Uncovering The Dirt Of Factory Farming | Will Harris

Summary

Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Episode: Uncovering The Dirt Of Factory Farming | Will Harris
Release Date: January 10, 2025

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Introduction: Breaking Down Factory Farming

In this compelling episode of Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, host Alex Clark engages in a profound conversation with Will Harris, a fourth-generation farmer and owner of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia. Will shares his transformative journey from industrial cattle farming to embracing regenerative organic agriculture, offering listeners a deep dive into the realities of factory farming and the sustainable alternatives that promise to heal our environment, animals, and communities.

From Industrial Farming to Regenerative Practices

Will Harris begins by painting a stark picture of his past as an industrial cattle farmer. He recounts the harsh realities of factory farming, including the grueling conditions animals endured:

"When I was an industrial cattle farmer, I was in the killing business. What we would do is we would load up 100500 pound calves on a double deck truck. They'd be on the truck for 30 hours for no food or water or rest. The ones on top urinating and defecating on the ones on the bottom."
[00:06]

This unflattering admission sets the stage for his profound shift in perspective. Will explains that while animal welfare initially drew him towards change, it was the environmental degradation that truly compelled him to adopt regenerative farming practices:

"Animal welfare was the canary in the coal mine for me. That was what led me into it. But almost immediately, I focused on the environmental aspects."
[08:08]

Challenges of Transitioning to Regenerative Farming

Transitioning from a linear, monocultural farming model to a more cyclical and regenerative approach was fraught with challenges. Will details the complexities involved in abandoning chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and mass production techniques that had been the backbone of traditional farming methods for decades.

"Once I figured it out, I had a higher cost in my calves. I was raising live calves, and I couldn't sell them into the commodity market and survive."
[47:56]

He highlights the economic and logistical hurdles, including the need to invest in slaughter capacity and shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer marketing to maintain profitability.

Environmental and Animal Welfare Implications

Will delves into the profound environmental impacts of factory farming, emphasizing how industrial practices disrupt natural ecosystems:

"When we make the decision to kill them, that functionality goes undone and probably will need to kill something else."
[27:42]

He explains the concept of regenerative farming as operating within the natural cycles of nature, allowing organisms to coexist symbiotically, which in turn enhances soil health and biodiversity. This holistic approach contrasts sharply with the destructive linear model of industrial farming.

The Role of Labels and Greenwashing

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around consumer deception through misleading labels. Will critiques the prevalence of greenwashing, where large corporations falsely portray their products as environmentally friendly:

"Pretty much any big national international company is probably greenwashed."
[38:08]

He cites examples like "certified organic" products grown hydroponically without soil or sunlight, questioning their true health benefits compared to genuinely regenerative products. Will emphasizes the importance of transparency and consumer education in distinguishing authentic sustainable products from deceptive marketing.

Consumer Responsibility and Supporting Regenerative Farming

Will underscores the critical role consumers play in driving change within the agricultural sector. He advocates for informed purchasing decisions and direct support of regenerative farmers to foster a sustainable food system:

"If you can buy a product... they won't pay that cost. We'll all absorb that cost. That is an expense of operating outside the cycles of nature that is spun off so that the producers don't bear it. It's shared by everybody."
[35:20]

Furthermore, he encourages consumers to seek out local, transparent farms like White Oak Pastures, where they can witness firsthand the sustainable practices being implemented:

"It'd be great if they could visit it, but I don't have to. You know, with social media being as pervasive as it is, I bet you there's 25 or 30 people on my farm right now looking to see, you know, we have a restaurant and we got lodging and we have a store and we invite people, we got people there to show you around."
[39:05]

The Economic Realities and the Path Forward

Addressing the skepticism around the scalability of regenerative farming, Will is candid about its current limitations but remains optimistic about its replicability:

"Regenerative farming is not highly scalable. It's highly replicatable, but not highly scalable."
[33:36]

He acknowledges that while individual regenerative farms like White Oak Pastures can thrive, widespread adoption requires a collective shift in consumer behavior and agricultural policies. Will also touches on the systemic challenges posed by government subsidies and lobbying by Big Agriculture, Big Food, and Big Pharma, which perpetuate the industrial farming status quo.

Legacy and Personal Motivation

Will's personal motivations and family legacy add depth to his commitment to regenerative farming. He shares how his daughters' return to the farm was inspired by the improved lifestyle and sustainable practices he implemented, hinting at a hopeful future where his farming methods can continue through generations:

"I'm the fourth generation on the farm and I think I would have been the last generation on the farm had I not changed."
[50:48]

Conclusion: Empowering Change Through Awareness

In closing, Will Harris emphasizes the necessity for both farmers and consumers to embrace sustainable practices. He calls for greater awareness of the true costs associated with industrial farming and advocates for a collective willingness to support regenerative agriculture as a viable and necessary alternative.

"With reference to food, which is what I know about, that's the business I'm in, is for people to understand what the true cost of that food is and be willing to pay it."
[59:02]

Through his candid insights and unwavering dedication, Will Harris offers a roadmap for transforming the agricultural landscape, one farm at a time.

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Notable Quotes:

• "When I was an industrial cattle farmer, I was in the killing business."
  — Will Harris [00:06]

• "Animal welfare was the canary in the coal mine for me."
  — Will Harris [09:10]

• "Pretty much any big national international company is probably greenwashed."
  — Will Harris [38:08]

• "Regenerative farming is not highly scalable. It's highly replicatable, but not highly scalable."
  — Will Harris [33:36]

• "I'm the fourth generation on the farm and I think I would have been the last generation on the farm had I not changed."
  — Will Harris [50:48]

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Follow Will Harris:

• Instagram: White Oak Pastures

Learn More:

• White Oak Pastures Website: whiteoakpastures.com

Support the Show:

• If you believe in healing a sick culture physically, emotionally, and spiritually, consider leaving a tax-deductible donation here.

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This episode serves as an eye-opener for listeners, shedding light on the hidden costs of factory farming and presenting regenerative agriculture as a hopeful solution. Will Harris's honest reflections and actionable insights empower individuals to make informed choices that benefit their health, the environment, and future generations.

Transcript

[Alex Clark]

When people complain about animal welfare, it's actually just the canary in the coal mine.

[Will Harris]

When I was an industrial cattle farmer, I was in the killing business. What we would do is we would load up 100500 pound calves on a double deck truck. They'd be on the truck for 30 hours for no food or water or rest. The ones on top urinating and defecating on the ones on the bottom. It didn't bother me a bit that I did it for years until it bothered me and then it bothered me.

[Unknown Host]

Imagine a world where the land is dying, the soil is poisoned and animals are treated like mere commodities. This is the reality of factory farming. But one man, fourth generational farmer and owner of White Oak Pastures, Will Harris is rewriting that story. A former industrial farmer, Will risked it all to abandon toxic chemicals and mass production in favor of a bold radical shift regenerative organic agriculture. Now, on his 3,000 acre farm in Georgia, he's proving that healing the earth and feeding the world can go hand in hand. Get ready to hear the untold story of a farm that's defying everything we know about food production and why you'll never view grocery store beef the same. Will is positively the most southern guest I've ever had on this show.

[Alex Clark]

He's a slow talker, but he's got a lot of wisdom.

[Unknown Host]

Watch this episode on the Culture Apothecary, Spotify or real Alex Clark on YouTube. This show is completely donor funded. So if you believe in our mission to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally and spiritually, leave a tax deductible donation through the link in the description. If you're wanting to find like minded, conservative, health conscious female friends in your area, join the Kervatives Facebook group. Please welcome regenerative farmer Will Harris to Culture Apothecary.

[Alex Clark]

How often do you eat fast food? As a regenerative farmer?

[Will Harris]

Almost never.

[Alex Clark]

What would be the exceptions?

[Will Harris]

If I'm traveling and I need something to eat and I don't have much time to eat it, there are one or two fast food places that I would would frequent. I do not indiscriminately eat fast food.

[Alex Clark]

So if you have to, what are the ones that you're choosing? You said there's a couple.

[Will Harris]

Chick Fil a would probably be number one.

[Alex Clark]

What do you think about Chick Fil A bringing antibiotics back in their chicken this year? Should people worry about that?

[Will Harris]

Yeah, I mean that didn't surprise me a bit. Big companies make claims based on what they think their customers want to hear. And if they can do it, then they do. And if they can't, then they just say we couldn't do that. And they have brilliant people making excuses for doing what they want to do or not doing what they don't want to do. It's just very well done. You got to give them credit. You know, I've been battling big food for 25 years and they are an incredible adversary. I mean, they are so good at messaging. And every claim that people like me have ever made, they've taken it away from us and made the claim better than we did. They may not do the production better, but they make the claim better.

[Alex Clark]

Why are antibiotics bad in chicken? Like what do they do? Why is this really scary that they're allowing them back in the chicken?

[Will Harris]

First you've got to understand that there are only a finite number of antibiotics that we have. You can't just go and invent another antibiotic anytime you want to. And the next thing you've got to know is that when antibiotics are used routinely and especially at sub therapeutic levels.

[Alex Clark]

When you're eating them, when you're using.

[Will Harris]

Them in livestock or well, then the pathogens can become resistant to that antibiotic. When we use essential, necessary, precious antibiotics that we might need to save our kids life one day and we feed it to dairy cattle or poultry or hogs at sub therapeutic levels, we're training the pathogens to resist it and they learn how to do that. I mean, the pathogens evolve in a way that causes them to not be susceptible to those antibiotics. So we shouldn't do that. Don't use those precious antibiotics to just make the beef or pork or chicken a little bit cheaper. Don't do that. But we do.

[Alex Clark]

How much money is Chick Fil a saving switching back to chicken with antibiotics?

[Will Harris]

You think it would be a lot? It'd be presumptuous for me to say how much, but it would be a lot. If it weren't a lot, they would switch back and benefit from making the claim. So it was an economic decision for them.

[Alex Clark]

Your dad was 26 when he took over the farm.

[Will Harris]

That's about right, yeah. He was born in 1920 and took over the farm post World War II, about 1946. So, yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Do you think most 26 year old men today are capable of running a farm?

[Will Harris]

I think that running a farm is like running any other business. So I think that it would be a fair question. So should 26 year old people be able to run businesses and some can, some can't. You said men. Men and Women. I got three daughters. Two of my three daughters are involved in management of my farm. But you're right, they weren't managing it at 26. They worked there at 26.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah. And so your dad was. And the way White Oak Pastures was ran then is different than it's being ran today, correct?

[Will Harris]

Oh, yeah. And if you're comparing what my dad ran at 26 to what we do today, there's no comparison. You know, my dad had probably four employees. He would be the only decision maker. And it was a very simple business. One of the things that I'm sure attracted my dad to the farm is that it was a very simple, efficient business that had some other. Some other negative attributes. Yeah, we have 170 employees.

[Alex Clark]

Wow.

[Will Harris]

And I don't think many 26 year olds would be ready for that.

[Alex Clark]

I just wondered if you thought that some of the boys today are drinking a little too much soy and not enough raw milk, if you know what I mean.

[Will Harris]

Well, I don't think it's as gender specific as all that. Times are very different. We live in a much more complex society today than we did when my dad ran the farm. And by the way, I ran the farm as a very linear, much more simple deal when I first came back. So it's evolved what it is today over a 30 year period.

[Alex Clark]

Please explain where your farm is. Because your accent is so unique and interesting that for my audience that isn't familiar, you got to tell them where you live.

[Will Harris]

And I will try to enunciate more carefully so you can understand the words that are coming out of my mouth. And the way I talk is a function of where my farm is. I'll tell you more about that. But to answer the question, my farm is in that bottom left corner of Georgia, the southwest corner of Georgia, almost Alabama, almost Florida.

[Unknown Host]

Okay.

[Will Harris]

If you look back, historically, that part of the world was settled by Scotch, English, Irish people. There was not a lot of back and forth until the 20th century. And in the 20th century there's been less back and forth. I mean, back and forth, people moving in and out. There's been less than in most places because we have been in an economic decline since World War II. When I went to the University of Georgia, about six of us from home went together and we all talk like this. We all spoke the same way. We hadn't been there a month before. All five of my buddies started saying, you guys want dinner? And I was still saying, y'all want supper? And I think it made me dig down a Little deeper.

[Alex Clark]

Do you call Georgia. Do they say every single soft drink is Coke or no? Yeah. Are they Others I say Pop.

[Will Harris]

Yeah. No, that we say. We say Coke.

[Alex Clark]

Okay. Yeah. I remember that because I lived in.

[Unknown Host]

Tennessee for a little bit.

[Alex Clark]

So that's, I mean, sort of close. That's sort of close by. That's the closest. And they all say Coke for everything. It could be Sprite or whatever, but they say Coke.

[Will Harris]

Actually in Bluffton, we say Coca Cola.

[Alex Clark]

Coca Cola.

[Will Harris]

Coca Cola. Coca Cola. You know, Coca Cola.

[Alex Clark]

It's all one word, basically.

[Will Harris]

Cola with three syllables.

[Alex Clark]

You've said that when people complain about animal welfare, it's actually just the canary in the coal mine when it comes to typical industrial farming, that there's way worse stuff going on in the farms that supply our grocery stores. What should people, in your opinion, be even more worried about than just animal welfare?

[Will Harris]

Animal welfare was the canary in the coal mine for me. That was what led me into it. But almost immediately, I focused on the environmental aspects. Animal welfare initially, to me meant if you kept the animals well fed, well watered, in a reasonable, comfortable temperature environment, and you didn't intentionally inflict pain and suffering, that was good animal welfare. As good as it got, I thought. Then I realized that you got to do those things. And in addition to that, you've got to create an environment in which the animal can express instinctive behavior. In confinement cattle, hog, poultry, the animals can't do what they do in nature. Cows are meant to roam and graze, but they can't do that in a feedlot. Hogs were meant to root and wallow, but they can't do that in a confinement crate. Chickens were meant to scratch and pick. They can't do that in cages or even a poultry house. So furnishing the animal with the opportunity to express instinctive behavior, I think is good animal welfare.

[Alex Clark]

But is that just extra? I mean, letting a chicken pick and scratch and all that, is that just like an extradition? Like, what does that actually impact when it comes to our food, them being allowed to live instinctually?

[Will Harris]

It doesn't add anything, which is why the industrial movement took it away. So it's like being in jail. You know, being in jail, you can't express instinctive behaviors, but we do it. We incarcerate people. When they commit crimes with food animals, we incarcerate them, and they can't express instinctive behavior. So it's a form of cruel and unusual punishments, but they didn't do anything to be put.

[Alex Clark]

There was white oak pastures, always a regenerative farm?

[Will Harris]

No, in fact, it started as a regenerative farm when my, my great grandfather came there in 1866. And he would have run the farm in that way. And I know this just from anecdotal family law. My grandfather would have run it the same way. But my dad took over, as we said, post World War II. And that was the era in which his generation really changed agriculture. He went from being a very cyclical model to a very linear model. And my dad was really an early innovator in doing that. And he was really good at it. And it took cost out of food production. And that's what he. That was his goal. Not just his, that was everyone's goal, but it came at a great cost. It cost a lot in terms of animal welfare, a lot in terms of the impact on the environment, a lot in terms of the impact of the rural economy. Industrialized, commoditized and centralized. That's what my dad's generation did. And in fairness, it's all I ever wanted to do. When I was a kid growing up and the other kids wanted to be firemen or doctors or lawyers or superheroes, I just wanted to run that farm. And that's what I did.

[Alex Clark]

And then you were, in your words, you were doing regular commercial farming and then totally had a come to Jesus moment on your farming practices and saying, we got to change things. So can you talk about that?

[Will Harris]

Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure Jesus was there that day, but yeah, so I was a very, very industrial farmer. Monoculture of only cattle. And that's important, the monoculture part. And I was very happy doing it for a long time. I farmed that way for 20 years. As I said, that's what my dad did. And that's all I ever wanted to do. Be just the same, the same thing. I loved it. The animal welfare was the first flaw that I found in that. And I really didn't like what we were doing. We would load up 100, 500 pound calves on a double deck truck and ship them to Nebraska. They'd be on the truck for 30 hours with no food or water or rest. The ones on top urinating and defecating on the ones on the bottom. It didn't bother me a bit to do that. I did it for years until it bothered me and then it bothered me. I didn't want to do it anymore. And that triggered me wanting to do other things differently.

[Alex Clark]

Like what?

[Will Harris]

Not long after I had that epitome, I was in my field and I looked at the Soil, which I thought was pretty good soil till then. And I realized that that was a dead mineral medium. And I could walk 20ft into the edge of the woods that never had a plow or chemical fertilizer or pesticides. And that was a living medium that was teeming with life side by side. And there was no difference except that this had been tilled and fertilized and sprayed with chemicals, pesticides, and that hadn't. This was full of living things. Some of them I could see, like earthworms. Some of them I couldn't. And this was a dead mineral medium. This one was 5, 6, 7% organic model. This was a half percent organic model. There was no comparison. And that had been done by the practices that my dad and I had been doing for the last 50 years.

[Alex Clark]

And you're in your 40s as you're having this epiphany? Yeah, about 40 at the time. You in your 40s was. What would that have been like, the 90s?

[Will Harris]

Yeah.

[Alex Clark]

So it's the 90s. How much is out there about regenerative farming?

[Will Harris]

Oh, I didn't know what that was.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, I mean that word is pretty new, right?

[Will Harris]

Yeah, well, you know, it was, it was organic, which I thought was just vegetables back then. You mean? I know butter now. That's what I thought at the time. And you know, what I did was so different from what those vegetable guys was doing that I, I didn't really think I was emulating anybody. In fact, I thought that. I guess I thought I invented it. I didn't. There were people doing great work when I started. But keep in mind that again, the 90s, we didn't have the Internet. There were books, but I didn't read much. I went to the University of Georgia. We don't read much.

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[Alex Clark]

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[Alex Clark]

You decided to completely stop using glyphosate, right?

[Will Harris]

Yeah, well, I decided to quit using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, of which glyphosate is certainly one of them. And I decided GMOs really weren't that big a deal then. But I was using a lot of products on my animals, like wormers, to take to get worms out, internal parasites out, hormone implants. We would take hormone implants and put them behind the ear and the skin behind the ear of the cattle.

[Alex Clark]

And what would that do?

[Will Harris]

It would cause their hormone to be imbalanced and they would grow faster. It still does. People do it all the time and I did it a lot.

[Alex Clark]

And so when you do something purposefully to make a cow or a chicken grow faster, how does that impact the nutrients of the food?

[Will Harris]

Well, I'll tell you what I think and what I want to say first though is I don't consider myself to be a nutritionist. When I first started down this road, I used to study what people said about nutrition and health and safety. And I would speak with authority on it. I thought I was speaking with authority and then I realized how stupid I sound. And I decided I would focus on what I'm really an expert in. And I'm really an expert in animal welfare, in regenerative land management, in rural community building. I'm not an expert in these other things. I got opinions and I'll share them with you.

[Alex Clark]

Sure. I love, we love opinions.

[Will Harris]

Number one, when that animal ingests that hormone or whatever we're talking about, then there's probably some residual of that in the meat. It's hard for me to believe that even with the proper withdrawal period, which is what we're expected to do, that it's all gone. I just don't think that happens that way. Second, I believe that when something grows faster than it's normally supposed to, it probably has some effect on the nutrient density. A pine tree that grows really fast, the rings are a long way apart. It's not nearly as strong as an oak tree. It grows much slower and the rings are closer together. So I think that when we do things to abnormally accelerate the growth and development of those animals. We probably change the, the nutrient impact from when we, when we, when we consume it.

[Alex Clark]

I would agree with you. This is the thing. Anytime I do an episode on this topic, agriculture, I've got people in my audience that are coming from a, you know, regular commodified farmers. Is that the right way to say it? And they get very upset and say, you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to agriculture. We need this, we have to do this. It's perfectly safe. There's nothing wrong with grain. And then I've got people like you or some others that I've had on that are talking about the dangers of GMOs, of glyphosate, that those things are not completely necessary.

[Will Harris]

Those farmers, those commodity farmers, farming industrially, they're good people. These are not evil people that are intentionally damaging the public health to make more money. They're not. They're farming the way their dad probably granddad taught them to farm. They're farming the way that they learned at Land Grant University. They're farming the way that the county agent told them to farm. They farm in the way that the Department of Agriculture expects them. We can go on and on. They have every reason to feel good about the way they're farming. Now. I personally think there's a lot wrong with it, but these people that would be critical of the comments that you made, they believe they're doing right. A cotton picker cost over a million dollars.

[Alex Clark]

Wow. I did not know that.

[Will Harris]

It won't do anything but pick cotton. That's all it'll do. And the guy that owns a million dollar, the farmer that owns a million dollar cotton picker probably has a financial interest in a cotton warehouse and a cotton gin. So he is vertically integrated in the cotton production business. It can be the same with peanuts. I'm from Georgia. Or grain. These farmers are incredibly invested in what they're doing. And they're doing what they're been told all their lives is okay to do. And I disagree with them. But I understand and I'm not being critical of them as people or businessmen. I'm critical of the way that they're managing the land and the animals and the environment and the rural community.

[Alex Clark]

Are there a certain amount of chemicals that just have to be used on our food? And are the regenerative, organic, organic farming camp lying, saying we don't need them?

[Will Harris]

No, no, they're not lying. If you're asking me is does it Take some cost out of production and make it easier to use some chemicals, pesticides. Then maybe if you use a little cocaine, it might make you feel a little bit better. If you use too much cocaine in my kid. So, you know, I don't, I don't, you know this. I don't think we should be talking about how much we should be able to. I think that what a farmer has to do, and I've done it, is to decide to go back to a natural nature, natural production system and do the things that needs to be done to make that system work. So let's talk about that just a minute. When nature is allowed to operate in an optimal manner, it produces an abundance. You know, all that coal and oil and gas in the ground, that is the abundance of nature that occurred during the era of the dinosaur. Just incredible abundance that came off the land, that's been stored beneath the surface of the land, and we've been using it for the last hundred years or so. That same abundance has always occurred without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. For that abundance to occur, the cycles of nature have got to be allowed to operate optimally. So the cycles of nature, we could talk about that all day. But the energy cycle, the sun sends energy down on every acre every day, even above the Arctic Circle. That's the energy cycle, the water cycle. There's rain, there's snow, there's dew. There's the microbial cycle. If you don't kill the microbes with a fungicide. There are microbes out there that operate symbiotically in the land. There's the grazing cycle, herbivores eating the foliage and turning it into manure. But when those cycles of nature are allowed to operate optimally, it produces an abundance, the oil in the ground, Right? So when we farm in a more linear manner, as opposed to that cyclical manner, we decide we're going to impugn certain things right there. I don't want anything growing out there but soybeans. So I'm going to kill every plant with a herbicide that's not a soybean. And we don't want nematodes and other microorganisms adversely affecting the yield. So we're going to put out something that'll kill all the fungicide, kill all the microorganisms, on and on. So we kill things. When I was an industrial cattle farmer, monocultural industrial cattle farmer, I was in the killing business. I went to my pastures every day and aggressively, overtly looked for something to kill And I could find it. I could find a plant that was growing that was competing with my other grasses I wanted. I could find flies bothering my cattle. I could do internal parasites on my cattle, on and on. I could find something out there I didn't like, and I knew exactly what to use to kill it. Side means kill, homicide, kill people, Right. Fungicide, kill fungus, insecticide, kill insects, herbicide, kill plants. I don't know when my dad's generation and I embraced it, made the decision to farm monoculturally and linearly. We made the decision that we were going to kill everything out there except what we wanted to live, and that removed all symbiosis.

[Alex Clark]

Because you're saying there's certain bugs that a farm needs, that the soil needs, there's certain types of animals peeing and pooping and eating like this. All this whole cycle of life is what makes better soil, which then makes better food, Correct?

[Will Harris]

Yes. I believe that every living organism that occurs in an ecosystem naturally, occurs in an ecosystem, has a role there. Some of them we recognize earthworms, we know what they do. They're good. But all those other organisms, we're not. I don't know that we're not smart enough. We hadn't studied enough to know what they do that's beneficial. But they're doing something out there in that ecosystem that's positive. That's the reason they're there. And when we make the decision to kill them, that functionality goes undone and probably will need to kill something else. That's the way the deal works. When you go into an ecosystem, you decide you don't want something mild, there's something to kill it. There's a technology out there that will kill it, and it will be efficacious. It'll do a great job killing it, but it kills some other stuff too. And then. But whatever role in that ecosystem those other casualties was providing, it's not done anymore. So you need to use another pesticide and another one, and another one and another one. I don't think that the people in the pesticide business were so brilliant that they figured that out day one and had a great plan to do that. But it's what evolved is what happened. You know, the. The most of the pesticides and fertilizer and a lot of the other farming tools were products of World War II. You know, the things that we generated for the war effort.

[Alex Clark]

I mean, that's how we got glyphosate, right?

[Will Harris]

We got a lot of these chemical nitrogen, nitrogen. Fertilizer is one Is one of the most destructive things that we use and addictive.

[Alex Clark]

Addictive for the farmer spraying it.

[Will Harris]

Yeah. I hadn't used any artificial nitrogen in 25 years. And I tell people there are times I'd kill a man for a load of ammonium nitrate.

[Alex Clark]

Which is Roundup, right?

[Will Harris]

No, no, no, no. Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer.

[Unknown Host]

Yeah, okay, okay.

[Will Harris]

No, I had, I had a little Roundup addiction, but it wasn't, it wasn't as much as the.

[Alex Clark]

And why, why would that be addictive for a farmer? Because it just gets the job done.

[Will Harris]

Well, because it's so efficacious. It's just so. I mean, just. It just, it's like steroids.

[Alex Clark]

But would it be safe to say that we are stripping way too much of everything in life of bacteria? That we need some bacteria?

[Will Harris]

That's an understatement. It's an understatement. I don't think we nearly appreciate all. That's what I meant by the symbiotic relationship all these beings have in an ecosystem. They're beneficial. Yes, there may be some things we don't like about it, but there's some things we need from it. And when we drive species into extinction and we have driven countless species of plants and animals and microbes into extinction or near extinction, the functionality that they had in the ecosystem is not being done anymore. Now something else has taken over, but it's changed the ecosystem. It's a little different than it was.

[Alex Clark]

Should people be trying to look for only grass fed, grass finished, or is it okay to have meat that is grass fed, grain finished?

[Will Harris]

All the industrial meat is grass fed, grain finished. The only thing on my label is grass fed, not grass finished. And the reason is because I got my label in the late 90s and there wasn't a grass finished then. Grass finished. Grass fed means that the animals don't eat grain. So I don't, I don't make a. I don't know where that, that distinction, that perceived distinction came from.

[Alex Clark]

Well, because I guess some farmers are doing half and half. Like if they start on grass but then they finish them on grain or. And they say it's necessary, that's grain fed. Okay, so it's just like hogwash.

[Will Harris]

Yeah, that's what it is.

[Alex Clark]

Sometimes I have farmers that are farming in different parts of the country where.

[Unknown Host]

They say, like, well, we don't have.

[Alex Clark]

A lot of access to grass. For example, I live in Arizona, so I'm in a desert climate. Would you agree that it's possible to be an organic or it could be a good farm if those cows are not only eating grass. Just because we don't have access to tons of grass.

[Will Harris]

Well, I mean that Arizona may be, may not be where we need to be raising our grass fed beef.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, see now this is interesting to me. Maybe we need to be farming different types of food. Other places you don't have to farm at all in every area.

[Will Harris]

That's exactly right. You know, lemons and bananas are great, but you don't grow many of them in Connecticut or Massachusetts or Maine. Every ecosystem has a functionality. This idea we have of farming anywhere we want to, exactly how we want to, is very artificial.

[Alex Clark]

Factory farmers say that regenerative farming isn't scalable. That we are ignorant, that people in inner cities and food deserts would not have access to food, that we would have groups of people starving. Is that true?

[Will Harris]

I don't agree with everything you said, but I do agree that regenerative farming is not highly scalable. It's highly replicatable, but not highly scalable. What we do on my farm, we're probably about as big as we need to be. I probably don't need to grow it a lot and don't intend to. But you could do it again and again and again. You can have a white oak pastures in every state, or one or two or three of them in every state. I mentioned this earlier, but regenerative farming is operating within the cycles of nature. It's not real linear to scale something up. It needs to be linear so it can go up and up and up.

[Alex Clark]

And the only way that these factory farms are able to do that is with using more chemicals and things, using.

[Will Harris]

The tools that technology has given us to break the cycles of nature.

[Alex Clark]

So when you say, yeah, that is a valid point, that there would be food deserts, there would be people that are starving. If we tried to switch everything over to regenerative, you're saying that because it would take multiple farmers switching over to this practice and strategically being in all.

[Unknown Host]

These areas of the country so that.

[Alex Clark]

We don't then have food deserts and people starving. But if we just said we're getting rid of factory farms and we're just.

[Unknown Host]

Going with what we have currently, the.

[Alex Clark]

Amount of truly organic regenerative farms, then there would be a lot of people without food, Is that what you're saying?

[Will Harris]

Pretty much so. So what I'm saying is the perception is that the factory farms produce food way cheaper than regenerative farms. And the reason that idea is out there is factory farms shunt off cost to other places. Whereas a regenerative farm absorbs more of those costs. For instance, there's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that's as big as Massachusetts. It used to be a thriving oyster ground and now it's a dead zone. And the reason it's dead is because of all the pesticides and chemical fertilizers and impurities washing down the river, killing off the life in that huge area of the Gulf of Mexico. That's a cost. That's a tremendous cost. That productive fishery that's no longer producing anything to eat is a cost. Now, the pesticide companies, the fertilizer companies, or the farmers, industrial farmers, won't pay that cost. We'll all pay it. We'll all absorb that cost. That is a expense of operating outside the cycles of nature that is spun off so that the producers don't bear it. It's shared by everybody.

[Unknown Host]

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[Alex Clark]

Look at my hair.

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[Alex Clark]

What are greenwashed brands in the grocery store and how can you spot them?

[Will Harris]

Pretty much any big national international company is probably greenwashed. Probably. I'm not going to get out of list. Go down this one, this one, this one. I think probably every big industrial food company I know of is guilty of some level of greenwashing, washing and that's because there's a percentage of the consumers who have found regeneratively raised product to be attractive. Those big multinational food companies, they are brilliant. I mean they are so good they can take anything that we say and find ways to make the same claims without necessarily having to to bear the expense of changing the practice.

[Alex Clark]

So what would that look like on a label? Some a way that they're able to mimic what a real regenerative farm like you is doing and make the consumer think they are, but they're actually not.

[Will Harris]

There's a lot of examples. Best example I can think of is certified organic. Do you know that you can certify have certified organic tomatoes that are grown in hydroponically, not in soil, in water and not in the light, but with artificial light. It can be a certified organic tomato. So you got A certified organic tomato on the shelf of the grocery store that was grown without soil or sunlight.

[Alex Clark]

And do you think that that tomato is going to be less healthy than a non organic tomato or they're about the same?

[Will Harris]

Intuitively, I would say it's going to be less healthy. It's certainly less natural.

[Alex Clark]

Even though it has no chemicals, it wasn't grown in a real way. It's like grown in a lab.

[Will Harris]

I don't claim to be an expert, but yeah, I'm pretty sure that there'd be a difference. I don't think the consumer can depend what's. Can depend upon what's on that label. You can't. There's too many things that can be done today. You can have beef that says product of the USA legally on the label, but the animal was born, raised and slaughtered in Uruguay or Australia or New Zealand or 26 other countries. And I want to be clear. I'm not saying that beef from Australia or New Zealand or Uruguay is not good. I'm saying it's not a product of the usa. I'm saying that it's mislabeled, it's not a product of the usa. Value was added here by repackaging or slicing or cutting, but it's not a product of the usa. So the consumer can't depend on what's on that label. They've got to know something about the person or the farm. It'd be great if they could visit it, but I don't have to. You know, with social media being as pervasive as it is, I bet you there's 25 or 30 people on my farm right now looking to see, you know, we have a restaurant and we got lodging and we have a store and we invite people, we got people there to show you around. And we don't make money with that stuff. It's break even. Ish. We don't make money with it, but we do it because I think that the way to build a customer base for a farmer like us is to get the consumer out so they can see what we're doing to know where.

[Alex Clark]

Your food comes from and they can.

[Will Harris]

Go anywhere they want to go. We got tours, but we also got maps. We'll give you a map, you can go look. I think that has power. I'll never be able to come up with the clever marketing strategy, whatever all that is, I won't ever have that. But I can show you and I think that's powerful.

[Alex Clark]

So if you are, which I know you're not, but if you had no choice and you had to go to a grocery store to get meat. What are you looking for as a regenerative farmer if you have no other option to get meat?

[Will Harris]

You know, again, that label is not telling you anything.

[Alex Clark]

I know.

[Unknown Host]

That's the hard part.

[Alex Clark]

That's what they're, they're struggling with.

[Will Harris]

I know, and I wish I could give you an answer that, you know, if it's, if it turns to little paper blue, it's great. If it turns it red, don't eat it. But that's not there. There are trillions of dollars being made by leaving these consumers to believe that what you're selling is what they want.

[Alex Clark]

So sometimes this organic grass fed labeled meat that we're getting at like a big box grocery store, could it just be Tyson repackaged or something?

[Will Harris]

Maybe. But I don't want to say that.

[Alex Clark]

You just don't know.

[Will Harris]

I don't know. I mean, I hadn't, you know, I don't, I hadn't put black paint on my face and gone to the Tyson. I don't know that I sold Whole Foods Market the first pound of American grass fed beef that they marketed as American grass fed beef 20 years ago.

[Alex Clark]

Cool. That came from White Oak Pastures.

[Will Harris]

It did. Cool it in. And I had a wonderful relationship with Whole Foods Market. Some of my favorite people on the planet, when they changed the country of origin labeling, it could bring in grass fed beef. You know, my margins to all my wholesale customers took a hit and we weren't able to be profitable anymore. When Amazon bought them, I ceased to do business with Whole Foods. They said I quit. They said I quit. Then they said they quit me. I don't know exactly how that happened.

[Alex Clark]

It's like, no, she broke up with me. No, he broke up with me.

[Will Harris]

That's exactly right. We got a divorce. Divorce. But you know, it just, it changed and it's just incumbent upon the consumer. It's just a shame. And I know it's a pain in the rear end. I know it is. If the consumer doesn't go to the trouble of knowing where their food came from, they probably going to get tricked.

[Alex Clark]

I've been telling them that. Now some of them claim there are no good farmers near me. I don't have any. There's nothing, you know, what would you say to them?

[Will Harris]

Yeah, you're probably right. And then you got. But that's got to be cultivated. So let me just, let's talk about that a minute. As a family, we've made the decision that we Sell them about much as we want to sell. We're not interested in growing our business. It's, it's, it's as big as we can manage.

[Alex Clark]

You shouldn't have come on this show then.

[Will Harris]

I'm here to help other farmers, not myself. We ship product to 48 states. I don't ship. Ship internationally. Choose not to, but I don't want to sit 48 states. I want, I want to ship to Georgia, maybe Georgia, Florida, Alabama. I want the smallest territory and I want other people to ship to the other 44 states or whatever those numbers are.

[Alex Clark]

You need more farmers to step up.

[Will Harris]

I need more consumers to step up so more farmers can step up.

[Unknown Host]

Okay, so we, it's up to us.

[Alex Clark]

To call these farmers and say, this is what I'm looking for. You don't do this. I have no one else that's doing this to kind of challenge them and convince them to make these changes.

[Will Harris]

Yeah, in a perfect, really aggressive world, that's the way it would need to be. But what I think you got to do is find a farmer like us. This is not an advertisement. I'm not saying us. There are a number of good farmers in this country doing it right. Buy from one of them. If it's us, that's fine. If it's one of the others, that's fine. What that does is it strengthens the movement so that farmers that want to change the way they operate will find the, the courage and the opportunity to do it.

[Alex Clark]

It kind of reminds me of when you talk to somebody who works in Congress. They say, I am so willing to vote on a certain bill or take a certain stance if my phones are ringing off the hook and I know that my constituen really want this thing done. I mean, it's almost like that you're saying with farmers where if their phones are ringing off the hook and everybody's like, do you have grass fed meat? Do you, Are you regenerative farm? And all this. And that's all they hear all day. They need to make money.

[Unknown Host]

Right. They're making a living.

[Alex Clark]

They're gonna have to change that.

[Will Harris]

That's, that's really a good example. I've never used, I've never used that example. But I'm going to plagiarize it now.

[Alex Clark]

That I, I'm honored. Please do.

[Will Harris]

I will.

[Alex Clark]

But yeah, they say that, they say when my phones are ringing in my office and my team is telling me like, like, you know, sir, ma'am, your people keep asking for this, you know, for your words on this, then they feel encouraged, like, okay, my people want this, I gotta do it. And I would assume if a farmer, if it's happening to them, they'd be like, maybe I need to start looking into farming this time.

[Will Harris]

Well, and that's right. And that's, that's, that's. That's a very good point you made. And what it does is that farm I described earlier, that's got that cotton picker that cost over a million dollars and got these other things. It might give him the opportunity to say, you know, when I get. When I wear out this cotton picker, I'm not going to buy another one. I'm going to plant some carrots or whatever the people are calling for, or cows or whatever. That's what we're going for. But it's hard. It's very difficult. And I should say this. Those farmers are not going to make a lot more money by doing what we do. It's profitable. My farm makes money. But we've got a lot of assets. We got some debt. We've got a lot of assets in. The return on my assets is not great. And the reason is what we talked about earlier. All those costs that are spun off in the industrial model, we're paying a lot of those costs. We're paying our way.

[Alex Clark]

What is the first step that an industrial farmer can make if they want to switch to regenerative farmers?

[Will Harris]

When I did it, it was a long time ago. I thought that if I figured out how to raise the cattle without medications and pesticides and grain, it'd be okay. Well, I did. I figured it out.

[Alex Clark]

With what? Apple cider vinegar.

[Will Harris]

Some apple cider vinegar involved.

[Alex Clark]

I figured.

[Unknown Host]

I figured we figured it out.

[Will Harris]

Not overnight, but over time. We're kind of still figuring it out, but we've gotten where I. I think we're reasonably good at that. And I thought that once I figured it out, it'd be okay, but it wasn't. Once I figured it out, I had a higher cost in my calves. I was raising live calves in, and I couldn't sell them into the commodity market and survive. So I needed to market beef. With a market beef, you got to slaughter the animal or get it slaughtered. And I didn't have that slaughter capacity around me. So I borrowed a bunch of money and built slaughter capacity, not just in one day, but that process occurred. And that was all right. We did pretty well for a while. Sold into Whole Foods and some public supermarket and some others. Purely wholesale business. Purely wholesale. And we made money for A while. Then the country of origin labeling changed and we didn't do as well for a while. So we found direct to consumer online marketing. So we do order fulfillment on the farm ship FedEx, UPS to the 48 states we talked about. My point is that it just gets more and more and more complex as the complexity goes up. The number of situation problems. We can call them a problem that you got to solve.

[Alex Clark]

I mean, you're not selling it right now. Like right now you're describing like it's all. It's a lot harder. It takes a lot more hard work. So. So there has to be some benefit that makes it worth it for you, all this extra work. What is it?

[Will Harris]

I have three daughters, two of whom came back to the farm and they wouldn't have done that. You know, it was industrial.

[Alex Clark]

They had moral issues with how their daddy was farming.

[Will Harris]

No, I don't think they got all that much morality when I was growing up, you know, I wanted to farm. You know, I wanted to do what my dad did. Kid. My daughters were raised like girls in the 80s and 90s were raised, you know, they went to, you know, softball and ballet and music and piano. You know, they, they were not raised to farm and didn't have the interest in farming and probably wouldn't, wouldn't have come back to farm. When I changed the way I farm, they found things in it they liked and they wanted to come back. I wouldn't let them come back. I put all three of my daughters through college and when the first middle daughter wanted to come back, I wouldn't let her. I made her go get a job and then the second one, I made her go get a job and they worked for a year or two and then I let them come back.

[Alex Clark]

What do they say it is that they like about the way that you're farming that made them want to come back?

[Will Harris]

This is pretty good lifestyle we got. We got a great lifestyle.

[Alex Clark]

Do you feel like the way you're farming now compared to how you were farming in the past gives you something to really be proud of and, and create a legacy on?

[Will Harris]

I'm the fourth generation on the farm and I think I would have been the last generation on the farm had I not changed? I didn't change for that purpose. I changed for the reasons I said. But when I did change, it created an earnings opportunity that my daughters wanted to be part of. I got seven grandchildren and you know that. And they're little. Who knows? But you know, out of seven, there may be, it may be A sixth generation to come back.

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[Alex Clark]

As citizens and voters, what should we be asking our legislators for in regards to food freedom?

[Will Harris]

I'm probably the wrong person to ask that question because I've been to to D.C. a lot during in my life to, to lobby for something or because somebody asked me to do something and, and I'm probably not going to go back anymore. I think that there's just so much money in the farming business, the food business, the equipment business, the technology business, pesticide, all those businesses that there's just too much lobby money there. And you know, every time I've ever been to D.C. i was treated so kindly and respectfully and they listened to every word I said. And wrote it down. After a while I said, you know, this is a waste of time, really, because I'm showing up without a suitcase full of money. And the next guy that's going on the other side, you'll have a suitcase full of money. I don't think that any change in our food production system will be from government. I don't think they'll be part of the help. And I think it'll probably be part of the obstruction.

[Alex Clark]

Wow.

[Will Harris]

I don't think that it'll be land grant universities where I learned because I think there's just too much money there. I don't think it'll be. Certainly won't be the. The big farming pesticide companies.

[Alex Clark]

Do you trust the Farm Bureau?

[Will Harris]

I'm not a Farm Bureau advocate.

[Alex Clark]

Put that in a very nice way. I'm sure you could be a lot meaner.

[Will Harris]

We want to demonstrate how mean we can be.

[Unknown Host]

Oh no, we do.

[Alex Clark]

I want the fire and brimstone. Give it to us.

[Will Harris]

I'm not, I'm not a Farm Bureau fan. I think the Farm. I think the Farm Bureau. I don't know. They're evil. I think they're influenced by Big Ag.

[Alex Clark]

My audience is very familiar now with Big Pharma and Big Food.

[Will Harris]

Then they know Big Ag because of the same people.

[Alex Clark]

Explain how Big Ag is just as much of a danger as Big Food in Big Pharma that they are all making up this triangle of corruption.

[Will Harris]

You said it perfectly. The Big Ag on the input side that's producing pesticides and chemical fertilizers and GMOs and those products and profiting from it. Then you've got Big Ag on the procurement side. This buying like ADM and Cargill, they're buying the farm production. The pharmacy companies are part of the ownership. There's so much mutual ownership back and forth in all these things. And it's all about producing a product to sell the farmers and then buying what the farmer produces.

[Alex Clark]

And how do you escape the government subsidies if you're used to having that padding and supporting your family by using government subsidies? That's gotta be even more hard to escape.

[Will Harris]

My friends and neighbors and relatives who are commodity farmers, every penny they make is from the government. It costs them as much to produce the crop as they get out of the crop. Whatever they have to put towards their equity and work was the government payment. And it's a really bad system. And it's a system that was not designed to improve the life, the economic well being of the farmer.

[Alex Clark]

Are there Some tips for someone who wants to buy meat from an organic or regenerative farmer, but they are on a strict budget.

[Unknown Host]

Like, are there certain cuts that are.

[Alex Clark]

Less expensive that they could ask to buy? Are there hacks to striking a deal with a local farm?

[Will Harris]

There are. And a lot of times buying packages is cheaper. There are cuts. We have an online store, and there are cuts that build up an inventory. And I'm not much of a marketer, but I told our people that do our marketing, I said, this is going to make life better. If something is flying through there, go up on it. If something is building up an inventory, cut the price. Keep cutting the price until it moves. When we kill a cow, we get chuck and round and steak and ground beef and organ. We get the whole thing.

[Alex Clark]

So they should ask the farmer, what do you have the most inventory in? Because that's what they want to get rid of.

[Will Harris]

I mean, that's one way to do it. But I think that if the farmer is much of a marketer, he's going to drop the price on those things he's got too much of. We sell things really cheap sometimes because we got too much habit. And I tell you, it's not, you know, it's not going to get better if we got too much of something, cut the price. Pricing is difficult for farmers. You know, when we slaughter an animal, you're going to get a requisite amount of roasts and steaks and ground beef and organs and all that stuff. And when something flies through there, like filet, we keep going up on the price till we slow down the volume a little bit. But when something backs up in inventory, like chuck, then we cut the price. And I don't care if I have to cut it to a quarter a pound, it don't matter. It needs to go. So I think that there's an opportunity there for farmers to make more money by pricing in that way. It's an opportunity for consumers to buy some cheap stuff if they're smart and watch. We have sales all the time. And when we have sales, I'm not doing it to be kind to my customers. I want to be kind to my customers. That's not why we're doing it. We're doing it because we got too much of something. It needs to go.

[Alex Clark]

So the consumer could be looking closely the farm's website, social media, seeing if they're posting sales and things. Those are going to be the opportunities that you want to take advantage of.

[Will Harris]

And our people do that. They have sale. They don't they don't. They don't ask me, can they have a sale. They know that how much the pars of different cuts are. Start getting too much or something, they cut the price and if it doesn't move, they'll cut it again. Doesn't move, they cut it again.

[Alex Clark]

If you could heal a sick culture with one remedy, physically, mentally, or spiritually, what would it be?

[Will Harris]

With reference to food, which is what I know about, that's the business I'm in, is for people to understand what the true cost of that food is and be willing to pay it. If you can buy a product, what a food product it is, but it requires the use of some pesticide that's destroying something else, you know, that's a great expense to society. So I think that knowing what the true cost is and being willing to.

[Alex Clark]

Pay it, not only just your community, your country, you know, future children, what you're saying, the environmental costs of those products, but also your personal health costs.

[Will Harris]

All of those things should be equally similarly compared.

[Alex Clark]

Remind people where your farm is located and what people can buy at your farm.

[Will Harris]

It's called White Oak Pastures. It's located in Bluffton, Georgia. We raise cows, hogs, sheep, goats, rabbits, honey eggs, vegetables, you know, whatever the bounty of nature produces. And we sell it online and we sell it in a number of grocery stores.

[Alex Clark]

Who you've grocery stores?

[Will Harris]

I sell to Publix.

[Alex Clark]

Really? All over that whole southern region or just Georgia?

[Will Harris]

I think all over the whole southern region.

[Alex Clark]

Ooh, I'm jealous.

[Will Harris]

We sell them ground beef.

[Alex Clark]

We've got to get you in the southwest.

[Will Harris]

Publix are wonderful people. I actually sold Publix the first pound of American grass fed beef they labeled as American grass fed beef. And I sold them before I sold whole Foods.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, that's good to know.

[Will Harris]

They are wonderful people, people.

[Alex Clark]

Well, you got to follow Will on Instagram at White Oak Pastures. And thank you so much, Will, for coming on Culture Apothecary.

[Will Harris]

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed being with you.

[Unknown Host]

If you like this episode with Will Harris, you'll also like my 2023 interview from December of that year with rancher AJ Richards. Also the interview I did with regenerative farmer Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm in June of 2020 24. Not only do I hope you learn something new, but also I really hope you feel motivated and encouraged to reach out to your local organic farmer. Be brave. Just call them. If you need help finding a farm, go to from the farm.org or realmilk.com we're on a mission to helicit culture twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 9pm Eastern. New guests bringing us their own unique remedy to do just that. Heal a sit culture. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark tpusamerch. Com. You can get show merch and get 10% off of that with code Alex Clark to support us. Make sure you leave a five star review for free. Tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary. I'm Alex Clark and thank you for listening to Culture Apothecary.