The Joe Rogan Experience - #1893 - Will Harris

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman and farmer. He's the owner of White Oak Pastures: a family farm utilizing regenerative agriculture and humane animal husbandry practices. www.whiteoakpastures.com

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! Alright, we're up and running. So you are actually the second Will Harris I've had on the show, I should just tell you. My friend Will Harris is a documentary filmmaker. He does MMA films, does films about UFC fighters. And he's been on recently.

So people see the name Will Harris. So like we have to make a distinction. There are more than one. And you're the different one. You're the farmer. Maybe next time I'll be your friend too. Well, I first saw you on television doing one of those very quick interviews where there was, you know, they were talking about all these issues that you like to

discuss, but they only gave you a couple of minutes. And it was really hard because you have a relaxed way of talking, but you were very interesting. And I was watching this. I was like, this is a stupid format. Like, I want to hear what this guy has to say. Obviously, he has a lot more to say. So that's why we're having this conversation. Well, thank you for that. Thank you. That event you're talking about was Fox News. A guy named Stuart Varney invited me to be on, and he kicked my ass pretty good. And I accept culpability in it. I don't watch TV much, and I've never watched Fox News. Never.

No. And I should have prepared myself, but I didn't. I took it at its word. I got an email from this Stuart Varney saying he wanted me to be on a segment, five minutes, explaining why I didn't think it was good for Bill Gates to own so much farmland. So I said, well, that's good. I have definite opinions, thoughted opinions on that. I want to share them.

So I sat down and wrote up a four-minute explanation of facts of why I thought that's not good. And I thought I was going to get to go through my stuff. And he asked the question, and I started explaining it. And I'm profoundly Southern. You know, I speak slowly. And I was doing what I thought he wanted me to do. And he said why why everything on those shows is just you got to get to the point get to the point get to the point

it's favors people if we'd been in the cow pasture I'd have pinched his fucking head off well unfortunately that's his job he's got producers in his ear I guarantee you they're telling him to move things along quicker it's a shitty job it's it's. He's got producers in his ear. I guarantee you they're telling him to move things along quicker. It's a shitty job. It's unfortunate. It's a terrible way to disseminate information. And could you just, like, let's start it from the beginning, like, who you are. Tell us, everybody, about your farm and how everything's run because it's very interesting.

Good. So I'm Will Harris. I'm the fourth generation of my family to own and manage white oak pastures. I have two daughters and two in-laws who are there with me today helping run the farm. And I have seven grandchildren. So the sixth generation is on the farm. There's been in my family since 1866. Wow. farm that's been in my family since 1866. Wow. So my great-grandfather, James Edward Harris,

came there in 1866 and established the farm and ran it all his life, followed by his son, Will Carter Harris, my granddad, followed by his son, Will Bell Harris, my dad, followed by me. And now, again, my dad, followed by me. And now, again, I've got two more generations in the offing. You know, I think the thing I enjoy most, and to tell you about the farm. So the farm is, that farm is 3,200 acres. We do some other grazing, but that farm is 3,200 acres. We pasture raise five different poultry species, chickens, turkeys, geese, guineas, and ducks, and we hand-butcher

them on the farm in a USDA-inspected processing plant I built. We pasture-raise five red meat species, cows, hogs, sheep, goats, rabbits, and hand butcher them at a separate USDA inspected facility that I built. We raised pastured eggs, organic vegetables, honey, and a bunch of other little ancillary businesses that go from the organism that is white oak pastures. It's very different from what I did prior to 25 years ago. What did you do prior to 25 years ago? So prior to the mid-'90s, I ran it as my father had,

as a very linear, monocultural cattle operation, the factory farm model. And what made you make a shift to the way you're doing it now? Would you call the way you're doing it now regenerative agriculture? That's how you would describe it? Yeah, I would. It's just a matter of days before big food takes that description away from us. But it was sustainable. It's been organic.

Now it's regenerative and makes us resilient. But it is a kinder, gentler agriculture. And it's an agriculture where everything works in symbiosis. Is that a safe thing to say? It's a great thing to say. The chickens grazing, the manure that the cows lay, everything goes back together. Exactly. We call it biomimicry, the emulation of nature. It's a very imperfect emulation, but it's better and better.

better and better. And it serves to restart the cycles of nature, which we broke through industrial farming, and make our living off the abundance that comes from properly operating cycles of nature. And did you go out on your own to learn this? If your father was a monocrop agriculture guy and you developed the farm in this way, obviously it must have taken a lot of planning. So how did you decide to make that shift and what was the motivation? I'll give you the motivation first. I operated the farm very industrially, as my father did, for the first 20 years. I graduated from the University of Georgia, College of Agriculture, with a degree in animal science, not animal husbandry.

And I operated the farm very industrially. By industrially, I mean I use a lot of technology. We misapply technology. We grow sub-therapeutic antibiotics, ionophores, hormone implants. Hormone implants? Yeah. How does that work? From an endocrine point of view,

you've got to talk to somebody else. Oh, okay. But the way it works is you can buy hormone implants for cattle, and you actually give little pellets that you put in the skin behind their ear, and it causes them to grow faster. Wow. Is that commonly used? Yeah.

In the industrial model, it's very, very commonly used. It's a multi-million or billion-dollar industry. Wow. Is that commonly used? Yeah. In the industrial model, it's very, very commonly used. It's a multi-million or billion-dollar industry. Wow. So they give the cows extra hormones so the cows get larger, and they try to feed them quicker, and they're feeding them mostly green to get them fat. Correct, which is a very unnatural feedstuff for a ruminant animal. Yeah. That's a fascinating thing, isn't it? Because so many people like green-fed steaks. They like that real fatty, and that if you give them a grass-fed steak, it's almost like, hmm, this is interesting. It tastes different. Like,

they're not accustomed to it. It's a little chewier. It's a little different. It is. And, you know, we never market our product by saying, this is the most tender steak you've ever put in your mouth. I hear grass-fed producers say that, and I wince because they're setting an expectation we can't get to. Well, it's also we have to look at the reality of why that animal is so chewy or it's so easy to chew. It's because it's got no, like, the body is unhealthy. There's so much fat in the system that the body's marbled with fat. Like, if that was a human being and you saw it, like, that person would be sick. Like, if you look at one of those cows that's, like, completely infused with fat,

if that was your body, you'd be like, wow, I might need to get myself together because this is not good. This is not a good look. A feedlot cow is an unnaturally obese creature that would never occur in nature. Never. Never. Never. So a bull or heifer that I slaughter would be two years old.

It would weigh, live weight 1,100 pounds. It would have two or three tenths inch of back fat. And if I gave it, if I gave that animal a presidential pardon and said, we're not going to slaughter you at two years age, they would live to be 20-something years old probably. That's the normal life expectancy of a cow. Contrast that to a feedlot animal that would yield prime or choice.

They would be probably 16 to 18 months of age, not two years. They would probably weigh 1,300, 1,400 pounds, not 1,100. They would have three quarters of an inch of back fat. And while I have not done this, I would be willing to bet you if you left that animal in the feedlot, gave it that same presidential pardon, it wouldn't live much over another year or so. garden, it wouldn't live much over another year or so. You're eating a naturally obese creature that would never occur in nature and is slowly dying of the same diseases of sedentary lifestyle and obesity that kill most of us. So you're saying that a cow with a grain-fed diet, before they slaughter it, they just let it live. It would only live a year or so longer than that?

That's my bet. During the pandemic panic, when the packing plants were closed down, they were euthanizing chickens and hogs particularly because they couldn't slaughter them, so they euthanized them. Now, I own my own packing plant, and we never shut down. That's a sign of resilience. But if I had, I wouldn't have euthanized anything. They'd have been fine. They would have kept eating, but they'd have been fine. And you would have gone right back to the natural cycle two years later if you had to shut down for that long. Yeah.

I mean, we would have just kept accumulating animals in the pasture until I could open my packing plant back up. Now, why did they have to euthanize the animals? Because they didn't have the resources or because the animals weren't doing well? Euthanize, to me, when I hear euthanized, I think something's wrong. You've got to put them down because they're sick, or there's no room for them. Why are they doing that? I would say it's because those are confinement

animals that live in very expensive confinement facilities, and they had nowhere to go with them. That's hard to deal with. That's just hard to imagine that life becomes that invaluable, that you could just decide to euthanize them all. No one's going to buy them.

We're just going to kill them all. I think that's what happened. So 25 years ago, you changed the model of your farm, and you restructure everything. What were the steps you had to do, the steps you had to take to go about doing that? Okay. So it was, you first asked why. So let me answer that.

Okay. credit, but in my 40s, I became increasingly aware of the unintended consequences of the production model that I was using, the industrial commodity centralized model. And I didn't like it much. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. Animal welfare was the canary in the coal mine. You know, I really, what I had previously believed to be good animal welfare is what most people still think of as good animal welfare. And that is you keep the animal well-fed, watered, in a comfortable temperature range.

You don't intentionally inflict pain and suffering on the animal, and you're good to go. All the boxes are checked. That's good animal welfare. And I subscribe to that. But to me in my 40s, I didn't like that much anymore. I felt like it was, in addition to those things, incumbent upon me as the stockman to give the animal an environment in which it could express instinctive behavior. You know, chickens are meant to scratch and peck. Hogs are meant to root and wallow.

Cows are meant to roam and graze. But in the CAFO confinement model, those instinctive behaviors are not an option for them. And I believe that puts the animal – I think it's like if you're raising your kid, let's talk about good parenting. Good parenting doesn't mean you take your child, your daughter, and put her in the closet. It's 72 degrees. You've got the light on. You've got a mattress in there.

You give them all the Cheetos and Oreos and Fritos they want, and that's good Fritos they want. And that's good parenting because they'll never be abducted. They'll never fall down and break their leg. But it's not. You've got to give those children the opportunity to express instinctive behavior. And I think that's also incumbent upon the stockman with his livestock. So I changed the way I raised, at that time, only cattle.

I was a monocultural cattleman at that time. You know, I quit feeding. You know, we used to literally feed chicken shit to cows, chicken litter. You put enough corn and enough molasses in it, and you give them enough sub-therapeutic antibiotics to keep them healthy, and you can get incredibly cheap weight gains. And it's legal. It's fine. Chicken shit.

And what's the benefit of that? Is chicken shit high in calories? Chicken shit's high in nitrogen, which is protein. And there are calories there. It's from confinement chicken houses. There's a lot of wasted are calories there. It's from confinement chicken houses. There's a lot of wasted feed. From a purely

nutritional perspective, if you view the world myoptically through that view of just the nutrition going into that animal, it's a great feed, mostly because it's cheap and it works. But it's not the thing to do.

Yeah, it's disgusting. So I quit doing those kinds. Is that common? I did it, yeah. You think it's probably commonly? I have been to courses at Auburn University where we were taught how to do that. Wow. I have been to courses at Auburn University where we were taught how to do that. So, wow.

So one of the horrors of animal agriculture was the great – the moment in England and in Europe where there's mad cow disease spread through the land. I had a friend who I think it was a decade plus later, after he had been to England, there was something about his medical report. He had a list that he lived there during the time that he ate ground beef, because so many people had gotten mad cow disease from people feeding cows cows. That's how that came about, right? They were feeding cows cow brains. B.S.E., bovine encephalus, whatever that stands for, B.S.E., bovine spongiform encephalitis, I think it is, comes from prions, which when they grind the central nervous system of an infected animal,

you convey it to healthy animals. And that was done in England fairly extensively, apparently. And that's for the same purpose, just because it's high in calories, it's cheap, they were going to throw it away anyway. Correct. Anyway, to finish the questions, most of my transition from what I did 25 years ago to what I do today involves just giving up stuff, giving up procedures, giving up products, giving up techniques. the problems that we have in agriculture today, they make it so destructive,

is the misapplication of technology. I've been accused of being anti-technology, and I am not. My farm is a $25, $6 million business with 180-something employees. We employ a lot of technology. But reductive science technology does not lend itself to living systems, whether it's your body or my farm. Living biological systems have so often unintended consequences to misused technology. And the unintended consequences are usually unnoticed consequences,

and they're undesirable consequences. And so, like, what did you see, as far as what technological applications on farms did you see that were particularly destructive that you felt like you had to eliminate from your farm? So it's a lot of them. I'm going to switch over and talk about the land side of it. So there's the animal, the land, and the community. Those are the three things that we think we're good at.

Okay. So let's talk about the land side because it's a little easier. So let's talk about the land side because it's a little easier. So I would say the three of the most damaging things we do to our soil, our land, is cultivation, the use of chemical fertilizers, and the use of pesticides. You know, and most of this misused technology came from the war effort, from the Second World War. I don't think agriculture changed much from the time the first person domesticated the first animal or put the first seed in the ground until post-World War II.

And I'll give you some examples. Ammoniated fertilizer, the chemical fertilizer, was invented, I think, in Germany in the 1880s or something. But farmers didn't use it because it was very expensive. After the war, so much money had been spent on the munitions factories, the technology to build those factories and make munitions, that somebody

figured out that, wow, we can make ammoniated fertilizer cheap enough to sell it. And they literally, companies, multinational companies, literally put salesmen out in the field to Bluffton, Georgia. I heard my dad tell stories about that. And to sell ammoniated fertilizer to the farmers. Well, ammoniated fertilizer is like steroids in your body. You put it on the land and immediately you've got this very visual growth and productivity boost.

What is in ammoniated fertilizer that's different from regular fertilizer? Well, prior to that, it was organic fertilizer. Things like compost. Compost, mostly guano. Guano, yeah. Batshit, bird manure. Yeah, we read once that people used to have wars over batshit, that batshit was so valuable that people would fight for batshit.

Good point. That's where batshit crazy comes from, apparently. that bat shit was so valuable that people would fight for bat shit. Good point. That's where bat shit crazy comes from, apparently. It was the most efficient way to import nutrients into cropland, which was guano, until World War II. Ammoniated fertilizer is chemically produced fertilizer. And what is exactly in it? Well, it can be a lot of things. But in this case, we're talking about ammonium nitrate or urea or maybe anhydrous ammonia.

So it's in super large doses that would normally not exist in compost or manure or any things like that. So ammonium nitrate, I think, is 33.5% nitrogen. Urea, I'm pretty sure, is 44% nitrogen. And the best compost or guano that you could find would be way under 10% nitrogen. It's just like steroids, right? Got it. So supercharged volumes of nitrogen, and it makes things grow quickly. In fact, since we're into this, I'll tell you a brief story.

So my dad told me that in—he was born in 1920, so 1946, he'd been 26 years old and taking over the farm. He was born in 1920, so 1946, he'd been 26 years old and taking over the farm. He told me that in 1946, after the war, a salesman came to Bluffton, our little town, and had a fish fry or barbecue or whatever it took to bring the farmers in. They had two 200-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer that had been made in munitions factories. And they gave every farmer like a five or ten pound bag to take home. And the ask was, go home, put this out on your grass, your pasture, wet it, put water on it, and don't look at it for about three days,

then come back. And my dad did that. And when he came back, where they put the ammonium nitrate, you know, it was a foot taller and five shades greener than the rest of it. And he said, damn, I want the whole farm to look like that. I want the whole farm to look like that. And from 1946 to probably 1996, 50 years, that'd be 50 years, either my dad or I put ammoniated fertilizer on every acre of land we had every single year.

Now, the benefit was so obvious. You could see it. You could see it at 30 miles an hour just looking out the window. What you couldn't see is that that ammoniated fertilizer oxidized the carbon in the ground, the organic matter in the soil. Oxidized it, right, chemically.

It killed the microbes in the soil, not sterilized them, but it was bad for the microbes. It had some other negative chemical impacts, but you couldn't see them. If you dug around the dirt with your fingers, you wouldn't have seen it. And at the time, was this a fairly new thing that people were doing?

So it was invented in World War II. When did it start being wide-scale implemented? Post-World War II. I think it was invented in the 1880s. But it was so expensive, farmers didn't use it until post-World War II when they repurposed the munitions. I see. And that made it effective to use financially. Cost-effective.

Yeah. So when these people started doing it, there was no long-term understanding of consequences. They didn't really know what to expect in terms of what you're saying about it oxidizing the carbon. No one knew about all that. That's exactly right. And really, when I was at the University of Georgia in the 70s, we still didn't know about it. We didn't talk about that. So everyone was still just talking about the effectiveness of it then? Absolutely. When I was taking soils in the 70s, we talked extensively about soil structure,

soil texture, soil chemistry. We never talked about soil biology. And if we did, we were talking about soil fumigants or soil sterilants. Because, you know, that was an era when germs make you sick. Germs are bad. Microbes are germs. Kill the germs. Right. Yeah.

And when did they figure that out, that it's actually, that there's soil biology, and that you have to manage that, and that these fertilizers were causing long-term consequences? When did they first start sorting that out? Well, I think it's getting sorted out now. Now? Just now? Well. The think it's getting sorted out now. Now? Just now? Well. Last five years, ten years?

You know, I guess the organic vegetable movement was probably the first harbinger of that in probably the 70s. But it was very fringe and niche. It was very vegetable-oriented. And were they aware of the consequences of herbicides back then? Like, what was causing that? I think we're just now realizing those things. Now, when we say realize, you know, you've got some thought leaders somewhere that have probably been around for a long time. But as far as actual acceptance by the practitioners. I think it's just now happening, and it's really struggling to happen.

It's hard to get off of a crutch. And herbicides are a big crutch, right, for monocrop agriculture? Anything with side as a last name. Side means kill, right? Oh, right, yeah, homicide. That's Latin. So homicide, herbicide, pesticide, insecticide, fungicide, nematicide.

No sides. No sides. So this is interesting to me, if I can digress a minute. Yeah. So pharma, I think, means care, health care. So, you know, pharmaceutical companies and pesticide companies.

And I can remember hearing a long time ago that the way to make money is sell bullets and bandages. You know, you teach them how to hit the target and then you provide them with the bandage. And for one company like Bayer Monsanto, if they sell Roundup and aspirin, they sell bullets and bandages. It's a hell of a deal.

It's a hell of a deal. We've talked about Roundup many times on the podcast, about how many people on when you test their blood you find roundup in it It's some crazy number. What is it like 80% right? Very high very high number of people test positive for glyphosate It's very disturbing because people want to pretend that's not having any effects on people You don't even know and then they were talking about the numbers The the minuscule amounts of glyphosate. It's no big deal.

And my thought was like, why are you making apologies for that? First of all, you're saying it's no big deal. You don't know if it's not a big deal. And second of all, you're only talking about some people have low amounts. Like what's the overall average that people have? And what's the high end? At the high end, should you be warning the people that have a high level of glyphosate because they ingest it every day? At what levels is it toxic, and is this really well understood? It seems like it's understood that it's not good for you.

Let me bring that home for you from a practitioner's perspective. So I've used an incredible amount of glyphosate in my life, Roundup glyphosate. When was that stuff invented? an incredible amount of glyphosate in my life, Roundup glyphosate. When was that stuff invented? You know, that was a new product, fairly new product, when I was getting out of Georgia in the 70s. So, and I started using it right out of college and used it until the mid-90s, maybe late 90s.

I don't really know. Maybe, yeah, I quit these things gradually. I don't really know. I quit these things gradually. I don't know what day I quit that. But I tell people that there are days I would kill a man for a load of ammonium nitrate fertilizer because it's just so good. And similarly, I have a new non-native invasive plant on my farm, new to me. It's called tropical soda apple. It's from the Caribbean.

They speculate it came up here in bird droppings. Oh, wow. And it's related to the tomato, but it's very invasive. Is it edible? Not by you and I. I mean, I've tasted it. It's not good, but it's a nightshade. But birds, cows, hogs, sheep, goats, coyotes, everything eats those little berries.

But it's not a good plant because it literally dominates the landscape. So I'm battling it right now on my farm. And I'm using, I've got something I'm excited about now, but I've been using organic apple cider vinegar and soap to fight it. And it's not very efficacious. Spray it. It's not very efficacious at all. Eventually, if you keep spraying it, you'll kill it. But it takes a lot.

I could give it a breath of Roundup and it would die. But I don't want to use Roundup for the reasons you stated. My employees, my family, my animals would be out there the ones doing it. Yeah. So I resisted the incredible temptation like I'd kill a man for a gallon of Roundup. But – Is there any other way? Well –

Could you grit it off and do it by hand? I'm glad you asked. So one of the ancient Greeks said, for every pestilence that nature sends, she sends the cure. And I absolutely prescribe to that. That's part of the balance, the cycle, the symbiosis you mentioned earlier. Right. Is there a bug that eats them? Yeah, there you go. So there's a professor at the University of Florida who has brought in a beetle from Paraguay. And she assures me that it eats nothing but tropical solar apple.

So I have bought, or actually she gave them to me. I offered to buy. She sent me some beetles, and I've turned them loose because of, you know. Oh, boy. Sounds like a horror movie. Like, this is the beginning. Yeah. Well.

Whoa, they're cool looking. That's them. Tropical soda apple leaf beetle. Yep, that's them. I had them. Gratiana boliviana. Wow, what a crazy looking bug. And.

So all it does is eat soda leaves. That's exactly what I'm told. And I believe, and it's my observation. I didn't just dump them out and go home. I've been looking at them every single day since I put them out. And I see them eating the tropical soda apple. And they're not eating it like locusts. I mean, it's a slow process. Which you want.

Which I want. Because otherwise they'll run out of stuff to eat, and they'll migrate to other things, right? Isn't that the fear, though? Oh, yeah. Tortoise beetle. Yeah, it's also a... There's a certain concern about whether they'll

overwinter on my farm. Whether they'll survive? Yeah, I'm... Maybe it'd be good if they don't. You know, I don't feel necessarily bad about this. I think that, you know, we have screwed with our wildlife. And this is wildlife. Yeah, for sure.

How many species have gone extinct? I mean, you read about that all the time. Increasingly, more and more and more species. And it's all part of this incredible damage that we're doing through misused technology in agriculture. Is there any concern, though, about bringing in an invasive beetle species that it might migrate onto other foods and, like, destroy other plants? That's certainly something that I considered, and I've extensively been assured that's not going to happen. It might. So it would have to morph. It would have to make a change in what it eats. I believe in nature. I believe in that kind of evolution. But what's happening now

is equally bad. I could very easily wind up with a 3,200-acre monoculture of tropical salt apple on my farm, which is equally flying in the face of nature. And, yeah, so if you weren't a steward of the land, you didn't take care of that, that could be the trend that it's going into. This is not new. Do you know what kudzu is? Yes. Yeah, we've showed photos of that stuff, too. Okay, so— Let's pull it up because it's pretty wild how it takes over. did that come from to come from japan china china it was brought in intentionally

just like i intentionally brought in the the there it is just covers everything it is destroyed thousands hundreds maybe hundreds of thousands acres of timber in the southeast it's crazy what it looks like too because it looks like a fungus or something. Like it's so prevalent, like it just overwhelms everything and covers all the trees. So here's the killer now. Do you know what the cure for kudzu is? Another bug? Cows, sheep, and goats.

Really? They eat that stuff? If I own that piece of property you're showing right now and I put a good fence around it and turn my cow, sheep, goats, I'd probably put hogs in there too, let them work on the roots. In time they would eat it to death.

It's actually quite a nourishing plant for livestock. That's interesting. So someone could intentionally grow it on their farm if they wanted to have nourishing food for their animals? You could. You probably economically wouldn't because it's not very persistent. The fact that they can eat it to death would cause it to be not real cost effective to plant for the animals. It seems like if you get it, well, there they are. They're eating a hell of a lot. Going to town on it. But if you get it to the

point where it was't that last photograph, like good luck eating that all to death. Like how are you going to keep up with that? There was so much. That one photo that you showed, Jamie, where the entire forest is covered in that stuff. I give you my word. Yeah, that one right there.

I give you my word. Think you did it through that? I got probably 3,300 cattle on my farm right now. No, you right through that. Maybe right through it. Yeah. I mean, how quick? Well, how many acres is it? I farm right now. No, you're right through that. Maybe right through it. I mean, how quick? Well, how many acres is it? I don't know.

The big question about regenerative farming for most people is, is this scalable to what our current reality is as far as urban life? We've talked about this a bunch of times, but living in cities, you've got in Los Angeles is a good example. I think there's something like 18 million people live in the Los Angeles area, but no one's growing food. So everything has to be shipped into there, everything. And it's a very unnatural state for people. When we want to be able to just pull into a Jack in the Box and get a cheeseburger, what does it require? How much much meat is required to fill,

to feed 18 million people that don't farm. That's so many people that aren't farming so many people that aren't growing any food. So it's got to be grown in these other places, but could you have a farm that's a regenerative farm? That's so large and supplies so much food that you could feed people the way they're living right now, but do it completely naturally?

Or do we need a certain amount of factory farming in order for people to live like that today? Good. I think I got it. Okay. I think I got it announced for you. Okay. So I'm not going down this road, but the first thing I could probably do is argue we shouldn't

have 18 million people. It's a good argument. But let's not even have that one. Right. Let's just let that one sit. We can have that one later. They're here. You know what I'm saying?

Right. All right. I'd like to hear your thoughts on why it's bad, though. I'll give it to you. So let's answer this question first. Okay. So one thing that's a little bit unusual about me personally is that most of the people in this regenerative space don't look like me. They're not good old boys that farmed industrially and went commanding.

They are – they got degrees from – Hipsters. Hipsters, yeah, they're hipsters. I probably ain't a hipster. Hipsters, yeah, they're hipsters. I probably ain't a hipster. But I am one of the good old boys, and I still live in a community that there is nothing but industrial farming. Zero.

And you're the only farm that lives the way yours is? In my— In your area. Big area. So—and I still—I mean, they're still my relatives and friends and neighbors. And we talk. Do they talk to you about it? Like, with like, they're thinking about doing it as well? No.

Don't forget that question. That's a good question. Okay. But you got to let me go down the road. I'm sorry. I'll let you go down the road. Stuart Varney. It's Stuart Varney.

He got all the time in the world, sir. All right. So, when I talk to them about this, and talk to them about this, that's the most common argument in the world, the one you just said. You can't feed the world like that. Right. And I love that discussion. All right, let's have it.

But first, let's stipulate that the earth has a carrying capacity. You can't keep— I like how you said that. Carrying capacity. Carrying. Very serious. Are you making fun of myself in that accent? No, it's beautiful.

It's beautiful. It's the only one I got. I like it. The earth has a carrying capacity. And, you know, we may be past it now. I don't know. When we double population, we may be past it. But at some point, that's all you can have. So

the question is, what farming method will carry the earth furthest in its carrying capacity? Will get the earth the furthest? That's really the argument. And the industrial farming with all this misused technology that we use in today, if acres of land is the first thing we run out of, it is a much better system than mine. You can feed more people with the industrial centralized commodity system than you can with my regenerative system. I lose. But what if land's not the first thing we run out of?

What if it's oil? I don't use as much oil. Petroleum. What if it's water? I don't use as much water. oil, petroleum. What if it's water? I don't use as much water. What if it's the reductive plant foods like potassium and phosphate that we mine? Mine's better. I can feed more people. What if it's other things? What if it's the antibiotics that the pathogens are not antibiotics that the pathogens are not resistant to. My system's better. I can feed more people.

What if it's the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico down there, right? My system's better. So from many, many, many perspectives, I can give you a list of as many as you want. My system is less destructive and will carry more people on this planet than the current destructive linear factory model. And your system is fairly self-sustainable in terms of like the feed the animals eat? Or how much feed do you have to bring in? No, we bring in feed. And you bring in feed for chickens? You bring in feed for cows? No? The monogastrics, the pigs and the poultry. We bring in feed.

And what kind of feed do you bring in? We bring in a bought, non-GMO, non-corn, non-sori, expensive feed that we bring in. But I could grow it myself. That's the question. I love closing loops, and there's some loops I have not closed. And that's the question okay i there's i love closing loops and there's some loops i have not closed and that's one that's one growing all my own non-ruminant feed monogastric feed is what with the cows it's just grass that's grass and hay grass and hay and hay is just rolled up grass right okay and so when you do this how much if you decided you wanted to go back to the

factory farming system, how much more money would it cost and how much more money would you get out of it? Is it more financially beneficial to do it the way you're doing it or more financially beneficial in a scale like the size of the scale that you're using right now? Because it seems like it would cost a lot of money to get all that stuff to feed these cows, to make them fat real quick, and all the money for the hormones and all the money for all these other things where you just let them roam around and eat grass,

but you don't get as much weight out of them. So what's the tipping point? So make no mistake, of all these inputs that the industrial model brings in, all of them are brought in to take cost out of production. You spend money for the input, but ultimately it takes cost out of production. But what's the percentage? How much of a percentage are you losing by doing it your way?

That is so situational. Let me give you an example. It's a great question, but I can't give you a short answer for it. give you an example. It's a great question, but I can't give you a short answer for it. So I would tell you that in the case of my grass-fed beef, my cost of production

is probably 30% higher than the industrial model. Wow. And you could argue, we could argue, if you told me 20 or 35, because I don't know, it's situational. Right. But that's not going to be too far off.

Now, let's step over to poultry. My cost for raising a chicken, a four-pound dressed chicken in Bluffton, Georgia, and putting them in a bag is like $4.50 or $0.60 a pound. I see chicken on sale for $1.10 a pound. So my cost of production for poultry is hundreds of percent higher. And that's because the chicken lent itself to industrialization more handily than the cow did.

We took more cost out of production. So, you know, when you say how much higher is it, that's like how long is a string. But it's higher. My cost of production is higher. When you as a consumer ask me

as a farmer to give up all the tools that reductionist science gave to take cost out of production, you add cost back to production. Now, I'm going to amend that. I stand by it. I'm going to amend it and say direct cost. Direct cost because long term you're destroying the soil. Direct cost because long term you're destroying the soil. The externalized cost, like destroying the soil, like losing antibiotics, like extinction of species, like the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico.

Like if you believe in climate change, and I do, how much is a good hurricane cost? How much is a good 100,000-acre wildfire cost? And those externalized costs are not borne by the multinational companies or the people that incur them. Right. They're borne by the average citizen. By me and you and everybody else who pays taxes and gets sick. So that's a hidden cost. Externalized. So when you are around all these other people

that are doing it in the industrialized way and you're doing it in your sort of regenerative way, it doesn't have any influence on those people. They see that you have a more natural approach to farming. It seems more prosperous. You're getting all this attention. People want to talk to farming. It seems more prosperous. You're getting all this attention. People want to talk to you. It's a fascinating subject, and people gravitate towards it as a potential option.

Nobody's looking at the factory farming system going, oh, wow, you stuff all those pigs together. Tell me more about that. What do you do? You take all the chickens, and you make them live in these abnormal cages, and no one's excited about that. But when people talk to you, they're excited about it. Like, oh, that's interesting. So you can just let the chickens roam around and you let the hogs roam around and you let the grass grow for the cows to just graze around on. And this is how you sustain a farm. That sounds intriguing to people because one of the big dilemmas about being a person who eats meat is contributing to this horrendous factory farming system.

That's what scares people. All right. That's a great question. I got a great answer. So let's just be crystal clear that these practitioners, these farmers that are farming industrially in that commoditized, centralized model are not bad people. Right. At all. Not bad people. Right. At all. Not bad people at all.

You know, big food, big ag, they may be evil. Multinational corporations, I think it's the equivalent of big tobacco in the 60s. But those practitioners out there on the ground are good people. So why do they not move over in the model that you said? Why do they not change over? And the answer is, first, there are three or four generations into farming this way. They're farming like daddy, granddaddy, maybe even great-granddaddy did. So they might not even know how to change it.

Well, they don't see anything wrong with it. Right. If you were raised as most of us generational farmers are, your role model being dad and granddad, and what they did, you're not going to say, this is bad. Right. It's hard to do.

So that's number one. Number two is that most of these guys are not just invested in the farm. Most of those cotton farmers, they own a million-dollar cotton picker. Do you know a cotton picker can cost a million dollars? No, it doesn't. It can't. They own a million-dollar cotton picker, and you know what that thing will do? Nothing but pick cotton.

Not a damn thing. They also probably have ownership in a gin, cooperative gins. You know what that thing does? It gins cotton. Not a damn thing. They also probably have ownership in a gin. Cooperative gins. You know what that thing does? Gin is cotton. Nothing else. And so on. Same with a grain farm, a grain combine, a grain elevator.

So that's one reason they're just so heavily invested. Emotionally, they're invested. Financially, they're invested. Ancestrally. Industrially. An, they're invested. Ancestrally. Industrially. Ancestrally. Ancestrally. Yeah, they're invested.

Their family's been running it forever. It's part of the family. On top of that, they're told every day by land grant universities and big food and big ag, this is how you do it. And we glamorize it. And it's fine. So those are the motivational reasons things don't change much. Let's talk about the business reasons.

So let's compare my business to a commodity farmer, a larger commodity farmer. Both businesses are very capital intensive. I've got $28 million worth of capital invested in my business. Some of it's debt, some of it's equity, but that's what we've got. They do too. Both businesses are also low return. My margins are not high, and their margins are not high. Both high capital investment, both low return.

My business is high risk. Their business is not so high risk. People have forever talked about how risky farming is. You know, when you've got an arsenal of sides, pesticides, to throw at any problem you got, when you've got irrigation and the water is free where I live, other than the energy cost of getting it out of the ground, other than the energy cost of getting it out of the ground.

When you've got crop insurance to mitigate risk, then compared to what I do, which is own the product all the way from when the calf hits the ground to the hamburger goes in your stomach, one E. coli recall, then it's over for me. That won't happen with those guys then it's over for me. That won't happen with those guys. That's a big difference. You know, high risk, high return, low risk, low return. How long has that been going on? And all those things that you're citing in terms of the investments that are involved,

the cotton gins and the cotton pickers and all the different things that they need, that they've, like, they'd have to, like, restructure everything. so it would take a significant investment to do that and then a big risk. It would be so hard for those guys. And I'm telling you because I did the same thing. I was the same way. Is there a way to provide this country with the cotton it needs, all the other monocrops like corn and all the soybeans. Is there a way to do that and do it regeneratively? Well, I think it's the wrong question.

What you said is there's a way to get us all we need farming that way. I think it's the amount of living on what we can produce. So you think it's a matter of not doing it that way? How many t-shirts you got to have? Right. You're talking about cotton. I mean, how many t-shirts you got? I bet you got way more than you have to have. Me? Yeah, I

definitely do. If cotton was, I don't keep up with it anymore, but I think cotton to the farmer now is close to a dollar a pound. That's seed cotton. That's coming out of the field. That's actually for the lint after it's chinned.

Well, you know, if cotton was $15 a pound, you'd probably have less T-shirts. Right. You think that would be the only consequence of growing less cotton? I mean, do we absolutely use too much of it? Do we have an accounting of how much the cotton gets used every day, goes to waste? You know, what I'm good at is regenerative land management and animal welfare and community building. So those questions are valid and they're out there. community building. So those questions are valid and they're out there. But I think that, so I think that the way we farm

today is wastefully, it causes food or fiber to be wastefully abundant and obscenely cheap and just very damaging in the way it's produced. So let's talk about it. Okay. So I think what we're talking about here is those externalized expenses

that we briefly mentioned earlier. You know, there's USDA figures out there, You know, there's USDA figures out there, and I think the last one I saw said the farmer gets like 14.3 or 7 cents of the consumer dollar. Would you like some coffee? I got water, thank you. Okay. The farmer gets 14.3 or 14.7 cents. And your gut reaction is, that's unfair. Farmers should get more than that.

They probably should. Probably should. But in the industrial model that we operate in, a farmer in this country can produce a 48,000-pound semi-truck load of anything and call Big Ag and they'll come get it and send you a check or an EFT, whether it's oranges, hogs, soybeans, corn, cows, cotton, it don't matter. Big Ag, Big Ag, who I think of as being multinational corporations and being evil, but they'll come get it for you. And it sends you some money. Not much, 14 it for you. And it sends you some money. Not much, 14.3 cents, but it sends you some money. But then from that point forward, they take all the risk and provide all the service.

The farmer doesn't have to have $20-something million worth of assets like we do to further process. We forget in this country that in the commodity market, consumers don't buy cows and hogs and sheep. They buy beef and pork and lamb. And you got to make that conversion. And you make the conversion all in-house. I do. So you had a significant investment in order to be able to do that and you have the FDA facilities and all that in place. This is a subject that is being brought up more and more lately because I think as time's going on and people are aware of all these things that they're finding in food, it becomes much more attractive to get food from a person like yourself. How many people do you feed per year off of your farm? This is what I call cowboy arithmetic.

Okay. I think that, and you can verify this, but I think that consumers eat about $1,000 worth of meat a year, I think. That's going to be close. Well, if you assume that I fed, and I do $25 million. So what is that, 10,000 people? So out of your place, it's 10,000 people.

Well, that's assuming that's it and that's assuming that they buy every bit of protein they take in came from my farm right I do that right giving me pounds instead of money it says 274 pounds of meat I don't know what that would be in dollars okay what would that be three bucks a pound thousand bucks me yeah? Meat? A thousand dollars is what I used. Okay. It works. That's a lot.

So it's... So if it's 25, I do 25 million, and that's right. And if it's a thousand bucks per person, what is that? A thousand... 25 million, is that... 2,500 people? Is that what it is? What is that? 1,000. 25 million. Is that 2,500 people? Is that what it is?

What is that number? It's your phone's ringing. Whoa. Kill that sucker. It's okay. Yeah. 25,000,000 is 25 million. Okay.

Yeah. So if you're looking at that amount of people, how much of farmland would we need to feed 300 million people? Like how many farms like your own would we need? This is the question of scalability, right? And this doesn't include corn growth. If you're assuming that animals would go back to being grass fed, which would most certainly be healthier for everybody, healthier for the consumer and healthier for the animals. If you're assuming that, then you would have less monocrop agriculture that you would need for corn. Is that correct? That's correct.

Because most of what we grow today for corn either goes into corn syrup or it goes into animal feed. That's a lot of it, right? Ethanol. Ethanol. Is that a big one? Is that the biggest one? It's a big one. So feed, ethanol, and corn syrup. Three things that you could definitely at least get rid of the feed or significantly decrease and it'd probably be better for everybody. And it'd definitely significantly decrease our corn syrup usage. That'd probably be better for everybody, and definitely significantly decrease our corn syrup usage, that'd probably be better for everybody.

So those are two things that are abundant because of the fact that there's so much corn, correct? Yeah. I mean, I think the monogastrics, the pigs and poultry, are going to have to have something besides forage. They've got to have a grain of some sort. Is there a better grain than corn, or is that the best one for them? It's outside of my expertise, but I'm sure the answer is no, because corn has become

the dominant crop it is, because it lends itself so well to these outside inputs. It's a fantastic assimilator of chemical nitrogen. If it was another crop, you wouldn't put as much nitrogen and you wouldn't make as much calories of production. So corn didn't. It's like corn, it's a good example. Everything that's been done in agriculture for the last 80 years has been done for efficiency only. There's nothing wrong with efficiency.

Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's incumbent upon me as a businessman to operate efficiently. But when efficiency is all you're worried about, you pay the price in resilience. Because efficiency and resilience are like yin and yang. You give up one for the other. That is the dance, right? Efficiency and resilience. And it's only what you're talking about when you're talking about people examining the soil and realizing the oxidation, realizing the damage to the carbon in the soil. What are the steps that we can take to mitigate that other than

having farms run regeneratively like yours? Like if someone wants to continue with that industrialized model, but they're using all these herbicides and pesticides and it's destroying the soil in some way, what can be done to correct that? Or are we on a path that we can't get off of where we're not going to have good topsoil anymore? We're definitely on a path where we're not going to have good topsoil anymore. Definitely. There's no question about that. So what happens when that takes place? anymore. Definitely. There's no question about that. So what happens when that takes place?

We'll become far less productive as an agricultural industry. Can I go back? Yes, please. Go wherever you want, sir. Have you done a podcast before? Not like this. No. This is the best part about it is you can go wherever you want, sir. All right. Have you done a podcast before? Not like this.

No. Well, this is the best part about it is you can go anywhere you want. Yeah. So. So have you ever heard of Savory Institute? No, I have not. All right. You ought to look at it.

Savory Institute. Savory Institute. It's not like, yes. It's not like Savory Food. It's a guy named Alan Savory. It's not like savory food. It's a guy named Alan Savory. He's a farmer from Zimbabwe who is touted as being the father of regenerative land management, pasture and range management.

And Savory International is a group that is devoted to that. And my farm is a savory hub. devoted to that and my farm is a savory hub. I actually went to Zimbabwe and took my training under Allen Savory some years ago in regenerative land management. And this is after years and years of industrial farming. Yeah. You still needed to like take courses. What did you need to learn there? How to completely rethink about it.

So, and we can talk more about that, but the main point I want to make is in the savory thought process, we talk about the difference in a complex system and a complicated system. and a complicated system. So this microphone thing we're working on here is a very complicated system. And this computer this young man is working on over here is a very complicated system. And to me what that means is, there's a lot of shit going on to make it work. And when one component quits working,

it don't work no more. And reductionist science works great on those very linear, complicated systems. A factory is kind of the ultimate complicated system. Very linear and very, lends itself to scale, which lends itself to efficiency. So, and that is the model that my dad's generation and later my generation applied to agriculture. Now, let's talk about agriculture. My farm, like your body, is a very complex living system. There's a lot going on in both of them to make it work. But if one component quits, everything kind of morphs and it keeps working, right?

In that scenario, it doesn't lend itself to reductive science as well because of the unintended consequences, that morphing we're talking about. Living systems are complex systems. Reductive science easily becomes misapplied to those systems because they have those unintended consequences that are not easily recognizable. We talked about some of them. Right. You take, not you, somebody taking steroids or me using fertilizer and pesticides on my land. Reductive science applied to a living system. Living systems are very cyclical.

They're not super scalable. They are super replicable. You can have more of them. So this is finally getting back to your question about feeding LA. Yeah. All right. So we have, for the last 80 years, been feeding bigger and bigger and bigger cities

using the factory model, applying that reductive science to a living system, and it had unintended consequences. Well, some of us think we probably ought not do that so much anymore. And if we do, then we need to move towards treating that cyclical biome, your body or farm, in an amount that is favorable to the cycles of nature. Because those cycles of nature are essential, and they must all work together, to have your body working good or my farm working good. So let's talk about the cycles of nature just a minute.

First, let me tell you that industrial farming breaks the cycles of nature. No species has ever done that before. But it breaks the cycle. You and I are the ape that learned to eat meat. And when we learned to eat meat, we became less apish, and ultimately we became the first species to really get good at technology. So we applied the technology to this system, this cyclical system, and broke the cycles of nature. The cycles of nature, to me, are the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the mineral cycle, the microbial cycle, energy cycle. There's probably a lot more that we don't recognize. And when we broke the cycles of nature using those industrial tools,

we ceased to produce that abundance, that one plus one is three, that symbiosis you mentioned, symbiosis earlier. So that's what's important to us in my space, is that we restart these cycles of nature. And there's a, you know, you don't use reductive science. You use experiential wisdom. It's like the opposite of, or not the opposite, but the other side of reductionist science.

And we're able to restart the cycles of nature. That's what I've done on my farm. And we're able to restart the cycles of nature. That's what I've done on my farm. And so could you please show that water video for me, please? This is one cycle of nature, but I want to talk a little bit about how they all tie together. And is this your farm? It is my farm.

Okay. Well, it's my farm and a neighbor's. That's coming off my farm, and that's coming off a neighbor's farm. You see that? Oh, boy. So your farm, the water runoff is clear. Their farm, the water runoff is a very muddy, dark brown. That's crazy. So what we're seeing is there's a pivot of corn.

Make Spencer shut up if you don't mind. So that water, that's my neighbor. That's across the road from White Oak Pastures. They're good people. They're fine people. They're my relatives. They're good people. But they farm their land very conventionally, or someone does.

So what is in that water that's causing it to be that color? Well, there's no good news, but the good news is it's subsoil. The topsoil is gone. Topsoil is... Because of the way they've been running their farm, the topsoil is gone. So that's all subsoil. But on top, see, that was corn. And it's not unusual to put several hundred pounds of chemical fertilizer per acre on corn.

So a lot of that several hundred pounds of chemical fertilizer is in that water as well. Oh, geez. It's also very common to use, in fact, ubiquitous, to use herbicide, insecticide, some fungicides, all that. So those sides are in that water too. And there's no consequences to that stuff going in the water? No financial consequences? You don't get in trouble for that? No, no, no, no, no.

If it was a construction site, you'd be in trouble. So do fish live on your side of the river and not downriver? Oh. Because it looks like those fish. I mean, I can't. That is like the craziest line. Like when you look at the line there, the line of the mark between your land and his land, it's about as clear as it gets.

Like literally, no pun intended. Your side is clear water. His side is disgusting. All right. So let literally, no pun intended. Your side is clear water. His side is disgusting. Let me answer the fish question. I have not done fish studies, but that water goes to Apalachicola

Bay, to the Flint River or Chattahoochee River, and they both come together. Ultimately, they come out in the Apalachicola Bay of the Gulf of Mexico. There you go. There's a picture of my farm on the left, that same farm you just saw on the right. Jesus.

So Apalachicola Bay used to be famous for its oysters, these wonderful oysters. But they have banned oystering in Apalachicola Bay because the numbers are down. So an unintended consequence of that is the death of the fishery in Apalachicola. And, you know, an oyster purifies 50 gallons of water a day. That's what an oyster, you know how they work, that filtration system, right? So not only do we not have good Apalachicola Bay oysters to eat, we're also missing out on that benefit.

I'll say one more word about that. You talked about the quality of the water, maybe versus not. What you couldn't know is the quantity. So I'm not sure exactly how big the watershed is coming off my farm, but probably a couple thousand acres. And I'm not sure how big the watershed coming off my neighbors, but probably a couple hundred acres.

So not only is the quality way different, but the quantity. Yeah, it's pouring out. You can see it pouring out. All right, let me explain that to you. So that's the water cycle. Now, the carbon cycle, right? All these cycles work together. So because of the way we've managed my land for the last 25 years, my organic model in my soil is 5%.

You can look on my website, whiteoakpastures.com, under the Land Stewardship tab, and there is a LCA, Life Cycle Assessment, that was done on my farm. that was done on my farm. It'll show that over the last 20 years, the organic model on my farm has gone from a half percent to five percent. And every bit of that carbon came from greenhouse gases that were put through my ruminant animals

and back out. More about that in a minute. But the reason for the water is one% organic. An acre of rain, an inch of rain on an acre of land is about 27,000 gallons of water. If it rains one inch on an acre, that's 27,000 gallons of water. 1% organic model will absorb a one-inch rain

event. Because my land's over 5% organic model, I can absorb a five-inch rain event

if it comes slowly. Not in 30 minutes, but if it comes slowly. The land that you saw

in my neighbors would be about a half percent organic model. A half a percent? Yeah. That's what mine used to be.

That's a function of industrial farming. And how did you turn it around? Animal impact. Period. Animal impact. And this is what you learned from the savory method? Correct. And so how long did it take for you to do that?

It seems like— 20 years. 20 years for it to be where it's at now. Correct. And so how long did it take for you to do that? It seems like- 20 years. 20 years for it to be where it's at now. Correct. And it's a slow, gradual process of improvement? It is. Wow. So you had to be very committed to that because it's costing you money. It's like you're 30 plus or somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% less productive in terms of- Yeah. And then on top of that, this is a long-term investment to take this industrialized property and turn it into what it is now.

Wow. Which harkens back to your question about why don't my neighbors – Of course. It's too much work. There's the answer. Yeah, there's the answer. And expense and risk. And you have to be ideologically committed to doing it that way.

You do. To justify doing it. You have to have a very generational view of things. If your view, like most business people, including farmers, is what we learn in accounting, you know, the quarterly report or the annual report. Yeah. You'd never do this. No. port yeah you'd never do this no but if you have a generational view which is easy for us because we're six generations on the farm then it becomes more tolerable do you think it's possible that

especially when you're talking about like your neighbor who's only got 200 acres and you know they're probably very productive with those 200 acres doing it that way as opposed to doing it the way you're doing it how many of these without that sort of long-term 20-year investment is there a way that the government can incentivize turning farms over that would be ultimately beneficial to everybody is there a way because there is some sort of government incentivizing, they're subsidizing, right, for certain crops that they started doing during the war, right, because they wanted to make sure that they had a surplus of certain grains and food and things like that. That's how that all started, correct? Supply management, yes, correct.

Is there a way to do that to turn farms into more self-sustaining the way yours is? Well, that question assumes the government wants to do that. Well, if the government wants the environment ultimately to be healthy, that seems like the only way. Someone should send them that video of your river because that's crazy. So let me explain how the farm bill is an incredible farm bill, right? It's an incredible cost to the government. But let me tell you how it's written. Okay.

Big Ag and Big Food decide what they want, and then they hire lobbyists, and those guys go to Washington and write the program or get the program written through aides, congressional aides or Senate aides. And then it's passed. So if big ag and big food don't want to change, it's not going to happen through the government. don't want to change, it's not going to happen through the government. To exacerbate that, now, I don't want to get sued by anybody, so I'm just going to tell you what I believe. In the case of USDA, those bureaucrats, for the most part, I'm sure it's not all, but many of those bureaucrats that become very senior in USDA, and I'm sure it's the Defense Department too, post-retirement, they get really great jobs with Big Ag and Big Food.

And I think that there's a, I can give you some examples actually, but I think there's a culture of catering to big ag and big food because of the rewards that come post-retirement. You know, we, I'll give you an example. So we had an issue when I first started raising poultry outside in the pasture. We had a predation problem by bald eagles. It was kind of a good sign in a pervert way because we didn't have bald eagles. They were outside my ecosystem. We put poultry on the ground. We had bald eagles. They were outside my ecosystem.

We put poultry on the ground. We had bald eagles. And when the bald eagles first came back to my ecosystem, they were predating on my birds and just hammering me economically. Now, we finally figured out how to prevent it operationally. But for a couple of years there, 2015, 2016, we had huge economic losses because of eagle predation of my pastured

poultry. Wow. How many chickens got killed? Dozens. They weren't killing them to eat them. They were just killing them and having fun. Really? Yeah. It was bad. Dozens a day? Yes. They were just having fun.

Were they eating any of them? Oh yeah. They were eating some. But some of them they were just killing for a goof. So nature is not cruel. And nature is not kind. But nature is

pure and beautiful. And that's just what happens. That's just what happens. So if you've got a cat, let it find a nest of mice and see if it doesn't kill them all. Probably won't eat them all, but kill them all. We can go on and on about that. But anyway, back on this bureaucracy. But how did you solve that problem?

Let me tell you that in a minute. Okay. So, Stuart. How did you solve that problem? Let me tell you that in a minute. Okay. So, Stuart, so there is a – I learned that there is a program, federal USDA program called LIP, Livestock Indemnity Program. And the purpose of that program is to indemnify stockmen if a protected species is hammering your livestock. Like, not a coyote, not a bobcat, but a bald eagle, a tumblewolf, or a grizzly bear is to indemnify the farmer.

So I went to my local USDA office, and they told me what to do to prove my losses. And I did it. Painstaking record-keeping, but I did it. And the local county office, the guys that had seen the predation, approved it. When I got to the state office, they denied my claim. And they said that I had to prove every single one that got killed. Well, you know, if an eagle swoops in and grabs a chicken, I can't prove it. So they did not pay me my money.

And I went through the National Appeals Division. This is 2015, 2016. I'm still at war with USDA to get the $190,000 they owe me for those two years' losses. And I keep winning, and they keep appealing, and they won't pay me. feeling, and they won't pay me. Now, I'm pretty sure there's somebody pretty highly placed in USDA that might have told Big Poultry, hey, look what a good boy I'm being. I'm not letting this farmer get his money, because Big Poultry, for the most part, doesn't like pasture production, independent production like ours. Do you think that's what it is, or do you think they just don't want to give money away?

Oh, no. I think that's what it is, or do you think they just don't want to give money away? Oh, no. I think it's a... So, do you think that they're financially trying to punish you because you're an independent agriculture company? I do. Yeah? I do. How did you stop the eagles from killing your chickens?

A brilliant poultry manager of ours... I wish I could tell you this was my idea, but it wasn't. A brilliant poultry production manager that worked for me figured it out. And here's the deal. We've got these chickens, turkeys, geese, guineas, and ducks out in the pasture. And they're out in the open. And we've got guardian dogs to protect them. Guardian dogs are Great Pyrenees, Akbosh, Anatolian Shepherds.

And they do a fantastic job protecting my poultry from mammal predators. Mammal predators to us are coyotes, foxes, barcats, raccoons, skunks. They do a great job. Because those mammal predators are nocturnal. And the dogs are nocturnal. So we just don't lose virtually none to mammal sharp-toothed predators. But as soon as the sun would come up, the dogs would go to the woods and go to sleep. And the birds had their way, the raptors had my way with my poultry.

So our poultry manager, it took him a couple of years to get it worked out, but he did. We started putting up electric netting way around the area that the birds were. And we had to move it a lot. But that kept the dogs in. And when the dogs stayed in, the birds, the raptors, were not nearly as likely to just spree kill. They might still fly in and get one and fly off. You know, I don't mind that. That's like tithing to nature, right?

I like that perspective. Yeah, it is like tithing. Yeah, you're growing prey animals every now and then to get snatched up. They got ice creatures, too. They deserve to be there. Yeah. I just don't want them wantonly killing thousands of dollars worth of poultry. Yeah.

So it's the dogs. That's who kept it. It's interesting there's some animals that are protected even when they're not endangered anymore. People feel that way about the bald eagle in places where they're abundant, like in some spots in Alaska. It's crazy how many eagles there are. Would you like coffee, water, anything? I'm going to get some water. Can we talk a minute about this animal thing?

Yeah. And the relationship people have with animals. Yeah. All right, so you know what I do for a living. I produce animals and I slaughter them and I sell the meat. the meat. And despite that, when somebody tells me that they

are vegetarian or vegan, I have full respect for that. I mean, that is a lifestyle choice that everybody gets to make. You can choose your sexual orientation,

whatever you like. You can choose your religion. You can choose what you want to eat. That's the individuals to choose. And I would go to war to defend a person who said that they're vegetarian or vegan because they couldn't bear the idea of eating a live

animal. I get it. That's fine. If you tell me it's because it's yucky, the mouthfeel, I respect it. That's fine. But I'm not going to let you tell me that you

won't eat animals because they're destroying the earth when they're raised like I'm raising them. I will not let you bring that junk science on me. And that is junk science. It's fucking junk science. Let me give you back to you. I just told you that my farm, I showed

you that my farm has 5% organic model. You could see the 5%. You couldn't see the 5%, but you could see what See the difference in the water for sure. You know where all that... And an acre slice of soil

weighs about two million pounds. You can Google it. If I went from a half percent to over five percent, that's five percent of two million pounds. I think it's 100,000 pounds of carbon. Get it? Yeah.

Per acre. I didn't put any carbon out there. Every bit of that carbon, that 100,000 pounds per acre on 3,200 acres, used to be greenhouse gas. used to be greenhouse gas. That plant, through the magic of photosynthesis, breathed in that carbon and other gases, the carbon dioxide and other gases,

and turned it into fat and protein and carbohydrate. That is the plant. Some of it above the ground, some of it below the ground in roots. My cows or sheep or goats ate that plant and some of that carbon went to make beef or pork or beef or lamb or goat. Some of it went out as manure. Some of it was put up as flatulence or

burping or whatever. And a lot of it went into the root in the ground and was sequestered there for a time. When that plant grows, a growing plant is like a pump. It's pulling carbon from the air, putting some of it under the ground. The animal bites it off. Those roots start to slough off until it regrows. So it's literally just like a pump pumping carbon around. So not only is ruminant livestock not destroying the earth, it is a serious mitigator of climate change. As long as it's done your way.

Bingo. Bingo. Not animals being hauled corn in a feedlot. No, no, no, no, no. No, I'm not feeding it. So they do have an argument for that then. I agree with them. Yeah. We're on the same side there.

So it's not just raising animals. It's raising animals against the cycle of nature. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what we're dealing with. And that's what you see polluting that river. It's going out into the Gulf of Mexico, which is horrific. Just looking at that, that seems like a natural disaster that someone should regulate.

Like that shouldn't be okay. And it shouldn't be standard. You're looking at what that's doing to that water. That's horrible. That should not be normal and just accepted. If it was a construction site, you wouldn't be able to do it. Right, exactly. That's a perfect way to put it.

That was gypsum board. If you were breaking up wall board and you had all that stuff going down into the river, people, they would cite you for poisoning. Like, what are you doing? You're polluting the river. So let's go back to, and I'm also telling you that as a practitioner of regenerative agriculture, a guy who's regenerated thousands of acres of land, you cannot cost-effectively do it without ruminant impact. You have to say, I'm going to take this degraded land and put it back pristine the way it was before

Europeans got here, but I'm not going to put the animal impact in it. That's like you saying, I'm going to use my mama's recipe to cook brownies, but I'm not going to put the sugar in there. It's not the same brownie. Right. And that evolution of that land without animal impact is not the same. And you need the animals to make the manure, to make the cycle, to have it all work

the way it normally naturally would. Absolutely. And that's zero carbon imprint. Right? That's the idea. Or negative. Negative in our case. In your case. In your case, you're actually extracting carbon. Correct. So that LCA I mentioned

to you showed that we are sequestering 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent, whatever that is, for every pound of grass-fed beef we sell. The same environmental engineers, Qantas, did an LCA on, I think it was Impossible Burger, Impossible Meats. And they're sequestering 3.5, they're emitting 3.5 pounds for every pound of Impossible Burger. So if you want to have a zero footprint for every pound of Impossible Burger you eat, you got to eat a pound of mine. Isn't that crazy? Because if you ask the average person, they think that that stuff's good for you and it's good for the environment. And then if we don't get away from beef, it's just like people have these narrow perspectives, these narratives that get fed to them.

And so they just repeat it over and over again. But obviously, when talking to someone like you, who's an actual farmer, you realize how complex the organization is and how much time is involved and how much effort's involved. Very few people have put a lot of thought into what it takes to be a farmer. And what you were talking about, how it's high investment, low yield, and a lot of work. And most people, I don't't think are aware of it. They just want to get a cheeseburger. They just want to be able to pull into, you know, in and out, get yourself a cheeseburger,

and don't think at all about where that cow came from and how much work is involved in bringing that cow to you and how fragile that whole system is. Well, I'm not glorifying what I do for a living. It doesn't need to be glorified. It's just what I do for a living. It doesn't need to be glorified. It's just what I do for a living. I am trying to show you where we went so badly wrong. The application of that siloed, myopic reductionist science to this complex, cyclical system.

This is fairly recent in human history. This is not like a new thing that people have been doing for hundreds of years. The industrial system is 80 years old or something. Yeah. In my mind, when I went to the University of Georgia, I learned animal nutrition from a professor who had a doctorate degree in animal nutrition. And he knew all about animal nutrition, but he didn't know shit about the soil. And I learned the health aspect from a veterinarian who knew all about the health aspect, but didn't know crap about photosynthesizing plants.

And you see everybody in a separate discipline. And you get away from the holism that is what a biome is, what a complex system is. It's like if you were watching a ball game through a wood fence and you just had one board going and the third baseman was there and you were the third base coach, you know exactly what he's doing and you got it. You have no idea what's going on on first. So you can't be a good coach because you can't see the whole bone, the whole system.

Yeah. Makes sense. And they don't teach a course on running whole systems? Like if someone wants to be a young farmer, someone's interested in farming now, do they teach a course other than that savory type course? Do they teach something like that in American universities? You know, the only university in this country that I know of that land-grant university, you're talking land-grant universities with ag schools, right? There's one renegade ag school, Michigan State University, that is actually a savory hub like us. And it's that way because there's a powerful, one powerful professor there who gets it,

a guy named Dr. Jason Roundtree. And he has been influential enough in that school, he has brought them in this direction. But land-grant universities are not going to be where the change comes from, if there is a change. I don't know if there's going to be a change or not. There's several reasons for that. One is, you know where those land-grant universities are getting most of their funding these days? Where?

Industry. Oh, boy. Big ag, big food. So, A, they're not incentivized. they're not incentivized. B, another symptom of the linear factory

model is it lends itself to a how-to manual. You can write a how-to manual, somebody can, on how to put a rocket ship on the moon. Be a big old thick book, but you can do it.

You can't write a how-to manual on operating Joe Rogan's body or operating or running white oak pastures. It's too situational. Land-grant universities need to be able to offer that how-to manual. That's what you do. You go there and you learn how beef cattle production or poultry production or agronomy or whatever it is. So the change won't come from university systems.

I don't know if the change is going to come or not, but we've said it won't come from big food. They're making too much money. It won't come from big ag, they're making too much money. It won't come from big ag, they're making too much money. It won't come from the government because they're getting the money that big ag and big food is giving them. It won't come from the university system

because, it won't come from farmers because of what I told you about their commitment and ownership to the status quo. So, if there is a change, if, it'll come from consumers. And I don't know if it'll come from consumers or not because we're hopelessly addicted to obscenely cheap food.

Cheap and fast. And easy and thoughtless. This brings back to what we were talking about earlier that we skipped over, but I wanted to bring back to it. You were talking about is it normal to live where 18 million people live in one place like that? Okay, so I'm not an urban planner, but I can tell you what I know about the centralization of the food supply. So the difference in the way I farm today and the way my dad and I farmed and the way my great-granddad and granddad farmed is, great-granddad and granddad farm years.

Those guys then and me now are focused on, hyper-focused on the land because that's our savings account. That's our wealth. The animals, that's our checking account. If they're coming and going, we're raising them. And the local economy, that's our checking account. If they're coming and going, we're raising them in the local economy. That's our market. When we industrialized, commoditized, and centralized agriculture,

the industrialization was hell on the land and the water and the environment. We already talked about that. That's the industrialization. The centralization was hell on the local economy. Centralizing agriculture impoverished rural America. It caused it to be financially irrelevant, and it just wasn't needed anymore. And when something is not needed anymore and is irrelevant, it atrophies away. And that's what happened.

And then the last one is commoditization. I don't want to talk about it, too, but let me tell you about centralization and how the industrialization impoverished it and farming the way we farm re-enriches it. So 25 years ago when I started changing, I had typically about three employees, minimum wage. Payroll would be $1,000 a week. Today, fast forward the way I farm, I got 180 employees, 180-something. My payroll is $100,000 every Friday in one of the poorest counties in America.

And the town has gone from, during that period, being a ghost town, literally, to a little destination. And the reason is, when we, White Oak Passures is the largest private employer in the county. And it's an economic driver. And of the 180-something employees I got, some of them are local, a lot of them moved in. And we moved those people in, and they needed a place to eat and sleep and drink and shop and play, and we provided it. And Bluffton, Georgia, is a nice little town. You would enjoy bringing your wife and kids to Bluffton, Georgia, and spending a few days. Prior to our change, we got a store, we got cabins for lodging, we got an RV park, we

got a restaurant, we got got cabins for lodging, we've got an RV park, we've got a restaurant, we've got a leather shop, we've got a bunch of stuff, stuff that is commerce. Prior to us making those economic changes, the only thing you could buy in Bluffton, Georgia was a postage stamp. There was not a single new housing start in Bluffton, Georgia from 1972 to 2016. Incorporated City, eastern Mississippi, zero new housing starts for nearly 50 years. That's crazy. It's crazy.

Wow. So obviously you're having a positive impact on the community. Yeah. It's great. I probably shouldn't do this. I'm going to see if I can find this. While I was waiting for you, a young woman sent me something. She's doing a little economic impact study, and she just sent me this this morning.

If I can't find it, we won't worry about it. So her name is, I shouldn't say that. She goes to Appalachian State University. Here's what I've come up with given the information shared. White Oak Pastures employees, 80% of the total population in Bluffton, Georgia.

80% of the people are employed by us. And most of the rest of them probably don't work. Some do, but most of them are older people or welfare recipients. So basically the whole town is employed by you. 80%. And then the rest are just older folks on welfare. I know a school teacher and a nurse, but it's not much. In 2020, the census states there were 80 people employed in Bluffton without – it can be inferred that white-out passengers helped the employment rate by 128.75%.

That's pretty nice. Yeah, pretty good. She also talks about the fact we brought high-speed internet to Bluffton. White Oak Pastures, working with a local provider, we ran fiber optic cable about four miles to Bluffton. Since Bluffton is considered a severe distress community by the New Market Tax Credit map, it's reported that around 17.2% of adults do not go to the doctor due to concerns about cost, why do a pastor provide health insurance? It's just a long – I'm not going to bore you all day.

So obviously you have a lot of employees and you have a positive impact on the community. The real question, again, it was always about whether or not this is scalable. And what we were talking about is what is – is it natural to live with 18 million people in one place? I think we both agree it's not. But it exists. So if it exists and you want to feed those people, do we need a certain percentage of just factory farming no matter what? Or is it possible that over time, that if everybody got on the same page, which I'm not saying they would ever do that. But if everybody got on the same page, would it be possible to feed the country the way you grow

food? Is it possible for the country to keep growing food the way it's growing it? No. That's another question, though. That's another question, though. It's not possible to do that because we are going to run out of topsoil, right? And what is the estimate? There's like 60 seasons left?

Who knows that? But that's the only number I heard. But obviously, if you look at that film, you could see a clear definition of the difference between what's happening with your water, how it's going into that river, and his water, where his topsoil's fucked, and he's just using industrial fertilizer.

It's not good. Can't do it that way. But can we? So is it a question of we shouldn't be saying there shouldn't be a Jack in the Box and a McDonald's on every corner because you shouldn't be getting your food like that. Which we all agree.

Like I don't eat that stuff very often. But every now and then I want one. I like the fact that I could just pull into somewhere and get a burger. It's a very guilty pleasure that a lot of people enjoy. Right? But if it didn't happen, if it didn't exist, I wouldn't be sad. I could just pull into somewhere and get a burger. It's a very guilty pleasure that a lot of people enjoy, right? But if it didn't happen, if it didn't exist, I wouldn't be sad. I'd be okay.

If I knew that we were creating more regenerative farms and more people were doing things more naturally. But in economically deprived places, like they rely, a lot of people rely on fast food to get their calories, unfortunately. Two things there. One is all I can do is say again, what I do is highly replicatable. It's not highly scalable. There could be white oak pastures in every agricultural county in the country. It's just not scalable. But it's not scalable.

Right. You have to do it correctly. And the way you're doing it is correctly, where all the animals are working symbiotically. It all is not scalable. It's not scalable. Right. You have to do it correctly, and the way you're doing it is correctly, where all the animals are working symbiotically. It all is working together. And that's the more attractive thing about it to someone like me who doesn't know anything about farming. I go, well, that guy, the way he's doing it, that's how I want to buy my food. I want to buy my food from a guy like Joel Salton.

I had him on the podcast back in the day, and we had these similar conversations about this natural blend of these animals existing together, and that's what keeps the land healthy. So it's replicatable. There could be a bunch of them. It's not scalable. And I told you that if it is amped up, it'll be because of consumer demand. Right. Now, what I didn't tell you is, and this might sound a little bit self-serving, but it's just what it is.

I am a deliriously happy person. I am. You seem like it. I am. I tell you what, I am a happy son of a bitch. I believe you. I'm telling you. I wouldn't change a thing.

But I see a lot of frustrated, unhappy young people in this space. In the farming space. In the regenerative, in the regenerative, last place. And the difference

in me and them is, this is the part that may sound a little self-serving, but I can't help it. The difference in me and them is, this is the part that may sound a little self-serving, but I can't help it. The difference in me and them is they are trying to save the world. And they may not be able to do that. I am trying to save white oak pastures. And I'm probably going to be able to do it. Now, I don't know. I honestly don't know. Me and

my management team talk about it a lot. I cannot tell you if I am a niche provider or if I am an early innovator changing the way we're going to produce food in this company. I don't know. I hope it's the latter. I do, too. I really do. I hope there's more demand for it. I do too. And well, if it happens, it's going to be because there's more demand for it because people want it. But, you know, I don't go to bed at night agonizing over saving the world.

I go to bed at night over saving the 180 people that come to my farm every day. And that's all you can do? Well, no. No? You can you can do? Well, no. No? You can save the world? No, but I can help.

You help by doing what you're doing, actually. Well, last year we spent money that we really didn't have forming a nonprofit. We formed a 501c3 called Center for Agricultural Resilience. And we did that to help people learn what we've learned over the last 25 years, if they want to know it. Now, it's a nonprofit. It's separate. I took some cash and started it, hired a brilliant executive director and fed it until it got going.

And that's my part towards saving the world. If you want to do your part in saving the world or you want to replicate what we're doing, you can come there and we'll teach you what we know. But if you don't, I can't help it. I did what I could do do you teach people yeah you do do you run courses on yeah well we do we do we started this year we did we did we did the the non-profit last year and um then we put I put the seed money in it. And now she's recruiting companies or high net worth individuals, whoever. I'm not part of that. But we do the training.

White Oak Passage is the center. That's the lab. It's the demo. And I'm very pleased with uh the impact i think we're having whether or not it'll uh save the world or not you know probably not but it'll help now this brings us back to the original reason why you were on uh the fox show that i saw you on and i was like i want to hear him talk i want to hear more of your thoughts. And I think this idea that one person controlling all this farmland, you think it's negative, and I wanted to know why, since you are a farmer.

Yeah. All right. So it's really not just one person controlling that much farmland. It's having a technocrat. having a technocrat. As I've explained earlier, I think that the mess we're in

has been primarily caused by misapplied technology. Pesticides, chemical fertilizer, sub-therapeutic antibiotics, hormone implants, dot, dot, dot. And I think that Bill Gates, not just Bill Gates,

but the people like Bill Gates, find technology as being the solution for every problem. If the only tool you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. if you if you if the only tool you got is a hammer everything looks like a nail and you know what he's done in africa and india and some other places uh caused me to really nothing i can do about it it's caused me to really have disdain technocrats controlling land people what are these things what are these things that have been done in these other countries? Yeah. Let them pull that up. I don't want to get into the intricacies of those train wrecks, but there have been train wrecks by bringing technology in as the solution in these biosystems. You know, Stuart Varney wanted me to say, Bill Gates is an evil man.

And I don't have that to say. I'm not judgmental on who's evil, who's not. I think he just wanted you to say it quickly. That's why I wanted to bring you here, so you could expand. See, like, you do have this very comfortable way of discussing things. It's very great to hear. But you need time. Yeah. And these are complex issues.

So this complex issue of a technocrat using technology as the only tool, this is what you have an issue with. That's what I have an issue with. Yes. Yes, sir. And you think that that's going to be, if this is the largest farm owner in the world, or in the country rather, and he owns that much land, he's going to use it that way. You take issue with that. I do. And you also take issue with this idea that there's this binary approach to raising animal agriculture, that it is inherently evil.

And you're saying, no, it's not. And no, it's not bad for the environment if you do it my way. Absolutely. So if Bill Gates was the number one farmland owner in America and he adopted your practices, that would be a net positive for everybody. It would. And maybe he will. Maybe he'll listen to this. Maybe he'll realize, you know what, we could do a lot more good

if we have not just carbon neutral but carbon negative, where you're actually extracting greenhouse gases from the environment and using them in a natural way to grow food for everybody. That could be done. Maybe he's the answer. Maybe someone like him who makes the decision, who owns that much land, he says, you know what? This Will Harris guy has got a really good point. This could be done.

It's not impossible to imagine someone like him making that decision. Yeah. You want me to tell you why I think that probably ain't going to happen? Probably. Why I think it probably won't? Yeah. All right. So we discussed previously how the narrative that cattle are destroying the earth just caught traction and everybody has heard it and so many people believe it. It's one of those narratives that people repeat whether or not they have the information at their fingertips or not. Exactly.

So let me tell you another one. Okay. Carbon is the problem. So we have come to talk about carbon like it was evil. You know, carbon is an element on the periodic chart. We are carbon-based. We are carbon-based. That's exactly right.

And I talked to you about the cycles of nature. Those cycles of nature are interchangeable. And carbon cycle is one of them. By interchangeably, they react together symbiotically. And you can't have, if all your systems are working well except for carbon, it's not going to work. All of them got to work together. So the fact that the narratives out there that carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, not water, not microbes, not minerals, carbon. My belief is that that is being done at some level intentionally.

And there's no doubt in my mind that a technocrat can't come up with a machine technology that sucks carbon out of the air. Yeah. It puts it in a little ingot that we can store in a warehouse or bury in the soil, bury in the ground. And that is not correcting, that's not going to correct climate change. It's got to be part of the cycles of nature. It's got, the carbon doesn't need to be sucked out. Can you imagine how much somebody could get paid for a machine that will suck carbon out of the air?

You think they've made them. We talked about this before. I think so, too. There's going to be an incredible amount of money made on those machines if we make people believe that the only problem is we just got too much carbon. But would those machines be effective? We use those in urban environments where we don't have regenerative agriculture to do its natural cycle? Would those machines be effective in that? If we do have an excess of carbon, they could bring it to a natural balance? That carbon that's in those urban areas, it's the same carbon that's in the rural areas. Right, but without the ability to grow regenerative

agriculture in these urban areas, unless we decided to level buildings and start putting farms up everywhere. I don't know that you got to do that. What would you have to do? Store the carbon on the areas that we're currently farming. So that would do it? It would certainly be a step in the right direction. So if I, you know, if my math's correct and we're storing 100,000 pounds of carbon per acre on my farm, yeah, I think so. So one thing that we have to think about when it comes to pollution in urban cities is that the air is not as good.

It's not as good for you, and this is not a knock on cities. Cities are great. You want to live in a city, though, you have to acknowledge that you're paying a price for living in those urban environments in terms of your health. That's a reality that's been documented in terms of the length of life that people that live in heavily polluted areas or areas with high particulate matter, they live less. They don't live as healthy. It's not good for you. Where you're living, the way you're establishing, it's actually better for everybody. It's better for you.

You're breathing nice, clean air every day. Absolutely. And it's crazy that that's a radical thing, that that's not the norm. thing, that that's not the norm. Well, I guess my point is that we have this problem with this linear thing we've been doing of pulling carbon out of the sea, the land, fossil fuels, and putting them up. And we've got a natural solution for it, which is the way we manage our land. And I hope we don't succumb to what we've succumbed in the past, which is just grabbing technology to do it in a way that's completely unnatural.

You said something earlier where you said you think it's being done intentionally. What do you mean by that? Something earlier where you said you think it's being done intentionally. What do you mean by that? I mean that I believe that this narrative about cattle destroying the earth was done very intentionally. I think that you take the militant vegan community. I didn't finish that part. So I told you I respect the vegetarian-vegan decision. They get to decide what they eat.

I do not respect the militant-vegan decision. Militant-vegans want to decide what everybody eats, what I eat and you eat and they eat. The plant-based protein industry that sprang up so quickly and attracted so much money. I know it's not doing well now, but it sprang up quickly. Cattle are bad came from the partnership, loose, probably unintended partnership of the militant pagan community and people that stood to make a lot of money on vegetable-based protein. So you've got a message, and as you pointed out, the feedlot example makes the message easy. And you've got a very loud voice and a high platform to speak from, which is the people who make a lot of money

on vegetable-based protein. And the narrative just caught fire. And I think that the carbon may be exactly the same thing. Why aren't we talking about water? Why are we just talking about carbon? Right, right. Why aren't we talking about the damage that these monocrop agricultural farms do to the water?

But we're just talking about carbon. Yeah. And if we all go vegan, we're going to need a lot more of those. We're going to need a lot more of those monocrop agricultural farms in order to sustain all those people. Just like we're talking about sustaining 18 million people with meat, you have a real issue sustaining 18 million people with plant-based protein.

And there's money to be made in the business of technology to take carbon out of the air. There's a lot of money to be made in that business. When we villainize carbon badly enough that we're ready to have the carbon emitters, Delta Airlines and whoever else,

pay a lot of money to mitigate their carbon footprint, then who's going to, if technology is the answer, there's a lot of money to be made. If it's managing land properly, not so much. When you said that you think that the food industry, like the plant-based protein industry, is not doing as well now, does that give you any hope that at least people are recognizing this is not a choice they want to make? It's not the way they want to eat. When they eat it, it's not satisfying.

And then at least in terms of some of these options, it's not healthy. We talked about it yesterday. We brought up the rat studies that were done with Impossible Burger. They were talking about how they found all sorts of issues with rats that ate high levels of that stuff. It's not a natural way to make food. If you want to eat vegetables, just vegetables, organic vegetables, it's probably pretty healthy. But if you want to eat that stuff, that stuff is not a healthier alternative to ground beef. That stuff is not a healthier alternative to ground beef.

It gives me hope for others who want to follow us and start this kind of agriculture. That there's a window that people recognize. But the window may be bigger than we thought it was. I never worried too much about plant-based protein because, I mean, I raised my voice against them when I thought it was appropriate and accurate, but I've never worried about it a hell of a lot. When I talked to my management team, I said, you know, that's not what we've got to be afraid of because it's just too far reach for my customers. You know, my customers are people that get it. They don't want hydroponically grown organic vegetables.

They don't want vegetable based meat. They get it. They understand natural systems and evolution and I just wasn't worried about losing my customer base to it. Of course. I worried about other people having the

opportunity to do what I do because of it. But don't you think that the less demand than they anticipated for that stuff is a good sign? I do. I do too. I do. I do. And more demand, or at least it's enticing when people find out the food is raised organically and regeneratively the way yours is. Attracts people to it. I think now more than ever where people are really conscious about what they put in their body, that's a much more attractive choice. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I don't know what the percentages are.

You know, I just don't know. You know, to be sure, when I say a $25 million worth of stuff a year, there's people out there that will pay 30% more for beef and 100 and something percent more for chicken. They're out there. I don't know how many there are. I don't know if there's enough to have a white oak

pastures in every county in the United States, ag county in the United States. That's what I hope. You know, right now, let me tell you this. So, we can talk about distribution if you want to, but right now I built my business on wholesale grass-fed beef sales. And now it has evolved to more direct-to-consumer through our website. And I did that for some reasons.

And one of them was I want to be more local. Right now we ship our product to 48 states, FedEx, UPS, and I don't want to do that. I really want to sell our product. I can't do it in Clay County, Georgia, because it's poor and sparsely populated. But I really—I don't want people in California ordering my beef, my pork, my lamb. I want somebody in California to do it. I don't want to send it to New England. Right now, I have to, because I've got to sell $25 million worth of stuff, and I've got to reach as far as I have to reach to send it to New England. Right now, I have to because I've got to sell $25 million worth of stuff,

and I've got to reach as far as I have to reach to get it. But it's my hope that as time goes on, I'll be more and more local. And other people will. So that'll have an even lower carbon footprint because you won't have to be shipping things. And if there's more places like yours that are in local areas where people can get their food locally, that's better for everybody. Yeah. So I'll tell you this. The Whole Foods market continues to be my biggest customer. They used to be virtually my only customer. But my relationship with Whole Foods has been cooling for a decade, and eventually I won't be in there anymore. I, Will, Will Harris, me, sold Whole Foods Market the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they marketed as American grass-fed beef 20 years ago.

American grass-fed beef 20 years ago. And at the time, it was so lucky, and it just caught traction, and they wanted to buy all I sold. But today, it's a very different Whole Foods, and we won't be there long. What's the issue? You know what greenwashing is? Greenwashing? Yeah. No.

Sort of. Greenwashing is big food advertising using words to make consumers believe that the food they're selling is the same as what I'm producing, even though it's not. Hey, is that, have you got that global animal partnership Whole Foods video where you can show what you show? Please. So, greenwashing. Greenwashing.

Okay. So, greenwashing. Greenwashing. Okay. So, what's this meat rating system about? Let me put it this way. Step one is like... Step five is like... So, step five. Let's get a New York strip and definitely a filet.

What the hell does that mean? I can't tell you how much that angers me. Tell me what that means. That makes me so god damn mad. Is that their, that's their question? I mean, that is their video that they made? Yeah. That was their hourglass.

So there's no... Let me, let me, let me take... Come on. It makes you laugh. It makes me mad. I'm sure it does, sir. But as me, as a consumer, looking at that, what, come on, man.

You're supposed to be Whole Foods. Whole Foods to me is supposed to be a place where I can go and get healthy food. It's like the idea behind it, Whole Foods started by hippies, started here in Austin. Great, Whole Foods. I want Whole Foods. Let me go there. But what is, and this is, what does that mean? You have so many things you can tell me in a short period of time.

Healthier, better for the environment, low-carbon footprint. It's all those things they can tell me. Instead, they go, and that's their commercial. All right, so this is about greenwashing. And Whole Foods and Global Animal Partnership are big on greenwashing. Okay, what is step five and step four? What does all that mean? So let's talk about the global animal partnership.

Okay. The global animal partnership is an animal welfare nonprofit that Whole Foods financed, I don't know, 15 years ago or something. I don't know how long ago. I don't know, 15 years ago or something. I don't know how long ago. And I went to the first meeting, producer meeting they ever had in Denver, of the Whole Foods had for the Global Animal Partnership, rolling it out.

And it was all about this. And by the way, I thought it was a great idea at the time. This animal welfare system so that step one, which is low hanging fruit, a little bit better than industrial two, three, four, five. And five was great animal welfare. No physical alterations, can't castrate, whatnot. We used to castrate everything born on my farm that wasn't named Harris. And we quit castrating all the things we had to do to achieve step five.

And it was explained to us at the time that we want to bring the industry into higher animal welfare, which was right up my alley. I did too. that we want to bring the industry into higher animal welfare, which was right up my alley. I did too. And we've got to have this step one, two, which is low-hanging fruit. Pretty much anybody. It's like getting your foot in the door. But all companies are expected to move up the continuum to everybody's step four or five.

Okay. I thought it was great. Sounds great. So I thought it was great. Sounds great. Yeah. So I embraced it and became a step five plus. I don't think they have just a very few in the country. We want them. And they never would pay us anymore for our product.

But as a result, in the case, in the meat case, everything was step one and step two, maybe a little step three. And they did allow producers, mostly big multinational corporations, to come in at step one, step two, and languish there. You know, 15 years later, it's still step one, step two, which is not the way it was supposed to work. so now

instead of even though there's five steps they talk about how it's all great and it's not all great if you're going to do it with your hands and mouth like that guy you know so step one's like step five is like

you're not it just pisses me off I would imagine Step five is like, you're not. It just pisses me off. I would imagine. But you go to Whole Foods and look and ask them, how much step four and five you got back there? And probably not much. So most of it, here it goes. Jamie's got it here.

Step one, no cages, no crates, no crowding. Step two, enriched environment, things to do. Step three, enhanced outdoor access. Step four, pasture-centered based on an outdoor system. Step five, animal-centered, no physical alterations. That means castration and all that. And then step five plus, which is you, animal centered, entire life on the same farm. As shoppers can know

exactly what the animal was raised for, the meat they are buying, just by looking for the color-coded step rating on the product label as of October 1st, 2014. Step five program includes 2,451 farms and ranches

that range from Step 1 to Step 5+, and raise more than 147 million animals annually. But they added everything together there. Oh, yeah. Step 5 and program. Look how they did that. Step 5 and program includes 2,451 farms and ranches that range from Step 1 to Step 5 in the program includes 2,451 farms and ranches that range from Step 1 to Step 5+.

So by saying that it includes these 2,451 farms, they're not saying how many of them are actually Step 5. They're like kind of fucking with you with the numbers there. And I can tell you it's not many. It's not 2,451. But that's Step 1 to Step 5. I'm not saying there aren't that many farms. I'm saying it's not. Not that many step fives.

The distribution would be greatly skewed. Right. So if you go to a Whole Foods and say, hey, so I want that. How many you got? It's less, far less. So they have to get very specific meat from places like you. Well, I mean, I think the reason they had that particular segment there is because they didn't have much Step 5 back there. So that allowed them to say, hey, man, it's all good. Right.

It's all good. It's all good. It's all better than anywhere else you're going to get. And that's greenwashing. That's greenwashing. That makes sense. It devalues what the Step 5 Plus does. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's a moronic way of describing it. It's a different Whole Foods than the one I started with. Is it because it's corporate now and it's because it's owned by big companies? And it's all about when you're involved in a gigantic corporation like that, it's about maximizing profits. Yeah. Everything you said is right. The way I would state it is that industrialized farming and big food distribution co-evolved together.

You know, prior to the end of World War II, there was no industrial farming. And there were really no great big food companies or retail companies, you know, the local Piggly Wiggly or what not. But there weren't. And those all co-evolved. Big ag, big food, and industrial farming co-evolved together to what it is now. And, you know, the guys that are managing the meat department's whole foods really need to pick up the phone and say, send me 48,000 pounds, a truckload of 48,000 pounds of six-ounce fillets to the following five distribution centers every week for the next month.

Thank you. Well, the Will Harris's of the world won't ever see 48,000 pounds of six ounce fillets. The only people that can do that are Tyson, Cargill, JBS, Smithfield. So that's that co-evolution. So the only way this is going to work, to do it your way, is if someone's deeply committed to change. Yeah, let me say this. I also sell to a grocery chain called Market District, one called Mom's, one called Publix, one called Kroger. And I don't feel as used as window dressing by those stores. So you feel that like your way of doing it is almost like it's a trick.

They're trying to pretend that most of their meat is gotten from people like you. That's my perception of what you just saw. It seems like that was the perception that I got from it, too, based on the way they used that giant number and said it's anywhere from step one to step five plus. They kind of lumped everybody in together. I actually sold Publix supermarket prior to selling 5 Plus. They kind of lumped everybody in together. I actually sold Publix supermarket prior to selling Whole Foods. I sold them before I did Whole Foods. And Publix,

this is not advertising, they have ordered consistently from me every single week for 20 years. They put it out there. People buy it or not. There's no bullshit. There's no smoke and mirrors. No greenwashing.

No greenwashing. It's just honestly buy it or not. And, you know, again, Whole Foods is still my biggest customer. This is probably going to get me thrown out if it does. Do you think so? Do you think they will? I don't know. You just don Foods is still my biggest customer. This is probably going to get me thrown out. Do you think so? Do you think they will? I don't know. You just don't seem to care, though.

I ain't much of an ass-kissing business. I like it. They do what they want to do. I mean, you know, we'll have to work a little harder and sell a little more online. But you'd prefer that to bullshit? Yeah. There was a time that – that's a very different company. I get it.

I get it. And, again, your company and what you're trying to do is very attractive to people, particularly people like me. And one thing I should bring up before we end this is that you brought me some testicles. Scrotum. Scrotum. Actually, I brought some testicles, too. They're in the dry. Thank you.

So this is a scrotum that's been turned into a bag? Yeah. This is where you can keep the ring if you were like Bill Bow Baggins. The cowboys call that a poke. So this is a sack. That is a scrotum. What does one generally keep in here, change or? Well, the bull kept his testicles in there.

Right, the bull does. But a human, once you turn it into one of these things that you just gave me, what should I use that for? Scrotum to totem, I guess. And you can cinch it up nice and tight. Keep your charms in there, maybe some crystals. Golf balls. Golf balls.

There you go. Jamie's a golfer. Hi, Jamie. So you could keep, how many golf balls can fit in this sucker? At least two. At least two. Probably more, right? Maybe three.

There was two in there before. How many do you need in a round though? Probably lose a few. Hopefully just one. Really? Do you ever go through a whole round of golf with just one ball? I've done it one time. So you keep a couple golf balls, some change.

I think this would be very attractive to people that like crystals. We in Dubbada operate at uh as zero waste we uh when we we slaughter that's great we slaughter uh uh yeah 20 excuse me about 100 cows a week 40 hogs 40 sheep goats several thousand birds and at our slaughter plant, which is on the farm. And that generates about nine tons of what's called packing plant waste. We call it a nutrient stream. It'd be feathers, the bones that are not good, soup bones, eviscerate gut fill, heads, whatnot. And we compost that and spread it back out on the land.

So we're very proud of that nutrient stream, that zero waste. The hides, we make rawhide pitch treats out of them or leather products. One thing, my daughter told me that you ate some of our liver on your show. Yes, I did. Yeah. Paul Saladino gave me some of your liver. So you might find this interesting. When I first built my packing plant in 2007, sadly, we literally threw away, composted, essentially threw away, a lot of the liver, the heart, the bone, a lot of the bones, the fat.

We made biodiesel out of the lard and tallow. Fast forward today because of the work that these nutritionists, Carnivore, I think he had Diana Rogers on, Paul Saladino, those kind of people. We sell everything now. All of the pork fat goes into lard. We've got a product called Praise the Lard. The beef fat goes into Tala. We've got a product called Tala Be Thy Name. The beef fat goes into Tyler.

We've got a product called Tyler Be Thy Name. We make broth out of the bones. The organs that we used to throw away, like tracheas and penises and esophaguses, we dehydrate them for pet treats. And it's just been a real blessing how, and thank God it did, because we need the income stream. We were able to market everything these days. And zero waste. It's a plus on both sides.

That's beautiful. I mean, that's what everybody would love to see from a farm that they did business with. I'll tell you about another one. Yes. So the most exciting thing we've got right now is very new. It was two years old to us. I'm sure you know there's been this explosion of renewable energy, windmills and solar, and we are in a hot spot for utility-sized solar voltaic production, big, big thousand acre. There's a company called Silicon Ranch, which is a shell company that is putting in like three or four000 acres of solar voltaic in our area.

And when I heard that they were doing that, I was a little dismayed by it because I've seen those beside the road. And it's just, to me, it was horrible. The land usage part is so unnatural. And I used a little political capital and got the CEO to come down, a really sharp guy, Reagan Farr, the CEO. And Reagan is a Florida MBA corporate. And I thought it was a hell of a marriage. I wanted to convince him to let me use the land to graze for the vegetation

control. I didn't think he would let me do it. When he came down, I was explaining to him and he started listening to me. I said, shit, this is great. I really thought I was just throwing it out there. As it works out out he is that

ultimate corporate guy but his daddy was the poultry production manager at LSU and he he was raised

showing chickens and he just got it and you might find I hope you find this interesting I do

so but he just when we first started he said I just don't see why it's better for the land. And I said, you know, natural systems, ruminant. He said, well, yeah, I mean, I just don't see it. So we were at a place on my farm where we had done some mowing of excess vegetation. We don't do that too much. Right beside where I was grazing. And I stopped, got him out, and I said, all right, this is where we mowed excess vegetation, like you do under your solar panels. And this is where I grazed it.

grazed it. Now you see this grass material laying on top. Probably 70% of it will oxidize and go up into the air and never find, the microbes will never know it was there. It's all about feeding microbes, microbial cycle, right? On the other hand, if that grass had been bit by a ruminant, a sheep, a goat, a cow, and spent 48 hours in that fermentation tank that they call a rumen, and then is defecated out on the ground, it is like liquid, not solid liquid gas, like liquid like currency. It's immediately available to those insects and microbes. And can you not see how that is life-giving, life-forming, and this is not? He said, oh, yeah. And we're going to be grazing about 3,800 acres for them by the end of 2024 or 5. Well, that's fantastic. If you can get him to listen, maybe there's hope.

Maybe you can get other people to listen. I think that solar grazing is going to be a thing. Because of the solar panels, you need to have the vegetation removed. And that water coming off, right? Yeah. Which one you want? You want your water. Yeah. So the same thing will happen there. And the other thing about it is, you know, there's so many underserved farms. I'm not an underserved farm. I inherited a very nice

farm. There's so many underserved people that would like to farm and like to farm properly. They don't have access to land. And with the millions of acres that are going in, I just think that's great. That is great. Well, listen, Will, this has been a very enlightening talk. I really appreciate you keeping up with my stupid questions and filling us in on all this information and, and, uh, giving us an understanding of, uh, what the real problem is and what your solution is

and the way you're doing it. And, um, it's just nice to know that there is options like that available. And there are people like you that are committed to doing it that way. That is so attractive to people like me. Well, thank you. I really appreciate being able to be here with you and reach so many people. And I hope that it does help move the P a little bit towards moving from industrial commodity agriculture to something that's kinder and chiller. I think it does. And I think there's always going to be these problems of scalability and these things that we're talking about in terms of fast food and just feeding large numbers of people. But personally, people can make their own choices that are regenerative and beneficial and are ultimately a much more natural solution. Well, again, if it happens, it's going to be because of individuals making a choice, not government, not farmers, not big food, not big ag.

But I think unfortunately most individuals aren't informed of the whole process the way you just described it. So I really appreciate you coming in here and laying it all out for us. It's everything I hoped it would be. Thank you. So thanks for being here. I appreciate it. And tell people White Oak Pastures, where's the website? What is it?

The website is whiteoakpastures.com. Social media is all the same, White Oak Pastures. Yeah. I don't know about all the handles and shit. You don't pay attention to that shit? I'll tell you this. You might find this interesting. We actually sold the book rights to White Oak Pastures about a year ago to Penguin, Viking,

Random House, and they hired a lady to write the book, and it'll be out. The gallery copy or something is out, and it'll be published this time next year, and it's called A Bold Return to Giving a Damn. All right. Well, we'll let everybody know when that book comes out. Thank you. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your time.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, everybody.