialized system that you're trying to fight. It seems like everything has its right size, where it's well embedded within this community and serving its community. And then the idea is you can connect and link up with others doing similar things, not just grow into this enormous beast.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, we don't want that. We can hardly maintain what we've got. So we're very happy being exactly where we are. If we can just keep doing what we're doing, we'll be all right. And you're right. The centralized agricultural model has been done before. Unless you really like reruns, that ain't who you want to be.
00:32:42
Speaker
And you're raising your kids in Bluffton, obviously, which is very different than the Bluffton that you grew up in. What are your hopes for that community? I would love to see more houses and more people. I'd love to have more employees living in Bluffton. I'd love for Bluffton to have a school. My kids have a great school. I have nothing against my school, but any mile in between me and them during the days, too many miles.
00:33:09
Speaker
I would really love to see our kids live in Bluffton, learn in Bluffton, stay in Bluffton. You know, we're a ways away from it. I think that Bluffton has got a lot of really marketable pieces to being a great community. You know, our marketing manager lives in Atlanta and I joke with them because their internet drops more than mine does. You know, everybody assumes that rural means off the grid. And the answer is hell no, it doesn't. We have fiber. I'm talking to y'all on fiber.
00:33:37
Speaker
This is no satellite, whatever else. We're a very connected community, and maybe we have to wait an extra day or two for e-commerce packages to be delivered. But hell, if you need it that quick, go get it. It's okay, you can get in your car. We still have cars, we can drive places. So for me, my interest is more in the community development piece. I think that Bluffton is, we're only scratching the surface of what really
00:34:07
Speaker
great rural towns can be, and I want to be part of the group that restores that magic.
00:34:13
Speaker
I love it. What are some of the ways that you see regenerative agriculture in particular, like small scale agriculture that takes care of the soil, that takes care of
Revitalizing Rural Communities through Agriculture
00:34:22
Speaker
livestock? What ways do you see rural communities coming back alive outside of Bluffton? I think Bluffton is a unique case because your farm is a unique case in the size and the complexity. But I'm curious if you're seeing rural revitalization happening with regenerative agriculture.
00:34:39
Speaker
I mean, I think it goes hand in hand. I think that civilizations settled around food systems. I think that people just kept walking until they could find a place that they could get a fresh, clean drink and a meal. And I don't think you can have much of a community or a very stable community if there's not a food system or multiple food systems serving it.
00:35:03
Speaker
So I think that what has happened in Bluffton is just a textbook example of what could happen in any rural community anywhere in the United States. I think that farms play such a crucial role because most of those communities evolved as agrarian communities. One really great way for them to be revitalized is in that same agrarian state.
00:35:27
Speaker
There's no meal in Bluffton, no manufacturing plant. We don't make solar panels. My wife's from a very manufacturing town. Her family works and has worked in the carpet business, manufacturing business. Bluffton doesn't have any of that. Bluffton was established on agriculture, and it's so special to see it reestablished on agriculture. But truthfully, I think that that can happen anywhere and everywhere.
00:35:55
Speaker
It's just the food system has to be given a chance.
00:35:59
Speaker
I love it. Emma, unless you had any other questions, I think we'll wrap up. I really appreciate what y'all at White Oak Bastards have been doing over the last decades now in being the leaders in this space. And that doesn't just mean being on covers and getting the limelight, but also learning from experience, learning through the school of hard knocks and then critically sharing what you guys have learned so that others can follow in your footsteps.
Focus on Quality of Life and Community Contribution
00:36:26
Speaker
and create a more resilient rural economy. So I really appreciate what y'all have done and continue to do. I look forward to seeing more people following their footsteps.
00:36:37
Speaker
Well, I appreciate it. Those are kind words that we definitely don't deserve, but we feel blessed to be in this position. You know, this is a good place to be an animal. It's a good place to be an employee. It's a good place to be a community member. We talked about how thin the margins are, but we got a really good quality of life. And at the end of the day, if I had to choose one or the other, I'd go quality every day. Likewise. Thank you so much. It was super fun to talk to you and always a wealth of knowledge.
00:37:07
Speaker
Come back for your third visit, Emma. I definitely will. Definitely will. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice. As a new podcast, it's crucial for helping us reach more people. You can visit agrarianfuturespod.com to join our email list for a heads up on upcoming episodes and bonus content.