Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - Uncovering The Dirt Of Factory Farming | Will Harris

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

4th generation farmer Will Harris owns White Oak Pastures, an organic regenerative farm in Georgia. With an accent as thick and slow as molasses, Will and Alex dive into the ethical problems with conventional farming, whether regenerative agriculture is realistic to scale, what you should know about Chick-fil-A bringing back antibiotic chicken, the truth about grass-finished grain-finished stock, how to spot "greenwashed" brands, if we can trust the organic label and much more.Thank you to our sponsors! Zebra⁠ | Use code "ALEX for 10% OFFA’del Natural Cosmetics | Use code "ALEX" for 25% OFF⁠⁠Masa Chips⁠⁠ | Use code "REALALEXCLARK" for 20% OFFCowboy Colostrum | Use code “ALEX” for 15% OFF Garnuu | Use code “ALEX” for 15% OFF Will HarrisInstagram | @whiteoakpasturesWebsite | whiteoakpastures.comResourcesBook | "A Bold Return To Giving A Damn" by Will Harris Alex ClarkInstagram | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠New 'Culture Apothecary' Merch OUT NOW! Glass tumblers, weekly wellness planners, hats, crewnecks and more. Use code "Alex Clark" for 10% OFF at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tpusamerch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the Cuteservatives Facebook group to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the CUTEservative Facebook Group!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.This show is made possible with generous donations from listeners who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture.You can support our show by leaving a tax deductible donation ⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠ or by subscribing to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube for FREE! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠#cultureapothecary #alexclark #podcast  #health  #wellness

When people complain about animal welfare, it's actually just the canary in the coal mine. When I was an industrial cattle farmer, I was in the killing business. We were doing, we would load up 100, 500-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 to do that. I did it for years until it bothered me, and then it bothered me. 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 in mass production in favor of a bold, radical shift, regenerative organic agriculture. Now, on his 3,000-acre farm in Georgia, he's proved 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. He's a slow talker, but he's got a lot of wisdom. 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, is that 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 Kutervatives Facebook group. Please welcome Regenerative Farmer, Will Harris, to culture apothecary. How often do you eat fast food as a regenerative farmer? Almost never. What would be the exceptions? If I'm traveling and I need something to eat,

I don't have much time to eat it, There were one of two fast food places that I would frequent. I do not indiscriminately eat fast food. So if you have to, what are the ones that you're choosing? You said there's a couple. Chick-fil-A would probably be number one. What do you think about Chick-fil-A bringing antibiotics back in their chicken this year? Should people worry about that?

Yeah. 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've 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 bottle, but they make the claim better. 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? 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. When you're eating them. When you're using 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 as 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. How much money is Chick-fil-A savings switching back to chicken with antibiotics, you think? It would be a lot. I mean, 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. Your dad was 26 when he took over the farm?

That's about right. He was born in 1920 and took over the farm post-World War II, about 1946. So yeah. Do you think most 26-year-old men today are capable of running a farm? I think that running a farm is like running any of. of the 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. And you said men, men and women. I got $3. Two of my $3 are involved in management of my farm. But you're right. They weren't managing it at 26. They worked there at 26. Yeah.

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

It had some other negative attributes. Yeah, we have 170 employees. Wow. I don't think many 26-year-olds would be ready for that. 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? 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. more simple deal when I first came back. So it's evolved to what it is today over a 30-year period. Please explain where your farm is because your accent is so unique and interesting that for my audience that isn't familiar, you've got to tell them where you live. 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. You know, we, 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. Okay. 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, you know, until. the 20th century. And in the 20th century, there's been less back and forth. I mean, people,

back and forth, people moving in and out. It'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 talked like this.

We all spoke the same way. And 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 won't supple. Uh-huh. And I think it made me dig down a little deeper. Do you call Georgia, do they say every single soft drink is Coke or no?

Yeah. Are there others? I say pop. Yeah, no. Let me say Coke. Okay. Yeah, I remember that because I lived in Tennessee for a little bit. So that's, I mean, sort of close.

That's sort of closed by. That's the closest. And they all say Coke for everything. It could be Sprite or whatever, but they say Coke. Actually, in Bluffington, we say Coca-Cola. Co-Cola. Not Coca-Cola. Co-co.

You know a Coca-Cola? It's all one word, basically. Coca-Cola, with three syllables. 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 well? 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've 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. You know, in confinement, cattle, hog, poultry, the animals can't do what they do in nature. You know, cows are meant to roam and graze, but they can't do that in the 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. 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? It doesn't add anything, which is why. which is why the industrial movement took it away. 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 there. Was White Oak Pastures always a regenerative farm?

No. In fact, it started as a regenerative farm. When my great-grandfather came then, 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 was his goal. That was not just his. That was everyone's goal. But it came to 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, centralized. That's what my dad's generation did. And in fairness, it's all I ever wanted to do. And when I was a kid growing up and the other kids wanted to be firemen or doctors or lawyers or superheroes, I just want to run that farm. And that's what I did. And then you were, in your words, you were doing regular commercial farming and then totally had like a come-to-Jesus moment on your farming practices and saying, got to change things. So can you talk about that?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure Jesus was there that day, but yeah. 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've wanted to do. It would be just the same thing. I loved it. The animal welfare It 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 shipped 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. Like what?

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 until then. And I realized that that was a dead mineral medium. And I could walk 20 feet 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 five, six, six. 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. And you're in your 40s

as you're having this epiphany. Yeah, about 40. At the time, you and your 40s was what? Would that have been like the 90s? Yeah. So it's the 90s. How much is out there about regenerative farming? Oh, I didn't know what that was. Yeah. I mean, that word is pretty new. right? Yeah, well, you know, it was, it was organic, which I thought was just vegetables back then. 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 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. You know, 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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Seed oil-free, salty beef tallow tortilla chips on the market. You decided to completely stop using glyphosate, right? Yeah. Well, I decided to quit using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, of which glyphosate is certainly one of them. And I decided so GMOs really weren't that big a deal then, but I was using a lot of products on mine. like wormers to get worms out, internal parasites out, hormone implants.

You know, we would take hormone implants and put them behind the ear and the skin behind the ear of the cattle. And what would that do? It would cause their hormone to be imbalanced and they would grow faster. It's still done. People do it all the time. And I did it a lot. And so when you do something purposefully to make a cow or a chicken grow fast,

How does that impact the nutrients of the food? 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 and rural community building. I'm not an expert in these other things. I've got opinions, and I'll share them with you. Sure, we love opinions. 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 long way apart. It's not nearly as strong. It's an oak tree that grows much slower, and the rings are closer together.

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Those farmers, those commodity farmers that are farming industrially, they're good people. These are not evil people that are intentionally damaging them. 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 the land grant university. They're farming the way that the county agent told them to farm. They're farming the way that the Department of Agriculture expects them.

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It won't do anything but pick cotton. That's all little bit. 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 islands and the environment. and the rural community. Are there a certain amount of chemicals that just have to be used on our food? And are the regenerative organic farming camp lying, saying we don't need them? No, they're not lying. If you're asking me, is it takes 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 butter. If you use too much cocaine, I might get it. I don't think we should be talking about how much we should be able to use. I think that what a farmer has to do, and I've done it, is to decide to go back to a natural,

natural nature, natural production system and do the things that need. 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.

It's been stored beneath the surface of the land. And we've been using it for the last 100 years or so. That same abundance has always occurred without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides or for that abundance to occur. The cycles of nature have got to be allowed to operate optimally. So the cycles of nature. We can 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 without 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 model, as opposed to that cyclical model, 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 will kill all, the fungicide, kill all the microorganisms. And on and on, so we kill things.

You know, when I was an industrial cattle farmer, monocultural industrial california, 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 internal parasites on my cattle. On and on, I could find something I didn't like.

And I knew exactly what to use to kill it. Side means kill. Homicide, kill people, right? Fungicide, kill fungus. A insecticide, kill insects. Herpeside, kill plants. I don't know. In 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 of that except what we wanted to live. And that removed all symbiosis. 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 whole cycle of life is what makes better soil, which then makes better food, correct? 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. If we hadn't studied enough to know what they do,

it'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 we'll 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 now. 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 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. It's what happened.

You know, 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. I mean, that's how we got glyphosate, right? That's how we got a lot of these chemical nitrogen fertilizer is one of the most destructive things that we use. It's an addictive. Addictive for the farmer spraying it? Yeah. I hadn't used any artificial nitrogen

in 25 years. And I tell people, there at times I kill a man for a load of ammonium nitrate. Which is roundup, right? No, no, no, no. Ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer. Oh, it's different. Yeah. Okay, okay.

No, I had a little roundup addiction, but it wasn't as much as there. And why would that be addictive for a farmer because it just gets the job done? Well, because it's so efficacious. It's just so, I mean, it just, it's like steroids. 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? That's an understatement. It's an understatement.

We nearly appreciate all. That's what I meant by the symbiotic. relationship all these beings have in an ecosystem, they're beneficial. Yes. You know, 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 is taken over, but it's still. change the ecosystem. It's a little different than it was. 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? 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 make a, I don't know where that distinction, that perceived distinction came from. 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 green fed. Okay.

So it's just like hogwash. Yes, what they is. Sometimes I have farmers that are farming in different parts of the country where they say like, well, we don't have 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 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? Well, I mean, that Arizona may not be where we need to be raising our grass-fed beef.

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. That's exactly right. You know, lemons and bananas are great, but you don't groom me now. I'm 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, it's very artificial.

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? I don't agree with everything you said, but I do agree that regenerative farming is not high. It's highly replicatable, but not highly scalable. You know, 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. And the only way that these factory farms are able to do that is with using more chemicals and things? Using the tools that technology has given us to break the cycles of nature. 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 these areas of the country so that 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 going with what we have currently, the amount of truly organic regenerative farms, then there would be a lot of people without food.

Is that what you're saying? Pretty much. 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 the regenerative farm absorbs more of those costs. For instance, there's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is 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. But now the pesticide companies, the fertilizer companies of the farm, 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 Socles of Nature that is spun off so that the producers don't bear it. It's shared by everybody. Okay, I've got to share the secret with you. For the first time in my life, I am loving my natural hair. Now, I know if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify,

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It is time to clean up your makeup back. What are green washed brands, in the grocery store, and how can you spot them? Pretty much any big national, international company is probably greenwashed, probably. I'm not going to get out of this, this one, this one, this one. I think probably every big industrial food company I know of is guilty of some level of greenwashing. And that's because there's a percentage of the consumers who have found regeneratively raised product to be attractive. And 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 bear the expense of changing the practice. So what would that look like on a label, 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. There's a lot of examples. The best example I 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. And it can be a certified organic tomato. So you've got a certified organic tomato on the shelf of the grocery store that's grown without soil or sunlight. And do you think that that tomato is going to be less healthy than a non-organic tomato, or they're about the same? Intuitively, I would say, it's going to be less healthy. It's certainly less natural. Even though it has no chemicals, it wasn't grown in a real way.

It's like grown in a lab. 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 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 reasonable. 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 they 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 have a store And we invite people, we've got people there to show you around. And we don't make money with that stuff. It's break-evenish.

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 your food comes from. And they can 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. You know, 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. 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?

You know, again, that label's not telling you anything. I know. That's the hard part. That's what they're struggling with. I know. And I wish I could give you an answer that, you know, if it turns to Littance 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. 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? Maybe. But I don't want to say that. But you just don't know. I don't know. I mean, I hadn't, you know, I hadn't put black paint on my face and gone to the Tyson. To Luke's, 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. Cool. That came from White Oak Pastures? It did. Cool. It did. 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 and 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, and I said I quit. They said I quit then. They said they quit me. I don't know exactly how that happened.

It's like, no, she broke up with me. No, he broke up with me. That's exactly right. We got a divorce. But, you know, it just 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.

And I know it is. If the consumer doesn't go to the trouble of knowing where their food came from, they're probably going to get tricked. 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? Yeah, you're probably right.

And that's got to be cultivated. So let me, let's talk about that a minute. As a family, we've made the decision that we sell them by much as we want to sell. We're not interested in growing our business. It's as big as we can manage. You shouldn't have come on this show then. I'm here to help other farmers, not myself. We ship product to 48 states.

I don't ship internationally. Choose not to. But I don't want to ship 48 states. I want to ship to 48 states. 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. You need more farmers to step up.

I need for more consumers to step up so more farmers can step up. Okay, so we, it's up to us 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. Yeah, you know, in a perfect, really aggressive world, that's the way it would need to be. But, you know, 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. 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 courage and the opportunity to do it. 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 constituents really, 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've 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, right? They're making a living.

They're going to have to change. That's really a good example. I've never used that example. I'm going to plagiarize it now that I'm. I'm honored. Please do. I will. But yeah, they say that.

They say when my phones are ringing in my office and my team is telling me 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 got to 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 way. And that's right. And 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 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 cow 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've got some debt. We've got a lot of assets. And 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 this cost. We're paying our way. What is the first step that an industrial farmer can make if they want to switch to regenerative farming? 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. With what, apple cider vinegar? There's some apple cider vinegar involved. I figured. I figured.

We figured it out, not overnight, but over time. We're kind of still figuring it out. But we've gotten where 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 into the commodity market and survive.

So I needed to market. beef. Well, to 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, you know, 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. We do order fulfillment on the farm, ship FedEx, EPS, 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 problems, we can call them a problem that you've got to solve. I mean, you're not selling it right now. Like, right now you're describing, like, it's a lot harder. It takes a lot more hard work. So there has to be some benefit that makes it worth it for you. All this extra work. What is it?

I have three dollars, two of whom came back to farm. And they wouldn't have done that. You know, it was industrial. They had moral issues with how their daddy was farming. No, I don't think they got all that much morality. When I was growing up, you know, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to, farm. You know, I wanted to do what my dad did.

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 were not raised to farm and didn't have the interest in farming. It probably 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 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. What do they say it is that they like about the way that you're farming that made them want to come back? It's pretty good lifestyle. We've got a great lifestyle. 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 create a legacy on? 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 they're little.

Who knows. But out of seven, there may be a sixth generation. generation to come back. When you use conventional tampons, you're often putting harmful chemicals, pesticides, and even synthetic materials like rayon into your body. These products can irritate the skin, they can disrupt your hormones, and even cause long-term health issues. But with Garnieu, you get the peace of mind that comes with 100% organic cotton tampons made

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that there's just too much lobby money there. And 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? And I'm showing up without a suitcase full of money. And the next guy that's going on the other side,

he'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. Wow. 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, it certainly won't be the big farming pesticide companies. Do you trust the Farm Bureau? I'm not a Farm Bureau advocate.

You put that in a very nice way. I'm sure you could be a lot meaner. I can. I think we want to demonstrate how mean we can be honest. Oh, no, we do. I want the fire and brimstone. Give it to us. I'm not a Farm Bureau fan.

I think the Farm Bureau, I don't know they're evil. I think they're influenced by Big Ag. My audience is very familiar now with Big Pharma and Big Food. Then they're no Big Ag because they're the same people. Explain how Big Ag is just as much of a danger as big ag. big food in big pharma, that they're all making up this triangle of corruption. You said it perfectly. The big ag on the input side is producing pesticides and chemical fertilizers and GMOs and

those products and profiting from it. Then you've got big ag on the procurement side that's buying like ADM and the Cargill that are 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. 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 got to be even more hard to

escape. 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 is 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. Are there some tips for someone who wants to buy meat from an organic or regenerative farmer,

but they are on a strict budget? Like, are there certain cuts that are less expensive that they could ask to buy? Are there hacks to striking a deal with a local farmer? 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. And 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. So they should ask the farmer, what do you have the most inventory in?

Because that's what they want to get rid of. 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've got too much of it. And I tell you, 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 to we slow down the volume a 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 of 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've got too much of something. It needs to go. So the consumer could be looking closely at the farms' websites, social media, seeing if they're posting sales and things, those are going to be the opportunities that you want to take advantage of. And our people do that. They have sale.

They don't ask me can they have a sale? They know that how much the part. of different cuts are, they start getting too much of something, they cut the price. And if it doesn't move, they'll cut it again. If it doesn't move, they cut it again. If you could heal a sick culture with one remedy, physically, mentally or spiritually, what would it be? 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. You know, if you can buy a product, well, what a food product 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 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. All of those things should be equally similarly compared. Remind people where your farm is located and what people can buy at your farm. It's called white oak pastures. It's located in Bluffton, Georgia.

We raise cows, hog, sheep, goats, rabbits, honey, eggs. vegetables whatever the bounty of nature produces and we sell it online and we sell it in a number of grocery stores Oh you have grocery stores

I sell to Publix Really? All over that whole southern region or just Georgia? I think all over the whole southern region Ooh I'm jealous We sell them ground beef We gotta get you in the southwest 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. Okay, that's good to know. They are wonderful people. Well, you got to follow Will on Instagram at White Oak Pastures.

And thank you so much, Will, for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed being with you. If you like this episode with Will Harris, you'll also like my 2023 interview from December of that year with rancher A.J. Richards. Also, the interview I did with regenerative farmer Joel Salatin from Polly Face farm in June of 2024. 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 fromthefarm.org or real milk.com. We're on a mission to Heelisit Culture twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern. New guests bringing us their own unique remedy to do just that, Heelisit Culture. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark. TPSAmerch.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.