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How to Leave the Industrial System Behind with Will Harris
323 Plays1 month ago
Years before regenerative ag and grass-fed beef hit the spotlight, Will Harris was figuring it out on his own land.
At White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, Will spent the last few decades unwinding everything industrial agriculture taught him: the chemicals, the confinement, the commodity mindset. In its place, he’s built a vertically integrated, closed-loop system that honors the land, the animals, the people who work it, and the rural town that depends on it.
White Oak Pastures is now one of the shining lights of what the future of agriculture can look like. If you’re thinking about what it takes to make regenerative ag not just real but resilient, you'll have something to learn from Will Harris.
In this episode, we get into:
- The real costs of industrial efficiency and what it takes to opt out.
- Why Will restructured every aspect of his farm—from soil health to slaughter.
- How White Oak Pastures uses animal impact to build biology, not extract from it.
- The economics of rebuilding a rural economy around regenerative principles.
- Will’s take on corporate greenwashing, fake meat, and the soul of agriculture.
- And the core belief that drives it all: regeneration is about relationships, not inputs.
More about Will and White Oak Pastures:
Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton, where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy.
In the mid-1990s, Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before.
Since Will has successfully implemented these changes, he has been recognized all over the world as a leader in humane animal husbandry and environmental sustainability. Will is the immediate past President of the Board of Directors of Georgia Organics. He is the Beef Director of the American Grassfed Association and was selected 2011 Business Person of the year for Georgia by the Small Business Administration.
Will lives in his family home on the property with his wife Yvonne. He is the proud father of three daughters, Jessi, Jenni, and Jodi. His favorite place in the world to be is out in pastures, where he likes to have a big coffee at sunrise and a 750ml glass of wine at sunset.
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.
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Transcript
Introduction to Agrarian Futures: Decline and Solutions
00:00:00
Speaker
Despite the fact that my learned friends scoff at my financial success, I feel really good about it. They view financial performance as a month of report, a quarter of the report, an annual report.
00:00:16
Speaker
That's not what I do. Success is not calculated by the month or quarter or year. It's by the generation. It's a generational business.
Highlighting White Oak Pastures and Will Harris
00:00:28
Speaker
In season two of Agrarian Futures, we're starting with a simple question. How did we get here? Farms are disappearing. Land is getting harder to access. Rural economies are hollowing out.
00:00:40
Speaker
But there are people building better ways forward. Join us as we investigate what's broken in our food system and what it looks like to build something better.
00:00:54
Speaker
Well, we're so excited to welcome Will Harris from White Oak Pastures to this episode of Agrarian Futures. White Oak Pastures, for most people in the region, organic ag movement needs no introduction.
00:01:08
Speaker
But I would say that for me and Austin that have both been down there several times to visit, it really is one of the shining lights of what the future of agriculture can look like.
00:01:20
Speaker
Moidook Pastures is a fully vertically integrated multi-species farm. They raise every animal on the farm from birth until death and sell a lot of it at this point directly to the consumer.
00:01:35
Speaker
They employ 170 people in Bluffton, Georgia, which is one of the, or was one of the, you know, most rural, but you know, poorest counties in America. They're stewarding 3,200 animals of their own acres and an additional 2000 acres of solar voltaic arrays with sheep grazing.
00:01:54
Speaker
Really an incredible, incredible ranch. And for anyone that hasn't visited, definitely worth
Will Harris's Transition to Sustainable Farming
00:02:00
Speaker
visiting. We had the opportunity to talk with your daughter, Will, Jenny, on ah a previous podcast last year and talked a lot about the history of Bluffton and kind of its evolution and the role that White Oak Pastures has played in this.
00:02:14
Speaker
But really excited to talk to you today and start off with you your decision in the 90s to go from ah profitable conventional cattle rancher to you know what you are today. And so to start us off, I want to ask you, what made you risk your farm in the 90s when you were a profitable conventional rancher to build what is White Oak Pastures today?
00:02:41
Speaker
especially when what you have today is such a success, but this was no guarantee that you would get out on the other side and have a strong business and a strong farm that you have right now.
00:02:53
Speaker
My dad was an industrial monocultural cattle producer. And I never wanted to do anything except run the farm exactly the way he did it.
00:03:03
Speaker
I didn't want to be a fireman or a baseball player. I wanted to run the farm. And I wanted to run it industrially because that's the only way I've seen it run. I went to the University of Georgia. I majored in animal science. I came back and ran the farm very industrially for 20 years.
00:03:22
Speaker
During that 20 years, I went from loving it to not loving it so much. And I think that most of that, i don't think, I know most of that came from becoming increasingly aware of the unintended consequences of what I was doing. I was a very heavy-handed cattleman.
00:03:40
Speaker
If the label instructions on the injectable said, give them two cc's, I gave them three or four. If it said you put a pint to the acre of the pesticide, I put a quart.
00:03:54
Speaker
I thought if a little did some good, more would do more good. But i not I think because of that, I became increasingly aware of those unintended consequences that came from using those technologies. And I just didn't like it anymore.
00:04:12
Speaker
And I'll say that I did underestimate... the pain of getting away from it. ah thought like I just won't do it anymore. and It'll be fine. And I didn't do it anymore, and it we wasn't fine.
Reinventing Farm Operations: Challenges and Strategies
00:04:25
Speaker
It it took a lot of rethinking, a lot of repositioning.
00:04:30
Speaker
You know, I tell people that when a farm moves from being in the cycle, and in the chain, production chain, just one link in the chain,
00:04:41
Speaker
To be in its own tiny little food production system, a lot of stuff has to change. A lot of things have to be rethought. And I tell people there are three legs on the stool. There's production out here in the field, and that's what we all think about first.
00:04:58
Speaker
But then there's processing. you Consumers don't buy hogs and cows and sheep. They buy beef and pork and lamb. So you've got to make that conversion. And then there's marketing. There's getting it to the people that will pay you for it.
00:05:11
Speaker
So like so many others, I ignored the second two legs on the stool and just focused on the first one, the one that's easy and fun. and And only later did I realize that, whew, I got to do a lot more stuff.
00:05:26
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit about in the 90s, you know, you shifted from being successful, highly specialized cattleman with, you know, a lot of specialist knowledge to this more complex, diverse system.
00:05:41
Speaker
What was it like taking the first steps? And also, what was it like having to move into being more of a generalist and maybe shifting your perspective on how you think of your land and farming within cycles versus linearly like you you'd been doing for the previous 40 years? It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. And that that old adage, if I'd known it was going to be that hard, I might not have done it.
00:06:12
Speaker
You know, I literally went from making money every year. And I keep saying that we didn't make a lot of money, but we made some money every year. Paid taxes, live comfortably.
00:06:24
Speaker
And I lost money for some years. I was spending more to raise the animals the way I was doing it without without drugs and grain and their confinement.
00:06:38
Speaker
And I wasn't able to sell enough beef or enough of a premium to make that work. And I did not anticipate that when I jumped off the ledge. after I thought it'd be okay, but it wasn't for a while.
00:06:51
Speaker
i was very, very very fortunate. ah The movement towards grass-fed beef, the recognition of grass-fed beef as a kind of a new product happened on my watch. I was raising these grass-fed animals and couldn't sell them, couldn't sell them for enough of a premium.
00:07:13
Speaker
And suddenly people were writing magazine articles about it. And I had grass-fed beef and not many people did. And that was luck. I did not see that coming. That was pure luck. I'd love say I was so smart. I had
Diversifying with Multi-Species Farming
00:07:26
Speaker
that figured out. I did not.
00:07:28
Speaker
But it did allow me to go to Whole Foods Market and Publix and Kroger and some others and sell them the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they'd over-marketed as American grass-fed beef.
00:07:42
Speaker
And we had some really good years as a result of that. They didn't last forever, but they were good for a while. Will, what do you think would have happened if you'd made that change five years earlier 10 years earlier?
00:07:56
Speaker
i would have been a casualty. You think so? I either would have gone broke or I would have gone, had to go back to the industrial model. So you converted to grass-fed. it was very challenging because of a lack of a market.
00:08:11
Speaker
Luckily, the beginning of the grass-fed beef movement starts. You're able to sell beef to Whole Foods and Publix and other large retailers.
00:08:22
Speaker
When did you start thinking about raising other animals on your farm as well? That was not part of marketing. i started putting other animals out here because I recognized I needed them.
00:08:34
Speaker
When i had only cattle, I grew only Tifton 85 Bermudagrass, which cattle love. And I would spray herbicides to kill everything that wasn't Tifton 85 Bermudagrass.
00:08:49
Speaker
So I quit using herbicides. I had a lot of other plants growing that the cows didn't like. So I added sheep, then I later added goats, then later added hogs.
00:09:01
Speaker
And I came to appreciate the symbiotic relationship of having these different species on the same farm. And did that come with adding additional staff to be able to handle all that complexity and diversity?
00:09:19
Speaker
It did. That's a good question. i you know i was on I will say that I was a really good cattleman. So when I decided add sheep, I said, you know, it's not going to be that much different.
00:09:30
Speaker
But it was that much different. And I was not good.
Market Dynamics and Consumer Sales
00:09:33
Speaker
I was not good at it. I got adequately good at it. And I added goats thinking that they're small rumen. They'll be just like the sheep. And they weren't like the sheep. They were very different.
00:09:43
Speaker
And, you know, to even today, i've had I've had these other species for a couple of decades now. And I'm not. you' I'm not good at it. you know i'm um ah i'm a good cal I'm a good cow guy, and but I've got people hired.
00:09:59
Speaker
Every species has a manager. We have a person that manages the sheep, person that manages the pigs, person that manages the rabbits and everything else here. So following up on that last question of what would have happened if you were five or ten years earlier, what do you think would have happened if you were, let's say, ten years later and you saw the grass-fed wave coming in you said, look, I'm going to get in on this game as well, whether it's for monetary purposes or for ethical purposes.
00:10:30
Speaker
And you were just later to the game and you weren't that first person to sell the first pound of American grass fed beef. What do you think would have happened there? And and can you flesh it out for us?
00:10:42
Speaker
Well, that's happening now. There are producers out there right now that have recognized that grass-fed beef is a thing and they want to be in that business.
00:10:53
Speaker
Again, I'm so fortunate I did what I did when I did it because I offered my product when the big retailers had the appetite for it.
00:11:04
Speaker
Today, people are going in this business and they're struggling because things have changed. Specifically, country of origin labeling changed. In 2015, the big meat companies got the rule changed on country of origin labeling.
00:11:26
Speaker
Prior to that time, the animal had to be born, raised, and slaughtered in the 50 states to be a product of the USA. They changed the rule so that if value was added,
00:11:41
Speaker
In the 50 states, it was product of the USA. Horribly misleading marketing change. That really made it difficult for me. I was already in these big retailers. It caused me, I didn't get thrown out that day, but ah my margins suffered.
00:12:02
Speaker
And it and i it went from being quite profitable to not being very profitable because I had to meet those those prices. And we we reached the point that we weren't doing good. You know, i was an industrial commodity cow guy, and I was doing okay.
00:12:17
Speaker
I went in this business, and i lost money for a while. Big retail embraced it, and I did really well for a while. They changed that rule. So it's been up and down. If you try to get in 2016 and the big retailers have access now to stuff that's coming from Argentina and New Zealand and Australia, and that's and it's cheap, much cheaper, and it says right there on the package, product of the USA, there would have been no market or really, really stiff price competition if you were even able to get in.
00:12:47
Speaker
Is that it? And that's where these guys are right now. Now, the the good news is the the size of the market has increased. more More people know about grass-fed beef and pasture pork and whatnot today than they did 20 years ago.
00:13:04
Speaker
So the market is bigger, and other farmers are are able to make it selling direct to consumers or farmers markets or those kinds of things.
00:13:16
Speaker
I don't think they'll have the pathway that I had through big grocery.
Broader Challenges in Sustainable Agriculture
00:13:22
Speaker
So, you know, you started selling to Whole Foods and Publix and that was working well for a while.
00:13:28
Speaker
Eventually that relationship starts to sour with some of them at least. Could you talk a little bit about your guys' shift towards more direct to consumer sales and and the growth of your e-commerce, which I believe today is a very important part of your business?
00:13:45
Speaker
It is. ah So exactly what you said, you we we still had relationships with those grocers. We just weren't selling them as much and making as much money on it.
00:13:57
Speaker
When Whole Foods sold Amazon, that really changed that company a lot. They say I quit doing business with them. I say they dropped me. I really don't know what happened, but I know that the relationship changed dramatically when that purchase happened.
00:14:12
Speaker
So that's kind of the side. I still sell to Publix and Kroger and some of the others, and it's a good relationship. We don't sell nearly as much.
00:14:24
Speaker
Last year, we sold $30 million dollars of product. That's the biggest year we ever had and the biggest year I ever want to have. i'm I'm not interested in growing the business. But over half of it went direct to consumer, direct to the home through FedEx and UPS.
00:14:40
Speaker
And I never thought that would happen. We hope we can keep some wholesale business because I think that's a safety net. Don't make a lot of money on but it's safety net. And ah we're actually opening a store in Atlanta. You asked if there was any news, and we are actually a company from Austin converting an old poultry plant into a farmer's market. 365 a year farmer's market.
00:15:04
Speaker
And ah we are going to be the meat prevail. And so we will hope to be in that during 2025, probably fourth quarter. Fantastic. fantastic Now, Will, I should know this this story better.
00:15:17
Speaker
But if I remember right, part of the, let's call it the breakup with Whole Foods, was that that there was some kind of an understanding that with the the their animal welfare system that they have set up, where they try to communicate to their customers that what degree, what level of animal welfare that the the meat that they're buying is coming from.
00:15:39
Speaker
The animal that was slaughtered for that was able to experience that they were going to be moving practices in the right direction, of animal welfare practices, probably other sustainability practices, that that they would be moving those in the right direction. And we then this would be part of a rising tide, ah shift in the way that agriculture is done, not just for a particular farm, but for many, many farms and and moving the food system in the right direction.
00:16:12
Speaker
And then that that wasn't really followed through with, I'm probably mistaken in some parts of that story. Can you tell a little bit more about that? You know, you did a good job, but there's a little more to it. So they formed the global animal partnership for GAP.
00:16:29
Speaker
And, and it, and I think that the, this is pre Amazon. And I think that the intentions were good in doing that.
00:16:41
Speaker
And it was a good program. I think I thought it was well done. None of these programs are perfect, but i thought it was very well done. And the goal was, as you pointed out, I went to the first global animal partnership meeting they ever had for producers in Austin, Texas.
00:16:55
Speaker
And they explained it to us, and there was step one, two, three, four, five. And step one and two were very low-hanging fruit. I mean, you be able to do that. Three got tougher.
00:17:07
Speaker
Four was tougher. Five was pretty tough. And the way it was explained is that it gives, and it makes sense, it gives farmers the opportunity to slowly transition instead of just cold turkey doing it.
00:17:21
Speaker
And that made a lot of sense to me, and I thought it was ah vote was wise. But it didn't it just didn't happen. I'd say that the premiums that were paid to go from one to two to three to four to five were not adequate to incentivize farmers to do it.
00:17:37
Speaker
I did it. I was at one of the very few people who was a step five plus. We talk about that a lot. But I wasn't getting a lot more far than I was when I was at a lower level.
00:17:48
Speaker
So what happened is the farmers would sign up in a step one or two, start producing, start selling, and just never move up the way they said. And it it went from, I watched it go in the stores from step one, step two, step three, to Global Animal Partnership approved, you know, just in general.
00:18:09
Speaker
I'm not accusing them of intentionally misleading anyone. It just it just didn't work. There wasn't enough premium value to incentivize the farmers to move their production model.
00:18:22
Speaker
And presumably it was driven by there wasn't enough willingness of consumers to pay that extra premium or to demand a step five rather than a step three?
00:18:34
Speaker
The premium was not there for the farmer. Now, whether that was because the,
Impact of Industrial Agriculture
00:18:40
Speaker
you know, I wasn't involved in the pricing, the retail pricing, includ but it wasn't enough to motivate farmers to keep moving up the continuum the way they were supposed to.
00:18:51
Speaker
Taking a step back and and and zooming out again, you kind of talked about becoming sick with seeing kind of the unintended consequences of ranching when you're ranching conventionally and kind of taking the leap.
00:19:04
Speaker
You also kind of mentioned later introducing other species because you saw that they were needed for the land, not necessarily because there was ah it was like a market opportunity, but just like you needed them to properly...
00:19:17
Speaker
manage the land. Could you talk a little bit about how you and your team at White Oak Pastures see your land base and kind of like your ranch today and how you think about managing it from an ecological stewardship perspective?
00:19:34
Speaker
Managing land is is always so a complex endeavor. There's a lot of things you can do or you cannot do or you can choose and there's a lot of timing issues.
00:19:47
Speaker
The guiding light over all of this is the cycles of nature. The energy cycle from the sun, the water cycle from the rain, the mineral cycle from rocks in the soil, the microbial cycle, grazing cycle, on and on and on. There's just all kinds of things going on out there.
00:20:07
Speaker
If they're operating optimally, the land gets better and better. It's slow. It doesn't happen quick. But if you have all the cycles of nature operating as optimally as you can, the productivity of the soil just gets better and better and better.
00:20:25
Speaker
If you think about what we've been living on for the last hundred years, it's the gas and oil and coal from the era of the dinosaur.
00:20:36
Speaker
but That is the bounty of nature that was stored in the earth today. when the cycles of nature were rocking and rolling. I mean, it it had to be incredible. I'd love to see what that looked like.
00:20:50
Speaker
Then we, especially post-World War II, really industrialized the way we managed the land, and we broke the cycles of nature. We very intentionally broke the cycles of nature.
00:21:01
Speaker
It wasn't an accident. We thought that having monocultural production and and controlling nature all All aspects was was the way to do it. you know We at land-grant universities embraced it.
00:21:15
Speaker
The PhD instructors were instructors in soils or fertility or cattle specialists, hog specialists. It's all about specialization, all about departmentalization.
00:21:30
Speaker
So we broke those cycles of nature. And we continued to live well and food got cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So it it appeared to be working, still appears to be working.
00:21:42
Speaker
But that production system yields unintended consequences that we don't measure and look at. It's not on the balance sheet. It's not covered in the cost of the grocery store, the restaurant.
00:21:57
Speaker
The fact that all the chemical fertilizers and pesticides killed the Aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico, big dead zones down there. The perpetrators that are doing that aren't paying it.
00:22:11
Speaker
it's It's a cost. It's just slung out there for everyone to cover. We'll all cover that cost someday, somehow. so Extinction of species. We drive in countless species of plants and animals and microbes into extinction or near extinction.
00:22:28
Speaker
And I believe that every living creature, in an ecosystem that's indigenous, that ecosystem is making a contribution.
00:22:40
Speaker
yeah We may not recognize it. we We recognize that honeybees pollinate flowers. we we we We recognize it. I would maintain that every living being in that ecosystem is contributing something.
00:22:55
Speaker
We may not recognize it because we hadn't studied it. So, We have done incredible damage to the ecosystem. We continue to. but food gets cheaper and cheaper because we don't recognize those costs, and we sling them off to the side when others cover it.
Ecological Practices and Innovations
00:23:14
Speaker
And if at some point we don't have those cheap inputs anymore and we are left with a land that is degraded, so much more degraded than when we started 100 years ago, it's going to be a real uphill climb to then figure out again how are we going to do this without the inputs and now with worse land.
00:23:36
Speaker
yeah think about it a lot and I don't know how that's going to look. I don't know. I know they're There are hard times ahead somehow, maybe for my children, maybe my grandchildren. but i don't know when, but don't worry about nature.
00:23:50
Speaker
She'll bat last. She'll win. She'll be okay. You know, we as a species that has abused the natural systems, we're probably not going to do so good. and i don't I don't know how that'll look. I don't know.
00:24:04
Speaker
Will, you talk about how your farm has moved in many ways away from a linear system that's input-based to a a cyclical system. What are some of the things that you have gotten rid of inputs-wise that you no longer have to buy and be part of that system?
00:24:23
Speaker
What are some things that you also would like to... stop having to purchase as inputs or or get onto your farm and you'd like to be able to enter that much more deeply into the natural cyclical cycles?
00:24:39
Speaker
The first one that comes to my mind on things that I no longer use would be chemical fertilizer and pesticides. like I can come up with some more stuff, but that's the first, but that's the the really big ones that come to my mind. And fertilizers would be part of that?
00:24:54
Speaker
Fertilizers are part that. Fuel is something that we still use. We still buy gasoline and diesel and oil. and and And I am about to build a solar volcanic array.
00:25:07
Speaker
So $2.6 million dollars that will power my processing plants. Our processing plants use about $26,000 a month in electricity.
00:25:18
Speaker
where I signed the contract to build the array. There's some things we're waiting on. I can name a bunch of stuff, but that's the two that come my mind. um ah My processing plants generate about nine tons a day, five days a week, of what USDA calls packing plant waste.
00:25:37
Speaker
That's the eviscerate, the gut feel, the non-marketable bones, heads, feathers, feet, chicken, whatever. We compost that and spread it on the land, and it's it's magic. It's speech beautiful.
00:25:54
Speaker
And presumably grain is one of those things that is still a pretty significant input because you have animals that are not, they're not ruminants. That's a good point. We buy grain and it's so it's an outside input like fuel.
00:26:09
Speaker
You know, I'd really love to not do that. Trying to work in cycles, trying to minimize outside inputs. Obviously, that is a long-term process. Like you mentioned, energy is a big one. You're working on installing some solar that would reduce your dependency on fossil fuels. Grains for poultry and pigs is still obviously an outside input that you have to to purchase, but like, you know, working towards minimizing that over time. And and it sounds like you guys have made incredible strides already.
00:26:42
Speaker
You know, when you made this transition, what are some of the complexities that you started to add back as the flip side of this kind of minimizing external inputs?
00:26:53
Speaker
We try to do everything we can here. The classic farm shows big arrows of inputs going in and errors of production going out, and then waste materials.
00:27:09
Speaker
We try to cut out those waste arrows and use them like the composting operation. there's you know we ah we We make pet treats out of non-marketable meat cuts, things that we do to throw away as little as possible.
00:27:27
Speaker
I'm biased because my focus is on silvopasture. And you you've been a ah real advocate for for planting trees, not only an advocate, but also so someone who has planted a lot of trees in your lifetime.
00:27:40
Speaker
My understanding is that that's not how you started out, right? 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you weren't planting trees with the vigor and the intensity that you do now.
00:27:51
Speaker
Can you share a little bit from your experience in this like related to the cyclical, returning linear system back into cyclical system? Why have you wanted to get trees back on the landscape when you weren't 40 years ago?
00:28:07
Speaker
Why do you think that we don't see as many folks taking that next step? 40 years ago, we had D8 caterpillar on the farm here.
00:28:19
Speaker
And the only the tree that was pretty to me was one that was laying down. Because I wanted it all open so that we can run tractors and do what we wanted to do. And and I just, I did not see the value in it.
00:28:34
Speaker
so In retrospect, I stupidly didn't see the value in it, but I didn't. Now I can't get enough trees planted. you know we As I said, I can't get enough planted. Planting trees is not real expensive.
00:28:49
Speaker
Protecting them from these animals is very expensive, and I'm in the animal business, so it's it's hard for me to make all that work. But I do love trees.
00:29:01
Speaker
you know, I'm in the Gulf Coast plain of the United minnesota the united States. This was a forest. This had hardwood hills and hardwood bottoms and pines on the hills, and it wasn't much open land unless it had burned and then it probably wasn't completely open.
00:29:21
Speaker
If you appreciate nature, you want to emulate nature and having as many trees as I can, i see so many advantages. If nothing else, just catching those nutrients and bringing them back up and putting them back out.
00:29:35
Speaker
This is an ancient seabed. The land is quite sandy. So once that fertility, that soluble potassium or calcium and magnesium leaches down three or four feet, it's gone.
00:29:51
Speaker
And having trees with roots that are down 10, 20, 30 feet, catch it and bring it back up. That's the way that's supposed to work. We just stopped doing it. I'm very much an advocate of it. I'm not satisfied with the rate at which I am reforesting my farm. That's reason I ask you to come here and counsel with us on it. You had some really good ideas and we're implementing some of them, as you know, and and we hope to do better and better.
00:30:18
Speaker
Will I ever be able to return this 3,200 acres of land to a pre-Columbian forest? Probably not. Can I do better and better and better? Yeah.
00:30:32
Speaker
My experience, and I'm curious to see if this resonates with you, is that most folks who are in the grass fed space, they they like trees. They might not be tree huggers, but they they like trees and they recognize the benefit of those trees on their
Long-term Stewardship and Legacy
00:30:47
Speaker
farms. And like you said, planting trees is not expensive.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's the the protecting trees, keeping them protected from, to start with, the the mice and the rabbits and the deer and wild hogs where you're at, but then also cattle, 1,000-pound animals that want to trample on them and rub up on them and eat them.
00:31:05
Speaker
you Go to just eat the bark off them. Oof. Oof. You've got the most challenging situation with a whole bunch of different animals that all want to eat them in different ways. Thank you.
00:31:16
Speaker
Thank you.
00:31:19
Speaker
My experience has been that most folks in the grazing space, they recognize the the value of trees. It really is just that that more technical side of things of how do we get these trees established? That is what's holding in folks back.
00:31:33
Speaker
And then also there's the fact that it does cost money and not a whole lot farms are swimming in it. And trees take a while to grow. They're not easy to monetize. yeah we talked about some fruit trees and then they say that's good. But if you're going to cut the tree for timber, then you're starting all over again.
00:31:54
Speaker
I think that's a good segue into the more economic side of things and perhaps how we even define success for a farm or for our society.
00:32:06
Speaker
i think there's a lot of talk in the you know regenerative agriculture movement around farming regeneratively being more profitable for the farmer and things like that. I think that the reality is unfortunately much more complex. And in many cases, it's not true. And in many cases, doing the right thing for the land is probably not the right economic decision, such as adding trees that are increasing the biodiversity of the land, but just are hard to justify monetarily in in a lot of circumstances.
00:32:41
Speaker
you You know, when you think about how you define success for yourself and White Oak Pastures, how do you think about that? What role does the kind of financial piece of it play? And what are the other aspects of of success that you take into account that maybe aren't financial, such as your community, the environment, your sense of place, all of those things?
00:33:05
Speaker
How does that factor into how you think about success for you and White Oak Pastures? but That's a good question. It's a little hard to answer, but i' I know what I want to say. I'm not sure I and can get it out.
00:33:18
Speaker
We're blessed here. We've got about $30 million dollars in assets and about $10 million dollars in debt. And you know that's it's not a bad ratio. And we've been operating the farm a long time, and we're vertically integrated, and I think we've done about as good as we can do in producing and processing and marketing what we sell.
00:33:38
Speaker
But despite those two facts, The farm does not make a lot of money. It's profitable. We had the best year we ever had just this past year, year ending December 24th. But the return on investment, friends and and neighbors and relatives who are CPAs and CEOs and MBAs and all those things, when I tell them honestly what our numbers are, they scoff at it.
00:34:08
Speaker
They say, well why why would you do that? Well, why would you incur that much risk for that lower return? And they're right. um don't have a real good answer I can give them, but the but the answer is they view financial performance as a monthly report, quarterly report, an annual report.
00:34:28
Speaker
And that's not what I do. You know, agriculture is dealing with a non-depreciating asset, land, non-depreciating asset, the herd, and success is not calculated by the month or quarter or year. It's by the generation.
00:34:52
Speaker
It's a generational business.
Consumer Influence on Food Systems
00:34:54
Speaker
So I feel, despite the fact that my learned friends scoff at my financial success, I feel really good about it.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a a great message. the financial community is not geared for multi-generational stewardship. That's the truest thing I've said to you today. Yeah.
00:35:17
Speaker
A lot of the conversation around how do we you know shift our food systems towards one that's more ecological talks about how do we make regenerative farms profitable? Basically, how do we fit them in to our current economic system?
00:35:32
Speaker
I'd be curious to hear from you, and I know this is a very complex question, but it's not about fitting farms into our current economic system, but it's about shaping our economic system in a way that supports farms.
00:35:49
Speaker
You know, from your perspective as a farmer, you know, what would it look like to have an economic system that allowed you as best as it could to farm in the way that is appropriate?
00:36:02
Speaker
There's one five word answer, and it's the only answer there is, and that is you got to buy your food from them. Is that five words? That's whatever that is. If we see, if, if, big if, we see meaningful change in the way we produce food in this company, it's not going to be from Congress.
00:36:22
Speaker
The senators and the representatives are you make their living from lobbyists, and the lobbyists are big food, big ag, big tech, da-da-da.
00:36:35
Speaker
So ah you know I've been to D.C. a number of times to lobby for something. I'm not going back anymore. I finally figured out that, oh, they're being nice to me, but They're not going what I ask them to do.
00:36:50
Speaker
but It's not going to be the land-grant universities. It's not going to be the county agents. It's not going to be big ag, big tech, big food. I can i go through a lot of who it's not going to be.
00:37:04
Speaker
If we see meaningful change in the way we produce food in this country, it's going to be because consumers want it to happen. And consumers make it happen by finding a farmer and supporting them.
00:37:19
Speaker
And this is not Will Harris trying to get more business. This is Will Harris telling you that if you want to see things done different, you better find a farmer as local to you as you can. And, you know, people are like, well, you got to go the farm.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. It's good if you can go to the farm. But you don't have to go to farm. I mean, as connected as people are with social media and whatnot, if you know you could go to that farm and you know there are people going to that farm, you can you can go by what they say on social media and whatnot.
00:38:02
Speaker
I'm not a big social media guy, but I get that. if If it happens, it's going to be a consumer-driven change. And I'm not sure it's going to happen.
00:38:12
Speaker
I hope it does. The messaging from big food is so highly efficacious. I mean, we thought smoking cigarettes was fine until the 70s, 60s or 70s, because the messaging from the tobacco companies was so strong.
00:38:33
Speaker
I still remember a bunch of those cigarette songs. So often the the big food companies, is the same folks that are running... used to run big cigarette companies. So i don't know. my I know what's going to create the change if it's happened.
00:38:48
Speaker
If the community appetite is great enough for it, I don't know. don't know. The messaging from Big Food is so compelling. I mean, you think it's all right. You really do.
00:39:00
Speaker
And people are busy. yeah People don't have time to research white oak pastures and see if I'm doing exactly what I say I'm going to something, but not enough. It's obviously, you know, very complex and a lot of people are trapped making the choices that they're making.
00:39:18
Speaker
At the same time, I think in a way, the title to your book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, kind of alludes to part of the answer. People need to start caring. And I know it's not as simple as that. A lot of people don't have that choice, but at the same time,
00:39:37
Speaker
it's not going to be the easiest thing and you are going to have to go out of your way and it probably will be more expensive and it will be, you know, harder to access.
00:39:48
Speaker
And yet, you know, there are some people, not everyone that could do it if they chose to really make it a priority, but it would come, you know, at a sacrifice, probably a sacrifice that is less than the sacrifice that farmers and ranchers have to make when they decide to do the right thing.
00:40:05
Speaker
and maybe be less of a sacrifice than it's going to ultimately cost them in terms of eating food that's not not good, not good for you, not good for the environment.
00:40:16
Speaker
I think we all suffer and maybe uniquely today suffer from a lack of long-term thinking, both in terms of our own personal health and they're making the right choices so that we can enjoy long and good health as a society, whether it's our our political leaders, seem to have a significant deficit of long-term thinking and and creative will to do the right thing, whether it's preventing a catastrophe from happening or making something good happen that's going to be 20 years down the line or even 10 years down the line or even just after this next term. That seems to be a ah common thread in what what ails us here.
00:41:03
Speaker
And the messaging is so delayed. You know, if you touch that red hot pot here, it'll burn you right then. And you you don't touch that red hot pot anymore. If you eat the wrong stuff, it's 20 30 40 years before the negative consequence surfaces.
00:41:27
Speaker
And you you don't put that together. There's no way you can put that together. And to some extent, we're lied to about these things and what it's doing to us. It's very hard, very difficult.
00:41:39
Speaker
You shared that this was a ah hard journey that you took from industrial linear input based cow calf operation to the more cyclical vertically integrated business that you have.
00:41:55
Speaker
You're in a good position, but it was up and down and very, very challenging throughout. And you're not sure that you would have done it had you known how challenging that it would have been.
00:42:06
Speaker
What message would you have to your younger self? If that younger self did know how challenging it was going to be, what is it that you would tell them to motivate them to go through that process anyway? Challenging and hard as it's going to be, what's your message to them?
00:42:23
Speaker
i want to see you You accurately reported what I said. What i said is, if I knew it was going be that hard, I wouldn't have done it. that That was true at the time. Now that I've done it and gotten past it, I'm very glad I did.
00:42:37
Speaker
As far as how much money I'm making on this farm, it it probably wasn't worth it. I'm better off than I would have been I not made that choice, but I don't know if it's worth it or not. But now my two two of my three daughters would not have come back.
00:42:54
Speaker
I'm 70 years old. I would be looking for an exit strategy right now. I'd be looking for how do I cease this farming operation and get as much out of it as I can with no family members coming back to take over. That's where I would be right now.
00:43:13
Speaker
Instead, you know I'm helping two children and their spouses get in a position to operate it for another 30 or 40 years.
00:43:24
Speaker
And they will. I'm i'm convinced that unless there's just something... devastating that happens. You know, my my children will operate this farm for another 30 or 40 years.
00:43:36
Speaker
And, you know i don't know my grandchildren. they They're babies. But there's a high likelihood that least one or two or three of them will want to do it. Now, we don't know what it's to look like that far out. We're not, know, we've already said that no family farm lasts forever.
00:43:52
Speaker
But I think it's incumbent upon every generation two Stack the deck as much as you can for that next generation.
Podcast Conclusion and Engagement
00:44:01
Speaker
Well said. I'm very glad to to know that you are in a position where it seems that your life is is richer because of this transition that you've made. I'm the happiest son of a bitch on the planet.
00:44:16
Speaker
I'm a happy guy. I really am. I love it. Thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation with us. I know you do countless podcasts and you take a lot your time out of your schedule to to share this message.
00:44:28
Speaker
I think probably not even for the direct benefit of White Oak Pastures, but to see other people inspired and to see other people, consumers go towards their local farms and to see more of this this movement build and have other farmers who are later into the game have the same opportunities that you had.
00:44:46
Speaker
Very much. Thank you for that. I wanted to do this one because you're a friend of mine. i Even more appreciated. And I will say to folks, if you have not read book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, I highly recommend it.
00:45:03
Speaker
But mostly I recommend the audiobook version. If any of the listeners likes listening to Will's voice, that's the way to get it. I highly recommend the audiobook version. Very enjoyable to listen to.
00:45:15
Speaker
When they recruited me to do that audiobook, They said it'd take four days. Took eight. Wow. o And just about every line, say, read it again, read it again. Well, very good. Thank you very much, Will, for taking the time and and talking with us.
00:45:33
Speaker
Thank you all. I really enjoyed come Come back and see us. You bet.
00:45:40
Speaker
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.
00:45:51
Speaker
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.