The Joe Rogan Experience - #2062 - Will & Jenni Harris

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Will Harris is the owner of White Oak Pastures: a family farm utilizing regenerative agriculture and humane animal husbandry practices. Jenni Harris, his daughter, is the marketing manager of White Oak Pastures. Will's new book "A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food" is available now.  www.whiteoakpastures.com

Welcome back Will, how are you sir? Good, thank you for having me. Good to see you, please introduce the world to your daughter. Good, my middle daughter, Jenny Harris, who used to work for me, but now I work for her. Get used to it. That's got to be interesting. Well, we'll tell you about it. Please do.

And you guys are the first people to ever bring dirt to the studio, so I want to thank you for that. You're more than welcome. So here is your soil compared to industrial commodity, what does this say? Row crop. So you can see the difference. I mean, I don't know if you guys can see it very clearly in the video, but one of them is very light colored, and the other one looks rich and dark,

and it's filled with twigs and all sorts of biological material. There's probably some worms in there. Yeah, probably. And this looks like what I'd like to grow something on, whereas this looks like some stuff that blows in the wind when it gets dry out. I'm going to show you that. Yeah, please do. And they came from side by side, one side of the fence versus the other side of the fence.

And there's no difference other than the way they've been managed over the last 20 years. Yeah, and we've showed many times that video of the, was it a creek or a river near your house, where the runoff from their farm is just polluting the water. I mean, a very clear line. I mean, the difference is so stark. It's so stark. And how is that legal, by the way? Let me tell you what you see in there. So the brown water is coming off my farm. The red water is coming under the road. There's a coal footbath.

There's a video of that. We can look at it. Yeah. We've played that video many many times just to show people the difference between a regenerative farm and an industrial farm is that is that me or my daddy damn he looks old look at those arms oh scale i mean he's scaling scaling like a fish so you know this is it is, it's just strange that it's legal to just have the runoff pollute the rivers. That it seems like someone would see that and say, well, the downstream effects of this have to be pretty substantial and pretty detrimental to the fish, to every other piece of land that's downriver that's going to encounter all this fertilizer and pesticide and herbicides, and this has to be terrible.

Well, if it was a construction site, it would have to be under what they call SWIT. That's an acronym for something, stormwater something something. And they wouldn't allow that. But agricultural land is not under SWIT. In fact, it's not even under SWIT. That's a subsidized production system by the government. So it's not only okay or acceptable, you know, it's the status quo. So they've just accepted a certain amount of pollution.

Well, I guess it would be a nearly unlimited amount of solution because nobody checks it. Nobody checks the water. Nobody checks to see what the results are, which is insane. I mean, what is it like downstream? What is downstream of that? Well, it used to be the Apalachicola Bay, which was a thriving, oystering grounds, but they don't oyster there anymore. Because of the runoff in the farms? Because of the decline in oyster population, which is because of runoff, correct.

Wow. There's like a whole town, Apalachicola, that used to be a real thriving community because of the oystering business and industry, and the whole town has suffered, which is one thing we'll talk about with regards to rural America. But there's like a whole city that's suffering because they can no longer do what they've done for generations. How come no one's filed a lawsuit? whole city that's suffering because they can no longer do what they've done for generations.

How come no one's filed a lawsuit? Well, I'm not in the lawsuit filing business. Not you, but someone from that town. I mean, someone from the oystering community, because it seems like that's a no-brainer. I mean, if you were running a tire company, and the tire company was upstream of something and the water went down and started polluting it and ruining people's livelihoods, you would think that someone would have the grounds for a lawsuit. We had RFK on and he talked a lot about, you know, in New York, the, you know, the, the river and the pollution and how he led the charge. You know, people like that need to look at Apalachicola Bay.

And if you had a runoff from a tire manufacturing company, you could trace it back to that one entity in one location. You know, that water comes from all over South Georgia. And it's from everybody's fields, and most of it is treated the same way. So, you know, I'm not answering a litigation question because I don't know, but it would be a hell of a complex situation to jump on. So you would have to sue a large number of farms. You know, I don't know how that works, but, yeah, there's a large number of people contributing to it. Virtually everyone who farms corn, cotton, peanuts uses the same cultivation and the same pesticides.

So it seems like it would be a very, very complex litigation to me. It seems like it's at least worth a study. Have they done a study on the bay and the levels of pesticides and various chemicals? Dead zones in the Gulf have been studied, and Jamie can probably pull that up. Could you do me a favor and just pull that microphone just a little closer to your face? Just, yeah, just try to keep it like a fist away from your face like that. So it seems like that they would want to study that though. I mean, that seems, it's insane to me that they just allow that to continue and it's

happening every day, day by day, just constantly dumping toxic chemicals into the water. Okay. So I think, you know, I'm certainly not answering for that whole kind of politically motivated question, but you got to remember that the politicians who control the bureaucrats are controlled by pesticide companies and agricultural companies. There's just a lot of money involved. And, you know, if I were a politician running for office and begging for funding, I probably wouldn't want to be the guy that opened that can of worms. It seems like it all boils down to that. Money and politics. If we could take money out of politics, we could make it so that no one can donate other than individuals and a very limited amount of money. We could change everything. I think so. system and it allows things like this to happen but then the question is you explained how you

changed your farm from an industrial farm to a regenerative farm and that it took a pro it was approximately 20 years is that what you said we yes well i mean the when you start that process moving from an industrial farm to what were're returning from that we run today, coming out of the chute, you see a decline in production, and it lasts for a period of time, three years, four years, or something. Then you see a very gradual increase until it gets back to where ours is today. And where ours is today is not as high-yielding as if we used all the crop inputs. But it's approaching that. Of course, we don't have to buy the crop inputs, so I think it's better for us.

It's certainly a more resilient system. And if there was legal or at least some sort of financial repercussions that were enacted on the farm itself for the pollution, it would seem like that would balance itself out. Like if someone did the correct thing and said, hey, you guys are ruining the earth itself with this just so you can make a little more money, which is so crazy that that's allowed and not just allowed but subsidized. Well, you know, the farmers are making a little more money. You're right. The big multinational corporations are making a hell of a lot more money because they're

manufacturing these products and they're handling these huge quantities of agricultural production and turning out this industrial food that we all eat. So the amount of money is incredible. And don't forget, I think I might have mentioned to you when I spoke to you before, that it's a way of life that senior bureaucrats go to work for the big ag companies. Yeah. So if you're a very senior person in D.C. in Department of Ag and probably other departments, and you're getting close to retirement,

if you've been a good boy, you can retire and get a job making twice what you were making with the government. If you're not a good boy, you can retire and get a job making twice what you were making with the government. If you're not a good boy, you're just retired. Right, just like the FDA and the pharmaceutical drug companies. It's the same deal. It should be illegal. Well, and farmers aren't – I'll say this. Farmers are less and less raising food and raising food-like products. You know, there is a statistic said that farmers only get 14 cents of every food dollar that's spent.

And you think about, wow, the person who, you know, cultivates the land, plants the seed, harvests the crops, you know, they get 14 cents of every dollar. And the truth is the food production system has become such a long way from a farmer and a consumer. There's got to be room for, you know, distribution and manufacturing and logistics and whatever else. A dollar, you know, the food dollar is still there. It's just the farmers getting less and less of it because food more and more looks less and less like food. more and more looks less and less like food. She's right. But in our case, we get 100 cents of every dollar,

but we still don't have much money. We still don't make a lot of money. We get 100 cents, not 14, but then we cover all these costs that in the industrial system is just, the farm is just the production arm. Well, and ours is different because we took 100% responsibility of that food product. So we raise, we slaughter, we butcher, we package, and we distribute. So we take account for all of those parts in the food production system

so that we can keep that whole dollar. Now, it's not profit because we have to pay for those things, but the whole dollar stays in Bluffton. And that's the most important part. You know, Clay County, Georgia, where Bluffton is, was the poorest county in the United States of America in 2020. Number one, not just Georgia, the whole country. Georgia, the whole country. And when that whole dollar stays in Clay County, Georgia,

it's beginning to correct that. That results because only 14 cents stays there. That's the result. And it seems like the problem is so complicated now because of fast food chains and because of big cities that absolutely don't grow anything that what when you're getting food you have to get food at scale you have to get massive amounts of food like say if you're living in um california if you're living in los angeles which is just an insanely overpopulated place and you want to get beef especially if you want to get a cheeseburger from jack in the Box or something. I don't mean to pick on Jack in the Box. Burger King, whatever.

Where's that meat coming from? It's not grown from local cows. There are no local cows. I mean, you have to go pretty far out of town to find a farm that raises cows. I mean, you can go like an hour and a half out of town and find some cows, but that's not going to feed everybody. They'll all be gone. There's not enough cows.

A lot of it comes from Australia and New Zealand and Uruguay. Yeah. A lot of beef's imported. Yeah, and a lot of elk. A lot of elk. If you buy elk at a restaurant, most likely you're getting it from New Zealand. I got a story about imports that I want to say. This is really important.

So 25 years ago when Dad decided to change the way we farmed, he knew that in order to put all the cost that it was going to take to raise animals differently,. And, you know, that worked out really well. But the point I want to get to is that when dad started selling beef, grass-fed beef, to those two grocers, the first pound of American grass-fed beef to be marketed as American grass-fed beef came from white oak pastures. And that was not a sustainable option. We can't feed the world. We don't want to feed the world. But fast forward 20 years, and over 85% of the grass-fed beef in the American market is imported product, not raised in America. Isn't that nuts? In 20 years, we've gone from being a very early innovator to just a mere, meager portion of 15%.

Well, that's true, but it's not the worst part. The worst part is that imported beef is legally labeled product of the USA. How's that? If value is added in this country, it's a product of the USA. How's that? If value is added in this country, it's a product of the USA. What? We compete with it every day. How do they add value? Ooh, ooh, go ahead.

No, you go. This is good. If they grind it, slice it, cut it, package it, label it. Rebox it, slice it, cut it, package it, label it. Rebox it. Transport it. But the animal, make no mistake, the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered in Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, or 20 other countries. Lithuania. Lithuania.

Croatia. The United States imports beef from places like Australia, Canada, and much of Latin America. It then runs that beef through USDA inspection, and if it passes, sticks a label on it that reads product of the USA. How dare you?

But honestly, that's so dirty. The erosion of this type of farming in America is completely being exported to another country because we're importing all of this product. And then due to loopholes in labeling, intentionally fraudulent labeling even, selling it as product of the USA. Then we have to consider if everybody's really concerned about climate change and CO2 output, think about the amount of freight. Just these massive boats that are making their way across. Did you see this thing they did recently? I was reading this article, and I was actually listening to a podcast.

That's what it was initially. about how they changed, I guess, I don't know what governing body, changed the emission standards for these gigantic freight ships. And when they changed the emission standards, what they found was when they were releasing less pollution into the air, it was doing less of a job of blocking the sun. So the ocean water was getting warmer quicker than they anticipated. So it is having the opposite effect. So they're trying to come up with different methods to mitigate that now.

And some of the methods are spraying chemicals in the sky. Some of the methods are spraying ocean water in the sky, which sounds much more natural. You know, just taking some sort of machine. But then again, what's powering that machine? How is that going to work? What is, what are we doing? Instead of just growing it here. Should we really be spraying seawater into the atmosphere?

Should we really have to do that? No, but I mean, it's just water. That doesn't bother me. That seems like the most organic solution. You're going to take seawater, blow it, but who knows? I mean, think about all the pollution that's in the sea now and microplastics in the sea. Does that spray into the atmosphere and that get into people's lungs now and cause a host of new autoimmune issues and cardiovascular issues? Who knows?

It's so crazy that we're doing it this way. So that label change, product of the USA, even though it was imported, occurred in 2015, I think, 15 or 16. And it was a reaction to the fact that some of us had gone into the grass-fed beef business and were doing pretty good with it. We had some really good years in the early 2000s. And, of course, when they were allowed to bring the imported beef in as product to the USA, the margin structure fell dramatically. Of course. Dirty. Dirty. Everything is dirty.

When you get money involved in stuff like that and decisions that affect everybody, someone always does something slimy. Well, and here's the thing. I don't think either of us want to debate product quality or the fact that it is from another country. You know, the issue that we have is that it's being sold under the guise of product of the USA. Right. So if you're a person who wants to buy all American made stuff and American raised beef and you're like, oh, great product of the USA, I feel like I'm doing a good thing. It's like the textile industry. The textile industry has been exported. The automotive industry has been exported. But at least in those situations, it's pretty clear what you're getting.

You look in the back of your shirt and it's a product of not America. I started working recently with a company called Origin that's in Maine. I'm crazy about them. They make everything. Yeah. Everything American made. They're great. Every thread, all the cloth.

There is one part of their boots that they have not been able to source in America, and it's sourced in Latin America. That's the only piece. But I bet they talk about it. They do, very openly. But they make hunting gear. They make outdoor stuff. They make jiu-jitsu gi's.

They make fantastic handmade boots. And if you want to support an American-made company, Origin's great. But they have a limited amount of— They can only make so much of it. They have one major factory that's doing it in Maine, and it's all people working on it by hand, and it's pretty cool. But it's, you know, it's limited. Yeah, we're not saying that

beef from Australia is bad. I'm not saying that. There's some great beef from Australia, I'm sure, in Uruguay and everywhere else. Just tell the damn truth. We had a really awkward situation that occurred last week.

A company who is owned by friends of ours that we care about was buying some grinds from us, some trim, actually, making ground beef out of. And Jenny was renegotiating the deal with them last week.

And it came out that they were importing some beef. What happened is they showed her the projections of how much more they were selling. It was just way up. And they told her how much that they were going to buy from her. And it was way, you know, it was flat. It was flat. And she said, how much that they were going to buy from her. And it was way, you know, it was flat. It was flat. And she said, how are you doing that? Because we're a pretty big supplier.

They only advertise three people as being suppliers, and we're one of them. And they said, it came out. She said, are you importing beef? And there was a long silence. They finally said they are. And I told her I was not on that call. We're not going to sell them. I mean, I don't want to sell them anything.

Because then they can attach your name to it. And that's fraudulent. Yeah, I don't want to be part of a scam. That's a scam. Yeah, and it's not even a scam in terms of quality. That's what you're saying that's important. That it's not that this is bad beef. No.

It's just you're lying. This is a household brand that you've probably eaten, and it's headquartered here. But I don't want to do that. Yeah, and thank you for that. What led to this decision, the initial decision, to change your farm from an industrial farm to a regenerative farm? initial decision to change your farm from an industrial farm to a regenerative farm?

I mean, there had to be a lot of soul-searching involved in that kind of a decision, because it's not an easy one, and it probably cost a lot of money, and it was probably quite a headache. It was all those things, and to be real honest with you, I went into it with a little bit of naivety. I didn't think it was going to be as big a deal as it was, but it was. I was a very industrial cattleman for 20 years. Graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in animal science. Came home and put it to work.

My dad had been a very industrial producer using all the tools. I had a lot of pride in my knowledge and understanding of how to raise cattle industrially, monoculture of cattle at that time. And I think probably because I was an abuser, I used, if it said I used a little bit, I used a lot. I just came to see the unintended consequences of that industrial system more clearly probably than people that were playing closer to the rules. And I just

thought I didn't want to do it anymore. And I did not do a good job planning an alternative production program. I just quit using stuff. I quit using hormone implants and sub-therapeutic antibiotics and bad feedstuffs like chicken manure. I quit using chemical fertilizers. I quit using pesticides, and it was very expensive for a while. It was economically painful. But we survived it. And from day one, I enjoyed it better.

But from day one, I made less money until I lost money. But then, thank goodness, grass-fed beef became a thing. And it wasn't being imported. So we became profitable again. Since you've gone public with it, I found about you from Fox. I was watching television, and you were doing this interview, and we talked about it the last time you were here, and this guy was rushing you.

I enjoy the way you talk, but you have a way of talking that's very deliberate and clear, and it takes a little time. And this guy was just rushing you along and rushing you along and I immediately reached out to my booking guy said let's get that guy I want to hear him talk It's like lay it out like give him all the time in the world to lay it out And I'm really glad you did but from the time that you went public Have you seen more of a demand for your product and for what you're doing a half?

But it's been filled by imported product. This whole thing that we're talking about. Grass-fed, yes. Grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, all these more naturally grown

meats and other poultry and vegetables. All of it is catching traction. But big food has figured out a way to cash in on it. I can give a good example of that. So the word free range. So free range by definition, so you would see a brand with a grassy knoll

and a red barn and a white fence and you know it would say free range so free range by definition is just access to the outdoors via a concrete pad or whatever it's not actually pasture-raised poultry it's just maybe a little different than commodity in the house poultry but it's at a fraction of the price. You know, true pastured poultry might cost two or 300% more than commodity poultry. And so you have these consumers who are very busy. You know, they don't have time to learn the nuances and read and research like, you know, you have done and we obviously do. And so they see pastured poultry for $6 a pound or free-range poultry for $3 or $4 a pound.

How could you expect for them to pay 50% more, 75% or 100% more for something that is so loosely defined and due to labeling pretty misrepresentative of the way it's actually raised yeah free range sounds like you just let them out of the chicken coop and they wander around like your wife holding the bird right like my yard that's it yeah yeah there's free range chickens in my yard right now that's why marshall's here marshall doesn't get along with chickens we talked about that earlier. But this is deceptive. I mean, and it's unfortunate that they're allowed to use those loopholes.

And that should be more clearly defined. I mean, if you would rather save money, and I understand that. If someone's on a budget, you want to save money. I get it, 100%. But I've gotten eggs from the grocery store that say free range and I get it and I crack it open and it is that light yellow bullshit yolk that I know. I know that chicken has

just been eating feed it's not eating grass, it's not eating bugs, it's not doing things that chickens do and when you get a chicken that is doing things that chickens do you get that dark orange yolk. Blood yolk. It's so dark and it tastes so much better.

It's so much better for you, so much more nutrient dense, and it's what a chicken egg is supposed to be. And sadly, I don't think the consumers will ever really get what they're looking for unless they know exactly who they're buying it from. Right. unless they know exactly who they're buying it from. Right. It's just so easy to copy these, embrace these new.

Right now we talk about regenerative. Well, I mean, now everybody's got regenerative. It's too easy to label it, and it's too hard for really big companies to produce it. So it puts the onus on the consumer to know who they're buying from. That brings me back to the initial question. Is it even possible to use regenerative farming the way you folks have your farm and feed everybody? I mean, can you sell to McDonald's? I mean, is it even possible?

I mean, how much beef do they use in a day? It has to be insane. The answer is no, we can't sell to McDonald's. We couldn't start to scratch the surface. And I don't know the answer, but I'll say this. When you say, can we produce enough food like that? Can the industry produce enough food like that without doing such extraordinary damage? We're going to pay for this. This stuff is so cheap, not because it's really being produced that cheap it's because expenses are thrown off

and not borne by the producer or the company buying it like what give a great zone in the gulf would be a great example that's a great example because i mean think about the extraordinary amount of money it would take to take the gulf and bring it back to a pristine condition. Or wildfires. How much do we pay every year to put out wildfires? Fires. That soil right there. You know, the experts tell us it is like how many years left? 60, but that was like three years ago, so 57. Who knows?

But even the experts tell us there's a finite life left in that degraded soil. This beautiful organic soil is perpetual. It'll last forever. Right. Now, that's a cost, and it has a finite period of time. And I'm just not sure how this is all going to work out. The water in the ground, you know, so much of these crops irrigate. So you, I told you that one of them, the degraded soil is a half percent organic model.

The beautiful soil is over five percent organic model. One percent organic model will absorb a 1-inch rainfall. So the degraded soil will only absorb a half an inch of rainfall. The beautiful organic soil will absorb a 5-inch rainfall. So it requires a tremendous amount of irrigation for the degraded soil to make it. Well, we've got problems with water in the ground, even in the southeast and certainly in the west. So all of these resources we're just using up and using up and it's pissing in your britches to stay warm. Pissing in your britches to stay warm. It's a good short-term

strategy, but long-term, not what you want to do. That's a great way to put it. I love it. I'm going to use that one. Pissing in your britches to stay warm. Yeah, it's really sad. And it's weird how we haven't addressed this and how this is just something that just keeps going and going primarily because of the amount of money that's involved and the amount of money these companies are making by doing things the way they're doing it right now. And the fact that it's subsidized. Yeah, it's dirty business. And there's an ancient soil in the Amazon called Terra Prada.

Have you guys heard about this? Well, I watched the Graham Hancock episode. Yes. Fascinating. So thousands and thousands of years ago, the indigenous people of the Amazon figured out a way to create this regenerative soil. And it's composed of biological material, carbon, all sorts of different things. They don't exactly know how they made it and they don't know how to recreate it, but this is a self-sustaining soil. And when you grow in it, it acts like this soil that you folks have. And these people that lived thousands of years ago figured out how to way to make this sustainable soil. It just seems like that is something, if there's so much money involved in all this, that's something that someone would be able to figure out how to recreate today.

This is the terra preta. This is the stuff that exists. So on the left, you see the actual soil, what it looks like before it's treated. That terra preta on the right is entirely man-made and entirely man-made from an unknown origin. We know the folks, the people that live there, they're the ones who did it, but we don't know how they did it. And what we do know is that you can grow on that indefinitely. You can just keep going. They call it biochar, terra preta, but it's a phenomenal soil for growing crops on and for growing things on.

And it seems like that should be something that someone should invest in. Some sort of research. I mean, look, if they figured out how to do it thousands of years ago and we assume that they didn't have computers and AI and all the different advantages that we have in terms of technology and knowledge, figure it out. Someone, there should be some sort of a-scale project if we're really 57 years left of topsoil in the American farmlands due to monocrop agriculture and industrial farming. It seems like they should be able to figure out a way to do that. Actually, that's our farm.

Yeah. subsoil below that guy's hand, which is like the degraded soil, and the good soil, which is above it, which is soil that we have built up. Yes. And it was built up by using the natural systems. We emulate the buffalo ranging over the continent. It's not as good. We don't have from Canada to Mexico to play with. Right.

And we don't have hundreds of thousands of head, but it's a microcosm example of that. And it works. Yes. Denny, what was the story that you used to tell that scientists figured out exactly what seawater was? You know, like what made seawater. And they meticulously made it in a lab. But then somehow it wasn't after they did everything that science told them that seawater was.

When they made it, it wasn't seawater. That makes me question my, you're right, that makes me question my reliance upon reductive science. The project that Jenny's talking about, I don't remember where it was done. Jamie could probably find it. They took seawater and broke it down as well as they could with qualitative, quantitative chemistry. And decided it could determine exactly what was in it. Then when they put it back together, a fish wouldn't live in it. Oh, that was it.

But what happened was not so much it had too much sodium or too much whatever. It was the life was not there. There's something else. It was the life. The fact that they evolved together. And then there's some organic compounds that's in the water It was the life. It was the... The fact that they evolved together. Yeah. And then there's some organic compounds that's in the water. I don't know. Probably the life.

The actual living microbes that they couldn't put back in there because they weren't there anymore. Right. You took it apart, put it back together. So you just have sterile seawater. Sterile water. Sterile ingredients that made seawater. Yeah.

Probably like a fish tank but not even right because fish tank has fish poop and all sorts of other things that also have life yeah has life and leads to the microbes whoo you know people listening this probably feel very helpless you know because it seems like it's one of those situations like oh my god this is a problem that it's almost like you don't realize there's an avalanche coming because you're sitting in the town and you're like, oh, this is a good place. This is a safe place. But meanwhile, there's an avalanche coming.

And it's just a matter of time before it reaches the town. No, not exactly. Maybe that's a bad analogy. Well, I get it. And I agree, except for the fact that those people sitting in that town, there's not a damn thing they can do about that avalanche. It's coming. Right. When it comes to the way we treat our land and water and air, consumers have power.

They can do something about it. You can't depend on the government because of the lobbyist thing, the dark money we discussed that earlier. It won't be, sadly, the land-grant university system because so much of that funding comes from the huge multinational companies that are profiting from industrial production. I can list a whole lot of things it won't come from. But if it happens, it'll be by consumers.

Consumers making the choice, this is what I'm going to support. This is not what I'm going to not support. That's the only way it's going to happen. And I don't know that it's going to happen. Well, it seems like it would take a massive reeducation of the American public in order for that to take place. And then people would have to be willing to be financially impacted by their decisions. Because you're not going to be – you're not going to be able to get a 99-cent cheeseburger.

Correct. Correct. And to that point, nothing really brings about change except pain. And I don't think you can educate fat, satiated, full people and get them to spend more money for their food. But if there's enough pain, whether it comes from health or polluted areas or weather or fire, then maybe so. And it's also a problem people aren't aware of the issues for most people food is food they just go and get their food and then they don't understand the consequences of eating bad food until it's kind of too late but they're not really supposed

to who's educating them right i mean if if they go to the doctor there's a pill you know i mean there there's there's no there there's a lot of a lot of like anti correlation that's happening where it's like, here's a problem. Here's the solution. And we bypass all the hard work. We want the easy solution. Right. You know, so it's it's not just that consumers are making arguably wrong choices, but uninformed choices for the food that they eat. But additionally, you know, we're big cycles of nature people. We believe that in order to be good stewards of land, all of nature's cycles need to be functioning. And when they do, they create an abundance. And that abundance is enjoyed by you and I in the form of meat and vegetables and, you know, whatever else. And there's been so much intense focus on the carbon cycle.

You think about what you hear from the media. It's carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon. That in reality, all of nature's cycles are broken. You know, what about the water cycle or the mineral cycle or the grazing cycle? These are, you know, you can't just work on one cycle. And so there's just so much misinformation and so much of a spotlight on certain things, when in reality, it's so much broader than that. And it's not hard. It's just they're not telling the complete story. I agree with that fully. And I don't think that's an accident. I think that the carbon cycle gets all the press because that's the one that

somebody can make some money fixing. I agree with you. Yeah. And that's unfortunate that this whole green thing has become a political movement. And it's been a political movement that's hijacked by industry and they are trying to enforce mandates that will allow them to make extreme amounts of profit and also to control people and to control their choices you know all you read is that cattle are great contributors to global warming, greenhouse gases and all that. And we talked about before, there's a scientific study, a very expensive scientific study called a life cycle analysis on our website that shows that we're actually sequestering more carbon in our cattle side of our business than we're putting up. So, you know, it's… Which makes sense.

Yeah. That's the way it's supposed to be. So one of the differences in those two soils and the ones you showed and the one that you talked about in South America is carbon and microscopic life in that soil. Which is what makes it dark

versus the other one. Mm-hmm. So you know the way you build those carbon-rich soils is through proper livestock interaction. That's the way the eight-foot-deep soils in the Great Plains came about, was those huge herds of buffalo going across. Mm-hmm. And it's the reason that those two soils look so much different and the one that you showed jamie showed on the board there so you know we i think we know a lot more

about how to fix the problem than we acknowledge but it's just going to be so expensive especially for big food big ag and then ultimately also for the consumer. Because if McDonald's went purely to regenerative agriculture, if they had a large-scale effort to eliminate industrial farming and get all of their food through regenerative agriculture, there's not a chance in hell they're going to charge 99 cents for a cheeseburger. You know, and I'm not opposed to there being chains like McDonald's. But I just don't know how they work with any sort of local food movement. I just don't know how you make that work. Right. And then how do you make it so, I mean, there's a large amount of people in this country that primarily eat fast food, unfortunately.

That's where they get their calories from. And you see it because of the health consequences. I mean, it's a gigantic issue in this country. If you look at the human beings, I'm sure you've seen these photographs of people on the beach in the 1950s and 60s versus 2023. 2023 is like, it's insane how obese everybody is. And that's not an accident. That's a direct result of the way we eat and what we eat and where it comes from. It's the same with our animals. The goal in a feedlot animal is to blow them up fast and quick with cheap food. That's what we do to our people, too.

Yeah, that is what we do. In marketing, we create our own customers. You know, those people who suffer from obesity and sedentary lifestyles that have diseases and whatever else, then we get to sell them medicine. Yes. And then the medicine's called side effects, which then we treat with more medicine. Yeah. So it's, so I'm the director of marketing. And one thing that I love is, you know, is just good old fashioned marketing and reoccurring business and returning orders and,

you know, all those things. I see how that works. You know, the very idea that these lifestyles create a certain, you know, a certain issue, which are then prescribed with certain medicines that then create more issues that we treat with more medicines. What a genius plan. That's great. I mean, it's terrible. If you want to buy a yacht. Well, it's terrible for the people and for the environment. But, I mean, hell, it's great.

Very profitable. I'll give you another slant on that. We talked about the changes I made from what I used to do to what I do now. And one of the primary changes is, from the 30,000-foot level, is I used to go in my pastures every day looking for something to kill. I was looking for a fungus on the grass to put a fungicide on, looking for an insect to put insecticide on, looking for another competing weed that I put herbicide on, looking for parasites in my cattle, on and on, insects, on and on. I was looking every day for something to kill.

I was a successful commercial cattleman in terms of profitability, and I was successful because I killed stuff every day, spent money to high-tech companies to kill stuff. Now, since I made the change, I'm trying to keep things alive. I believe that all these species have a role out there, and I want to keep things alive. I believe that all these species have a role out there. I want to keep things in balance, but we're trying to keep things alive. We're not trying to kill

any of it. You're trying to create a contained natural environment. Symbiotic relationships between the animals. That's analogous with the food situation. That's what the

whole earth should be. That's how it evolved. Yeah. And it's just recently within the

last like how many years that we've done it this way? Since World War II. I believe

I thought about that a lot read about it a lot and I think World War II is kind of when we

started the change. Because we needed food. Well I actually should say the end of World War II. But, yeah, we needed the food, so there was a demand to produce it. And then World War II's war effort gave us so many tools.

You know, the munitions manufacturing became fertilizer manufacturing. The nerve gas became pesticides, on and on. How do you unwind all that? That's what's crazy, you know, when you're dealing with 80-plus years of this going on. Like, how do you unwind that, and how do you—I guess you do it through conversations like this initially, to get enough people aware of how big of a problem this is and how bad it is for everybody. Three generations and trillions and trillions of dollars. There's so many people making so much money on this.

You probably won't be here in 80 years. I know you're the specimen of health. Maybe so, but your kids will be. I didn't really focus on it until I became a mother and you have a son and a daughter and, you know, my sister has kids. It's like, all right, we can probably keep it in between the ditches. I'm 37. Maybe I'll, you know, make it to 75. So we can, we can probably keep it in between the ditches until then. But what type of world are we leaving our kids? I mean, your kids, they're going to inherit something way the hell worse than you did.

It's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. Way worse. Right. Unless enough people make this decision that you made. enough people make this decision that you made. Unless enough people take control of their health and start changing the way they eat and where they source their food from and caring. And the title of your book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, which is a great title.

One Farm, Six Generations in the Future of Food. When you set out to write this book, i know that this is an important message to you but how how has this been received so far you know we don't get too much uh feedback on how many people are buying the book it's out there but we don't get it jenny you can ask that question better than me she uh so you know, when dad started talking about writing a book, we were like, oh, there's no way. You know, his brain is truly cyclical, just like the farm. There's, you know, birth, growth, death, decay, birth, growth, death, decay. Where do you start? The chicken or the egg? Who came first? And for him, you know,

we had talked about him writing a book for a very long time. And honestly, nobody knew where to start. And so he was approached by, you know, some folks who said, hey, we think, you know, you'd be a great book writer. And dad quickly told them, there's no way I can write a book no way in hell I don't know where to start and where to end they said well let us help you so they found a ghost writer named Emily Grieven who is great and she and dad had phone dates every Friday for probably a year that lasted anywhere from two to four hours and in listening to the book dad dad, dad narrated it. And it is like a glimpse inside of his brain. It is such a, uh, all of his thoughts are there. And, you know, I think it's so important

because, you know, dad started a business and a mission that is going to last a lot longer than him. You know, he's 69 this year and, you, and the food system is not going to be fixed by the time he is gone. And so to be part of that and to be part of a business that's bigger than one person, bigger than one person's life that lasts so much longer, I think is so important. And people like him have got to focus on that. He can't fix the food system. He has to set the groundwork for people like you and I to fix the food system and then to instill it in our children to fix the food system. What was the motivation to write this? You know, I felt like people needed to know what I spent the last 25 years learning.

I'm not the only one that knows it, but I'm the only one that has this particular slant on it. I knew I couldn't write a book. I went to the University of Georgia and majored in agriculture. We didn't read many books. We certainly didn't write a book. When they approached us about writing it, it just seemed like the thing

to do. And I give so much credit to this Amy LeGraven that Jenny referenced, who wrote it, who actually wrote my thoughts down on the paper. And do you think this is a one-time deal? Are you going to write more books?

I know down well it is. It took me 69 years to come up with enough shit to put in that book. I'm not going to have time for it. It seems like another book, though, someone should write is how this can be fixed and what steps need to be taken. And I think it needs to be taken, for sure, it needs to be taken at a governmental level. There's a bunch of books out there that I've seen that farmers have written that I didn't agree with. There's one, Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown, that's great.

There are others. So if someone is out there that does run an industrial farm and is sort of tortured by it, that they're aware of the consequences of what they're doing and they maybe admire what you've done and would like to move in that direction? Since you mentioned it, Gabe and I are both about the same age. Gabe and I were both about the same age. We're both industrial farmers that went this route. And there's some great regenerative farmers out there, but there aren't a tremendous number of them that used to be an industrial farmer.

It's just not a lot of that. How many industrial farms are there in this country? Oh, I have no idea. A lot. I mean, a lot less than it used to be because they've consolidated and gotten so much bigger. But I don't know that number. Well, you were originally brought onto that Fox News show because they were trying to figure out what a farmer thinks about Bill Gates buying up farmland. You know, Bill Gates, who's famously said that everyone's got to stop eating meat and eat these bullshit fake meat versions, these plant-based meats.

So there's 25,000 factory farms. Factory farms continue to take over the agricultural landscape of the United States. There are currently 1.6 billion animals in our nation's 25,000 factory farms, which makes sense. I mean, if you just, you know, go to Arby's, where's that food coming from? Well, and, you know, and even, so Jamie, you should Google this, but when we talk about that, the centralization of the meat industry is even more stark. So what is it? Four, maybe four meat processors, at least with beef, occupy over 80% of the nation's beef supply. Four. Chitty just gave me this before we came in here, but this is in 2023. The United States has imported 956 million pounds of beef so far in 2023.

Wow. That's imported beef. That's crazy. Jamie, will you pull up that, I think I named it like food consolidation or something? I bet most people have no idea. I bet most people listening to this are blown away by that number. That most people would, if you asked the average person on the street, how much meat do you think is imported from other countries?

Beef. They would probably say none. They wouldn't even think of it. No. Especially if you get to label it a product of the USA, which is so dirty. Yeah, and consumers believe they have the impression of choice. They don't actually have choice. The image that Jamie's going to show us.

I'm just trying to find a cleaner one. Oh, good. It's a little blurry, but you'll see it. Okay, here it is. Yep. So look at all these brands that are owned by this, you know, 10 or so parent companies. That's crazy. So, you know, consumers have the impression that there is choice, but truly there is no choice. The same is true with with meat i think on tyson's website it has uh and i gave it to jamie but one in every five pounds of meat that's consumed in america is a tyson product wow whoa you know so we talk about

centralized food we talk about food security do we really want a global food supply? And the answer is yes or no. But with regards to fragility in food, think about COVID and the effects of what it did to the grocery store. There we go. One in five pounds of chicken, beef, and pork in the U.S. is produced by Tyson Foods. That's proudly registered on their website. Yeah, there's another one that talks about how many animals they slaughter in a week, and that's another just incredible number. And the same is, the other four pounds are produced by two or three other companies. So I like it was Tyson and everybody else.

Right, right, right. Will you pull up that other one, Jamie? Because I want to draw a correlation between the scale of this versus the scale of what farms like us do. No, there's one that says like 177,000 cattle are processed. Anyways, I'll tell you a little bit about our model and then we can compare it to that. So when dad decided to build the processing plant in 2007, he built it to process 50 head of cattle a week. And we got to that number and we were still hemorrhaging money. There was no way that was going to work. And so we made a few modifications primarily around refrigeration.

We dropped the chill time. Yep, that's it. refrigeration, we drop the chill time. Yep, that's it. So our processing plant, on-farm processing plant, will process 25 head of cattle a day, five days a week. So it's 125 head a week. Compared to systems like this, which is also on Tyson's website, 155,000 head of cattle are processed per week in only 14 facilities. Wow. That's crazy. And, you know, the further to the right you go, so, you know, pork, 471,000 pigs are slaughtered in a week at only seven facilities.

47 million chickens per week. And I've been in those facilities, and it's not pretty. But that is the scale of food. We've shown the footage of someone got drone footage where they fly a drone over a pig farm, an industrialized pig farm. And you see these lakes of pig waste, and it's so disgusting. It's just toxic waste. Which is sad because that waste is what created that topsoil at White Oak Pastures.

It's just we took the livestock off of the land. We decoupled what had been coupled for millions of years. So these are these lakes. Now, here's the question. Why can't they take that waste and redistribute it into the land and use it for fertilizer? And there's some of that done, but it's expensive. That's the problem. That's expensive.

Is that what they're doing right here? Yeah, I think so. I remember them talking about the waste was getting spread on the people's houses. Oh. Because it would be in the air and then it would spray over. Right, of course. Spray over or whatever. Yeah. Well, yeah, indiscriminate because they want to do it cheaply.

Yeah, and there's a difference between a cow or pig or chicken defecating here and there and there. Right. And spreading. In a natural way. That thick. Yes. Right. In a natural way. That thick. Yes. Right. Well, and just to sort of tie all that together, Jamie, you have one more thing, and I swear I'm going to quit asking you to pull shit up.

That's what he does. It's okay. He likes it. I have to apologize. He's probably like, who invited her? No, no, no, no. But there's one more that's like our brands. So one in five pounds of meat we just read that

was produced produced by Tyson but consumers have no idea that it was a Tyson product so if you look at the amount of brands that you know these big multinational meat corporations own there's no there's no no way for a consumer to know that that's one of those products. So it's just a really incredible system when you start pulling the layers back on it. And there's demand. That's the other problem. It's like you're not going to get them to stop doing that. There's a massive demand for all this food.

Yeah. And most people listening to this are part of that demand. Most people listening to this have stopped at a fast food burger place this week and picked up a product of this system. Yeah. And they want to be able to do that. If you're hungry and you're on the go and you want to be able to pull into a drive-thru, get a cheeseburger and some fries and a soda, bam. It's kind of extraordinary, the system they've created. It sucks that you can't do it in a healthy way,

but it's kind of extraordinary that you can just pull into somewhere and get 1,000 calories like that. So convenient. And cheap. Yeah, very cheap. Incredibly cheap. Yeah, for the amount of calories. And that is also reflected in the health consequences of impoverished people.

If you look at people that are poor that rely upon this kind of food all the time, those are the people that have the worst health outcomes. Because they're eating stuff that doesn't have any nutrients in it. It's terrible for you. It's filled with seed oils and bullshit and preservatives. And I'm sure you've seen those. They've done these little tests where they've taken a McDonald's cheeseburger and just sit it on a shelf for like weeks and nothing happens to it. You could probably eat it, which is so insane. That's crazy. I mean, you could sit it for weeks.

But, you know, these companies, as bad as this is, these companies have done what the public told them to do. The public has said we want food cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. Right. Cheaper, quicker. Consistent. And quicker. And you know how you get cheaper and quicker?

Okay. This is exactly the same after five years. Five years. Way to go, Jamie. That is wild. It doesn't look, Jamie. That is wild. It doesn't look that bad. That is crazy. Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Wow. So Megan wants to find out whether the cheeseburger will stay the same after another five years. So I bet it will. I mean, what's going to change? Five years. It says she's inspired to carry out the experiment after seeing an old burger being showcased in her doctor's office. And so she set this burger down and just left it out there for five years, and that's what it looks like. Hi, Megan.

Kind of crazy, but also disturbing if you eat that. Like, what is that doing to your gut microbiome? What is that doing to your health microbiome? What is that doing to your health? I mean, the preservatives have a consequence on your health. The eating stuff that, you know, we were talking about dog food earlier. And I feed my dog raw food. And I just started feeding him raw food about six, seven months ago. And it kind of, it's embarrassing to me that that's the case. Because I always just thought if you go to the pets I didn't think about it you go to the pet store you buy healthy food uh the best food that they have available at a you know a nice pet store like this has got to be good for the

dog oh look at all the nutrients look at all the stuff but then I was thinking like how is it just sitting there how can it how does it not go bad how it not? There's never mold on pet food. There's the cheeseburger. 20 years. Oh, my God. A Utah man. 20. Well, there's your answer, Megan. It doesn't even look like that one's been in the refrigerator.

No, just sitting there. I don't think hers was either. Dang. This guy's just hoarding cheeseburgers. This guy's got a 14-year-old cheeseburger. There's quite a few of them. He just breaks it out every year for an update. Oh, my God. That's insane. few of them. He just breaks it out every year for an update. Oh, my God.

That's insane. That's insane. The pickle went bad. Yeah, the pickle went bad. Pickle kind of, he's got it. He's got the receipt. That's incredible. How much was it?

79 cents. 79 cents. Not much more now, which is pretty shocking. Yeah. But there's a consequence. There's a consequence for all that. But what I was saying about my dog, he was getting fat and we were lowering the amount of food that he was eating

because of that and increasing his exercise. And he still just, it just did. And then I was thinking, I wouldn't eat that. Why am I feeding him what I would eat? And so I started feeding him, well, I was feeding him elk meat. So I'd get, I'd shoot an elk and I'd take some of the ground meat and that's what I would use in his dog food, and I'd cut it up. And boy, he would just dive on that food. I mean, he couldn't get it in his mouth quick enough. To him, it was what he was supposed to be eating. Now, when we switched over to the stuff we're using right now, there's a bunch of companies that do it really well, and they sell real food for dogs.

And it's frozen and it's cut up into cubes and it's just basically raw meat and some vegetables and some blueberries and stuff like that. And it's changed everything, changed his coat, his body slimmed down. He's got way more energy, his endurance. When I throw the ball for him, he's got way more energy. It's incredible. It's incredible. But of course it is. I mean, it just makes sense. You think about the high instances of cancer in dogs, and also the high instances of cancer in human beings that have been correlated to preservatives and all sorts of environmental contaminants that are in human beings' diets. It just makes sense that that would be in your, especially since the vast majority of dogs are being fed these processed, preserved, industrialized foods. Yeah, here's another one, too. We brought Marshall some rawhides, and I think he'll completely love it. But, you know, there's another part of it. And so we became fast friends with a pet food manufacturer in Atlanta, Whole Dog Market, who also coined farmhounds. They're really, really great people. But they told me about the fact that, you know, puppies chew and,

you know, you hate your puppy because it chews up all your stuff, your, you know, your seat, your chair legs, your shoes and whatever it is. And, you know, you spank the puppy and you know they learn not to chew and whatever else happens but truthfully chewing for dogs is uh is is soothing for them you know it's it's something that uh is calming it relieves stress it's a natural behavior they're used to having to gnaw their food off of a carcass that they've run down or whatever else it is. And so, you know, it is sad to think that we have turned dog food into something, you know, little bites that can be gulfed down and we don't give dogs something to chew on. And then they get in trouble for chewing on your shoes or chewing on your chair leg when that is how animals evolved for thousands of years?

Yeah, it's natural behavior. It's also changed the way human beings' jaws are. You know, the reason why human beings get crowded teeth and smaller jaw bones is because we stop chewing on meat. We stop chewing on food that's real food and we start eating mush and when you do that over generation and generation the the human body changes that's right yeah it's very bizarre i brought you some gum and it's from turkey and it's it's it's called phalem i don't know if i'm saying that right but it's exactly for that and i have chewed it for probably a year and a half. And it is the best stress dealing with mechanism that I have. It is, you know, there's just something to be said for chewing. Yeah, they sell that stuff.

I think it's called masticating gum. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a huge fan. It's actually good for your jaw. Boxers actually use that. I'm not a boxer. Shocking.

I know. It's good for their jaw, their jaw muscles. Yeah. It's good for mine. There's also a product called Jawsercise that I use. It's a rubber thing that you put in your mouth. I weight lift with my jaw, believe it or not. I put this thing in between my teeth and I go like this.

And I do reps with my jaw. Let's insert a video of you doing that on this episode. It's made my jaw muscles bigger, 100%. I was going to say something about it. You can see it in my face. I mean, your jaws, they look good, man. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

I'm very proud of my jaws. But there's people that go crazy with it, and there's a community online of people that have overused their jaw muscles to the point where they develop these massive, bull-mastiff jaw muscles on the side of their face. And it becomes, like, kind of a weird thing, like, almost like anorexia or something. Like, you know, they get obsessed with jaw muscles.

That's disgusting. Yeah, there's, like, before and after photos of these people that have just developed these. Because they want a square jaw, right? So in doing that will give you a square jaw because that's where it comes from. It comes from this muscle right here, this fat muscle right here. You could build that muscle just like you could build your biceps or any other muscle. You build

it from chewing. A lot of people are just eating mush. What do they want when they want a steak? Oh, I want a tender steak. It's one of the things that people don't like about game meat is that it's chewy. Or grass-fed beef. We did a tremendous amount of education for cooking grass-fed beef. And for the first several years that we had our e-commerce online store, we had consumers call and say, it's like shoe leather. You know, it's so tough.

And you say, well, how did you cook it? And you walk them through. And, you know, that has really cut down as consumers have become more familiar with it. But the fact that it melts in your mouth, meat's not supposed to melt in your mouth. No, it's not. That's not the way that works. Well, I'm not a big fan of Kobe beef. But when I look at like when they slice Kobe beef and they talk about how expensive it is

because of all the marbling, I'm like, that thing's dying. Like that is a sick animal. That is like a severely morbidly obese human being. If you took a slice out of them, it's going to look like that. Just a deep, just fat is everywhere. It overcomes the food where you're, you're eating it and you just, it like coats your mouth. And some people like it, you know, in like small pieces. Okay you want if that's what you're into me i like grass-fed beef i'd like a dark rich ribeye steak where it looks like a dark red like a cow's supposed to look like a bison steak if you eat a grass-fed bison steak and you cut into it that

is a dark red and that's what you're supposed to eat that's nutrient dense it's better for you it's much higher in protein you know That's what I like about wild game. When I'm eating wild game, I'm eating this animal that is essentially eating and living the way it's lived for thousands and thousands and thousands of years with no input from human beings whatsoever. And there's some companies that do that, like Certified Piedmontese has a very specific cow that's much higher in protein than other cows because it's leaner and it looks different it's darker but you have to cook it differently and the way i cook it and the way i tell people to cook game is uh what's called a reverse sear method so i cook it very slowly until i get it up to an internal temperature of like 120 degrees or 115 degrees.

Then I sear the outside of it to give it a nice crust. And it's tender that way. And that way you get all the flavor of the meat. But it's not tender like Kobe beef. It's still a little chewy, but it's flavorful. It's delicious and moist. And it's great for you. You know, the life expectancy of a cow is like 24 years of age.

And a feedlot animal wouldn't live much over two. Wow. Obesity. Yeah. Tell them about the story about the presidential pardon. Yeah, I tell them that truly the way we raise cattle, they live to be 24 years old. We don't do that, but that's what they would do.

And I've always wanted to take a feedlot animal and give it a presidential pardon and say, we're not going to slaughter you. We're going to see how long you'll live. And keep one in the feedlot and then turn one loose out there in the pasture with my cows. And I can guarantee you the fully feedlot animal wouldn't last but maybe three years or four years or five years. Yeah, no one wants to do that because you've got one of your friends. Say, let me make you a deal. Let's put a special tag on this cow. Put a little ear tag so nobody slaughters it, and let's see what's up. They'd be like, no thanks.

No. How long do you think it would last, a feedlot animal? You know, I've never done it. I don't have a feedlot anymore. And when I did, I needed to sell them to get the cash flow, so I don't know that. But it wouldn't be long because they are

dying of all the diseases of obesity and sedentary lifestyle that kills people. Right. They wouldn't last long. As well as eating food that they're not really supposed to be eating. Yeah. Like when you, people love a grain-fed animal because it's obese.

That's really what they like when they look for a lot of marbling. That's obesity. That's what you're getting, and that's what makes it juicy and delicious. But that's also what makes it sick. And that's also why they have to use so many antibiotics. Yeah know i'm sure you've seen there was a documentary i forget what the documentary was but there was a documentary where they showed various cows and that these cows all these diseases that these cows encounter because of eating that way and all the the chemicals that they have to use the antibiotics they have to use and the antibiotics they

have to use to treat these cows and the unintended consequences those have on the consumer. Well, you know, a concern is antibiotic resistance because we use those antibiotics, the pathogens that when they're not sick, the cows are really not sick. It just makes them gain weight faster. Antibiotics make a cow gain weight faster? Yeah. Sub-therapeutic. How does it do that? You know, it's got to do with the rumen. I don't know that, but it's got to do with that.

You know, a cow, the way they digest is there are microbes in the rumen, the gut, that breaks down the cellulose or grain, and somehow that antibiotics enhances that procedure. I don't know that. It probably keeps them functioning while still eating an unnatural diet. Here it says, the damage caused by antibiotics depends upon the mechanism of action, dosage, treatment, duration, and administration route. Antibiotics given at low doses to animals have the notable effect of increasing weight,

a practice termed sub-therapeutic antibiotic treatment, and used since 1946 in livestock. Wow. And, you know, we only have a certain number of antibiotics. And when we use them indiscriminately at very low levels, resistance and pathogen spills up. Yeah. So we put ourselves at risk of losing these life-saving drugs that we depend on. And also the rise of MRSA. You know, medication-resistant staph infections are huge in this country.

I mean, it's such a giant issue when people get surgery or if they get cuts. And, you know, in the jiu-jitsu community, it's a giant issue. And I have several friends that have gone through lengthy hospital stays because they developed staph infection that didn't respond to antibiotics. And it got systemic. And it's life-threatening. And people have died from it. And it's something very scary because they're pumping you full of antibiotics intravenously and it's not working. The antibiotics are not killing this bacteria and this bacteria is consuming the person.

Scary, scary stuff. We're playing around with nature itself and we're playing around with nature itself essentially just for profit. Well, and unknowingly, you know, I mean, we don't know what the effects of this stuff's going to be, but for short-term profits, you know, that's one of the major, I think, differences between businesses like ours and corporations. You know, corporations are so steadily focused on quarterly reports and profits and, you know, whatever else. And there have been so many decisions. In fact, all of the big decisions recently, certainly, that when we get together, my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, my dad, and he says, you know, do you want to buy this land? I'll die before it's paid off.

Is this something y'all want to do? And he abstains from the vote. And, you know, my sister, my wife, my brother-in-law, we all decide if that's something we can or can't swing. And so businesses run like that for the longevity versus businesses for short-term profit have completely different motivations. Yeah. And, you know, we're seeing the health consequences of that with other things as well. I was watching this video the other day where this gentleman was talking about farm-raised salmon being one of the most toxic things that you can consume, which is so wild. If you think about salmon, salmon is just immediately associated with health. Like, oh, guy's eating salmon, must care about his health. Unless you're pregnant or...

Right, right, right, right. But people think about salmon as being one of the healthiest things. And so this guy holds open this fillet of salmon. See if you can find a video on it, Jamie. This guy takes this fillet of salmon, and it's a fresh piece of salmon, and he opens it up. And he's like, look at how easily these bones separate from the flesh. And the color of the flesh is very different, which is one of the reasons why they have to use dye. When you see a farm-raised salmon and it's a dark red color, a lot of times what you're getting is people putting food coloring on the salmon itself

in order to make it that color, which is great because if you get a wild salmon, it's from the insects that they consume that turns their flesh that color. It's crazy to me. When I listened to your episode with RFK and he was talking about the mercury levels in fish. Yeah. I mean, I was not a huge fish eater to begin with. But after that, I was like, whoa, this is incredible. Yeah, it's pretty wild.

It's pretty wild. The farm-raised salmon thing is really crazy because people just don't associate salmon at all with being something that's not good for you or food i mean why should consumers have to you know second guess the the the nutritional density of food you know because i've been in the confinement animal business with cattle and other species this thing about the fish doesn't surprise me a bit. Right. When you raise an animal as a monoculture, there are going to be problems with it.

It's just as simple as that. You're going against nature. And you're pissing on your britches to try to stay warm. Pissing your britches to stay warm. That's exactly right. Did you find a video of the farm-raised salmon? There are a lot of videos. I think I found what you were just talking about.

Because it's disturbing. Is it Paul Saladino probably? Yeah, he just put one up on social media. Paul did. So give me some volume on this. GMO corn, GMO soy, and medications to prevent overgrowth of bacterial infections because it's so unhealthy. All fish is going to accumulate some heavy metals, which is not a good thing,

but wild salmon is a much better choice than any Atlantic salmon. All Atlantic salmon is going to be farm-raised, and we know that these chemicals, PCBs, PBDEs, are endocrine disruptors. Yes, it's an animal food. It's not a plant food. But this is one of my least favorite. He doesn't bring it down. But this one gentleman takes a fillet. He takes a fresh fillet and opens it up for you to see it.

And he shows how this tissue is essentially just weak and soft. And it's just not the same. This just doesn't surprise me. You know, the ecosystems are meant to be different species operating in symbiotic relationships with each other. Yeah. And I don't care if it's cows or hogs or salmon or mealworm. It doesn't matter. When you raise it in a monoculture, problems will occur.

You fight nature. It's inevitable. You fight nature the whole time. That's right. There's just every reason for it not to work well. Yeah, and it seems like the whole movement of this happening has happened for so long, and we're just sort of getting aware of it now. I mean, I've just been aware of it over the last few years, the last decade or so.

But most people aren't even aware of it at all. You think of the vast majority of Americans hearing this are just going, what? What's going on? Like this is, now I have to pay attention to this too? And what do I do? But if you think about all the ecosystems that exist on the earth from tundra to desert to rainforest to alpine, on and on. There's not a monoculture anywhere.

I don't believe you can find one anywhere. Everywhere there are plants and animals and microbes living in symbiotic relationships with each other. Yeah. And when you step away from that, which is what we've done in industrial farming, whether it's plants or animals, whether it's peanuts or hogs, you're fighting nature every step of the way. And the only—the tools we use to fight nature all have an unintended consequence. And then we have to take another tool to fight that unintended consequence. And another, and another.

Similar to what she was talking about with medical interventions. I was going to start to say that what she described with the medical is exactly what we've done in food production. One expensive technological tool that we pay money for that fixes a problem but creates another

problem that requires another expensive technical tool and another and another and another and there's no way into it. You know one thing that I'll say is that it has been so interesting to watch nature balance itself. And the best example that we have of that is that, you know, we evolved as cattle people, you know, the first generation, you know, had multi-species and, you know, continued. And then we became a monoculture of cattle. And, you know, around 2012, we started diversifying again. The first non-cattle species that we introduced at White Oak Pastures was poultry. And we got good at raising them. And the way we insisted on raising poultry, like all the rest of the species, is in an environment where they can express their instinctive behavior. So cattle were meant to roam and graze.

Hogs were meant to root and wallow. Chickens were meant to roam and graze. Hogs were meant to root and wallow. Chickens were meant to peck and scratch. So our chickens were outside, unconfined, unrestricted. You know, they could walk to Atlanta if they wanted to. turned the chickens loose out on pasture, we noticed maybe around 2013, a few bald eagles settled in. And, you know, that's, oh, come, come look, this is awesome. You know, mating pair, it was really neat. We were proud of them. You know, how American can you be? You know, I mean, this is great. And then the, you know, they're migratory birds. So they left. And the next year there were probably eight or something. And it was like, man, that's really cool. You know, they went and had such a great time here. They told their friends and, you know, brought more back.

This is great. And then, you know, eight left. They migrated away. And, you know, 20 came. And the next year, even more. They migrated away and, you know, 20 came and the next year even more. And I think at one point there were single sightings, 84 bald eagles at White Oak Pastures at one time, whereas historically we had never had any bald eagles. I mean, I went 30 something years never seeing a bald eagle.

But then in a very short amount of time, there were 80 something. And they put us near about out of the pastured poultry business. But that is just a prime example of how nature will balance itself. Yes. How did you mitigate the effects of the bald eagles? Go ahead. A brilliant poultry manager that we had came up with a plan to put the—so we used guardian dogs. And the guardian dogs were out there loose with the birds, but they're nocturnal. The dogs are protecting the chickens from nocturnal predators, and the dogs are nocturnal,

so they're working their butts off from sundown to sunrise. For coyotes and things like that. Coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, possums, skunks, dot, dot, dot. But when the sun would come up, the dogs would go to the woods and bed down, and it was fine. But the eagles were daytime predators. We hadn't had that before. So they were eating us up. And actually, I mentioned that to you the last time I was home.

And I told you that we were at odds with the government about a payment. Reimbursement for a livestock indemnity program, LIP. Livestock indemnity program. And they wouldn't pay us. For the damages caused by a protected specie, specifically. If the birds were killed by a raccoon or a possum or a dog, but a protected specie like a cougar or a wolf or an eagle, I'm not allowed to protect my birds. So they pay.

And we spent a lot of money, but we collected our payment since I saw you last. Well, that's good news. Yeah. But is there a mitigation effort that you could do daytime that's natural to try to keep the eagles away? Well, we put the dogs in with the birds in the fencing. The dogs kept the Eagles at bay not not we don't get zero predation but it's limited predation and I don't want zero

predation I like seeing those bald eagles I just don't want to see 80. Dad calls it nature's tithe. Tithing to nature. That's a good way of putting it. I like it. There's one stealing a chicken. Yeah. They're beautiful birds. It's kind of creepy, though, that the American animal is just such a vicious raptor. Just a flying lizard. So, you know, as I said, an eagle killing a chicken and eating it or two or three is fine. They would kill dozens and dozens and dozens and not eat them. It was a sporting event to prove hierarchy.

So it was like, if I want to be at the top of the food chain, I kill more and more and more. I kid you not, I had a 4Runner, and I got up and got in my car to go to work. And you crank up your car, and then you look up, and there was the back end, the two feet and tail of a chicken on my car. And there was not chickens anywhere probably within a mile of my house where I park. So it was a bloody mess. Well, they have that same problem with wolves.

Surplus killing. Wolves will just have fun and just kill 18, 19 elk. There was an instance in Wyoming where there was like 18 or 19 cows that had been slaughtered by wolves and they just left them there. Because that's what they do. And it's rare for them to get a chance to kill some elk, especially when they reintroduce wolves and the elk haven't been accustomed to them. And now all of a sudden the wolves are there and the cows and the bulls don't exactly know what to do because they haven't encountered wolves before. And they just ran right through them.

They dropped the population in Yellowstone significantly, which is where they initially introduced them. But now they're, you know, there was an article today that I was reading about them in California, that they're seeing them and, you know, and they're migrating into California and some of them are being released in California by these wacky wildlife groups. Like I showed one that was in central California, it was near Bakersfield, this lone wolf that was in a cow pasture that a friend of mine had filmed, this beautiful big black wolf by himself that most likely was brought there by somebody.

Nature ain't kind and nature ain't cruel. She's so beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. But it is what it is. That's one of the issues I think that some people focus on with agriculture in general is that they they have these expectations that it is kind or it is walt disney world or it is beautiful we had a situation where we were um we were kidding so our goats were uh you know kidding and we were we were co-grazing a paddock so there were hogs in with goats and what what was the wire called the the bob or the page wire page wire

and a goat got her head stuck this is terrible i can't believe i'm saying the pigs ate the kid so she she had uh a kid and the you know the hog smelled the blood they came they they uh they ate the baby goats and as sad as it was, that is nature. Now, we don't kid with pigs anymore, but we learned our lesson. New rule, starting right now. We ain't going to do that no more. Yeah, well, it makes sense. It's incredible.

Pigs will eat everything, anything and everything. Yeah. Do you have an issue with pigs getting loose and becoming wild? And do your pigs look wild? Because pigs are one of the weird animals that is. They're not domesticated. It's like when people see a domesticated pig like Babe, right? They think of that's what pigs are like.

Pigs are one of the strangest animals because when you release them into the wild within a month or so, they start to metamorphosize. They do. They absolutely do. They get the tissues and longer snouts. Thicker fur. I have no idea how they do that. It's crazy. It's incredible.

But yes, we've had that. I wonder if that happens with people too. You know, you think about wild people. Kids going feral? Well, it's humans. If humans had to live in a wild, I mean, I think there's a certain amount of wild instincts that humans have that are suppressed by modern society. And rightly so. I mean, you want to live in a city, you have to suppress some of the natural instincts of predatory human beings.

You know, we have wild dogs. Yeah. Wild dogs behave differently. But they don't look different to me. Right, that's important. We've had cattle that got away. They didn't look any different to me. But somehow hogs just change.

Yeah, they change their actual physical features. Morph. Yeah, when people think of wild boars, they think that that's a different species, and it's not. And that's what's really wild. it's not and that's what's really wild it's one genus it's sues graffa it's the same thing which is so bizarre that's bizarre yeah you know uh i went pig hunting recently in california and uh this place that i go there's there's a lot of them and the pig that i shot doesn't look anything like a pig that you would see in a farm not at all it's just dark hairy thing with a long

nose and big tusks and it's a big sucker that's what we do so you know guys in austin go and sip cocktails at some of these neon light bars downtown the guys in bluffton they go hog hunting and some of the shit that they overturn i mean they're hogs big as this table yeah i mean it's it's incredible. But, you know, different breeds have different characteristics. There's a Gloucester Old Spot. There's a tan hog with black spots all over it. There's a Hampshire.

There's a black hog that's got a white band across his shoulders. On and on and on. There's a bunch of them. But when they go wild, they get that elongated snout. But, of course, the color doesn't change. So it's just incredible how that works. That is incredible. It's a strange animal.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a very bizarre animal that we domesticated. The fact that it does that, because I don't know of any other animal that morphs so quickly. Do you eat pork? Yeah. You do eat pork? Yeah. It's delicious.

Yeah, it's delicious. I like wild pork eat pork? Yeah. You do eat pork? Yeah. It's delicious. Yeah, it's delicious. I like wild pork too. Yeah. But, you know, obviously wild pork comes with the worry of trichinosis and all sorts of other things that they get. You just got to cook it. It doesn't worry me. Yeah, you just got to cook it.

Yeah, you just got to make sure that it's the right temperature. You know, you said something that was interesting that I can speak to. And, you know, something inside of you that wants to experience nature, you know, it's just something that's just atavistic, you know, about watching nature. And we have, you know, we have a lot of people visit white oak pastures every year. And one of the things that they love the most are our big cattle moves uh we've got how many breeding mamas that because a thousand head and then uh so a thousand head and we move them in the growing season every single day i saved a video uh that jamie can play or not play it doesn't matter um but uh customers people anybody loves to take a step back into time and into something that's just so, it just awakens your soul.

Look at all those cows. Wow. It's not just newcomers. I've been doing it for 60-something years, and I love watching the cattle move. Yeah. Wow, look at that. Pretty cool. They have not been in confinement.

They're coming out of a big pasture to go into a big pasture. But they had eaten it down. It is time for them to rotate. This is Scott, the cowboy. With his two working dogs. And it seems like instinctively they know this. And the dogs obviously are moving them along. They know exactly where they know this. And the dogs obviously are moving them along.

They know exactly where they're going. The dogs and the guy are really just to encourage the ones that don't feel good that day. Somebody's got a hurt foot. To go through. And now into this new pasture. Wow. That's wild. The next one's really great. That tunnel is under the four-lane road that goes through our farms.

Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. Hang on. This next scene is sort of like the, it's the big, there we go. That's it. That's the one. That's crazy. Look at all those cows.

That is wild. But they do that every day. Right. And people love, I love to see it. He loves to see it, he sees it every day. But there is, there's something inside of you that wants to be a part of that system. You go to a, you know, to a CAFO, to a confinement situation. Have you ever been to a, you know, feedlot? Confinement Animal Feeding Operations CAFO.

Jamie can Google it. Not up close. Jamie, will you Google a CAFO? And there's nothing about that that makes you want to watch it. It's so starkly different. It's like seeing people in prison. Yeah. You just know you don't watch it. Well, I was going to say that about pigs. I've seen

industrialized pig farms where they're all confined to these very small cages. It's terrible. It's very disturbing. And it's also, I mean, that's where disease gets. I mean, that's what human beings encountered when there was poor hygiene and no sanitation in the United States. It was the rise of a lot of plagues. You see a calf like that, they're probably feeding sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics in the feed to keep them from getting sick.

Look how many of them there are. And if you want a McDonald's cheeseburger. That's what it is. It's just so interesting because people don't associate. They say a cow is a cow is a cow. Cows are ruining the planet. Cow, cow, cow. There are no correlations between these

two systems that are the same. I mean, they're... No. It's completely different. And when they talk about cows causing ecological change, I agree. In that scenario, it's a different deal.

It's a totally different deal. I would challenge anybody to look at that video that you just posted and not say, oh, that looks normal. The video that you showed looks normal when they're running through the field, green grass, the cows are all roaming around eating the grass. That's what they're supposed to do. And they don't need sub-therapeutic antibiotics. Right. They're fine. But you're also getting a lower yield.

Yes. Yeah. And it takes longer. Yeah. I think an animal that we would slaughter weighs about 1,000 pounds and takes us like 36 months to get it there. A commodity animal would weigh 1,600 pounds. Up to. Up to 1,600 pounds and would take how long?

Less than two years. So, I mean. Yeah, a lot of difference in yield. A lot of difference in yield. A lot of difference in the volume and the amount of time. The cost per pound. Yeah, that makes sense. How many people have reached out to you?

Have a lot of people reached out to you after you've gone public with all this stuff and become sort of higher profile and wanted help in trying to figure out how they could do that for themselves? Yeah. We formed a nonprofit, 501C3, CFAR, Center for Agricultural. Resilience. Resilience.

That's the word. And we're training people. We have an internship program. We take six or eight per quarter four times a year. We get 20-something applications. We can't train everybody. We're not set up for that. We are increasing our capacity.

But it's not going to be a college. It's going to be a farm. But we do want to be generous and share what we've learned with other people. It's just, boy, it's beautiful what you guys do. It really is. And I think for a lot of people it's very satisfying to see, and it seems very natural and very normal, and it seems like the right way to go.

But for the vast majority of people that are getting their food, this is not going to be an option with what's currently required to feed 300-plus million people. Well, it's highly replicatable, and I understand what you're saying, but all these things that are going wrong with the big industrial production, that has problems, too. Yes. I don't know. The price is probably a lot closer per pound when you take in the external cost than industrial agriculture takes outside of the cost of producing food. Right. That's not at the per pound price on the label. But it would take someone a lot smarter than you or I to figure out how to scale that and

how to make that available for everyone and how to encourage people to do that. Because I don't think you're, I mean, I think the only way to encourage industrial farms to change is financially. Yeah. There has to be some sort of a cost. They have to be responsible for this damage they're doing. They have to be responsible. And then also the health consequences.

If someone starts saying, hey, what you're doing to these animals is having a direct effect on human beings that consume them, and you're responsible for that. If there's a change, it will be a consumer-led change. That's the only way it's going to happen. So it'll have to be a change of people voting with their money? There's no other way that's going to happen. And it's going to have to get really bad before that occurs on a wholesale basis. And what scares me is that that's when opportunists and people that have a lot of money and influence and people that are in positions of power are going to try to encourage people to do something else instead that's profitable. And they're going to try to blame cattle instead of blaming monocrop agriculture.

And they're going to try to force people to eat plant-based meat, which has really been interesting to me because that's one of the instances where people have voted with their dollar. It's really been interesting to me because that's one of the instances where people have voted with their dollar. Because when they first started introducing things like Beyond Meat or Impossible Meat or whatever the fuck it's called, when they started doing that stuff, you know, initially a lot of people were like, oh, this is great, until people tried it. Like, oh, my God, this is terrible. And then when people saw studies, it shows that it gives rats cancer. They're like, rats? Rats eat rats?

What's it going to do to me? Yeah, what is it going to do to me? And so the stock on those things has dropped off substantially. And because of that, there's been lawsuits where a lot of people invested in these things, hoping for a very specific amount of return. And it's not... They're not getting it. And people are not buying it.

Some people are buying it, but it's just a very, very small... In terms of what they thought it was going to be versus what it is now. And so now the new thing is 3D printed meat. Or cell grown meat. Yeah, cell grown meat, which is essentially the same thing, I think, because they're taking that cell grown meat and then they're using 3D printers to try to replicate it. Artificially created ribeye. It's bizarre.

And what are the health consequences of that? Like, who knows what, you know, what does that do for you? I have never been and am not economically threatened by this kind of technology meat. You know, I don't have a very big customer base. And they're not going to swing from where I am way over there. Right. Of course. I think that the entities that are threatened by this high-tech meat is the big meat companies

that are industrially producing meat. And evidence of that is a lot of them have invested in that. Yeah. No, I think they are. And I think they do realize that the plant-based meat is a bust. And also, more and more people are becoming aware of the health consequences of industrial seed oils and how many of these industrial seed oils are used in the processing and creation of these artificial plant-based meats.

And, you know, these things cause inflammation. They cause a host of health problems in people's bodies. Yeah, his mother grew up cooking everything in lard. And then when Crisco came along, that was like the thing. You know, like these vegetable oils, these canola oil, sunflower oil. It was like this very stark change. And one thing that has been interesting for me is that in the last 24 months, our suet fat and pork lard is one of the fastest moving items that we sell. It's because people refuse to cook

in canola oil and peanut oil and whatever. And they're finally becoming aware. It used to be a disposal problem. Yeah, that's right. We put in a... Biodiesel? Yeah, a biodiesel converter.

You know, so most of the stuff that we have that's waste, we can compost. Compost, fat does not compost well. Most of the stuff that we have that's waste, we can compost. Fat does not compost well. So we spent a lot of money on a biodiesel converter that didn't work worth a thing. So the idea was to convert fat into diesel? Yeah, and we did. The yield was terrible? It's hard.

Better for food. We were just trying to get rid of it. Right. And now I have a biodiesel converter I would love to sell. Gas gas so cheap. Because we sell all our lard and tallow, all the beef and pork fat. Well, I think that is because of education and unintended education that's not public education. This is education that's coming from people discussing this on podcasts and people that are reading articles about the consequences of industrial seed oils. Also the origins of these industrial seed oils,

that they're originally industrial lubricants that weren't designed for human consumption. And then I had Gary Brekka on the podcast the other day, a fascinating guy, who details the process that's involved in converting rapeseed oil, which is canola oil, into what they think of. When people think of canola oil, they think, oh, it's corn oil. It's healthy. It's vegetable oil. Good for you. No, no, no. Your body's not supposed to eat that. It's not supposed to get that much of it, first of all. Also, it's rancid, and they have to use chemicals to treat the smell. They have to bleach it to make it clear. There's like so many things that are involved in the processing of that junk,

and then you put it in your body, and it causes a host of problems. And people are finally becoming aware of these problems and also becoming aware of other options like olive oil, avocado oil, healthy oils, animal fat. It's like fast food. There is no fast food that's cooked in animal fat. Right. There are, you know, if you eat fast food is 100% seed oils.

Right. So there's a real rub because there is all this education around what seed oils are doing. But, you know, people say, oh my gosh, I can't go out and eat. You know, Paul Saladino has been so instrumental in that. Yes. And, you know, McDonald's used to cook their fries in lard. They sure did. Hey, McDonald's.

How about go back? Taller, wasn't it? Yeah. It was Taller. Taller. Beef fat. Beef fat, yeah. And they're so good.

And they spent a fortune. To's tallow. Tallow, yeah. Beef fat, yeah. Beef fat, yeah. And they're so good. Yeah. And they spent a fortune. To make them worse. And to try to make the vegetable taste like the tallow cooked. Yeah. It's crazy. It's, I mean, French fries cooked in tallow. Shit. Tastes good.

It's good. It does taste good. And it's not as bad for you. Here it is. Like most fried foods, McDonald's fries are cooked in canola oil. Didn't used to be the case. Beef towel was initially used because the supplier for the chain couldn't afford vegetable oil. As health concerns over saturated fat grew in the 1990s, fuckers, McDonald's finally made the switch to vegetable oil. What drives me nuts about that saturated fat thing is that's a

small number of scientists that were bribed what is essentially the equivalent of $50,000 in today's market oh man so these guys were they were bribed by the sugar industry to write a bullshit article that made this connection between saturated fat and heart disease because they were trying to lead people away from the the actual conclusion is that it's. And that sugar is what's bad for everybody. And that's what's causing the increase. It's all these corn oils. But research today is exactly the same.

Who's writing the check? What do you want the paper to say? What outcome are we looking for? It's so scary. It is scary. It's scary because the consumer, for the most part, relies upon the air quote experts. And these air quote experts, like we detailed because the consumer, for the most part, relies upon the air quote experts. That's right. And these air quote experts, like we detailed with the FDA, how they go immediately into some sort of a cushy job in these corporations afterwards.

It's sick. It's really twisted. And the unintended consequences for the consumer is your health. And you don't even know what's going on behind the scenes. You trust these experts. You trust these governing bodies to do the right thing. And when they make things illegal or they ban things, you think, oh, they're banning things because it's bad for you. And it turns out, no, some of the things they're banning for you are very good for you.

But they compete with some of the things that are paying them off. That they can profit from. That they can profit from. Spooky stuff. But the only way that changes is through education. And then you're seeing these downstream effects of that education like with the fact that you guys are selling lard and tallow now.

People are waking up. And liver and kidneys and hearts. We used to literally compost all those kinds of organs we'd sell a few but now we sell out of those kinds of organs yeah i think the some of the highest priced per pound meat items that we sell are the most nutrient dense parts of the carcass oh my god how God. How about that? It's crazy. How about that? People are eating for nutritional benefit? Finally.

Shocking. You know what coyotes eat the first night they kill a calf? The guts. The guts. Yeah, they go right for the liver. That's what wolves eat. The alpha wolf is the one that first gets the liver when there's a kill. Watching nature has been so interesting.

Just to tell that story a little deeper, you know, Dad always said if a bad herdsman has a calf go down, the first night the coyote will chew through the anus and eat the most nutrient-dense parts of the carcass, the liver, the kidneys, the spleen, and it's full. You know, they can't eat more than they can hold, and it's not like they're going to preserve it and store it. So, you know, they leave, they rest during the day. And if the farmer doesn't pick up that carcass the next night, they'll come back and eat the muscle meats. So they'll chew on the shoulder, the back legs, and, you know, they'll eat till they get full. And then they'll retreat. They'll, you know, sleep during the day.

And then if the farmer still does not pick up that dead carcass, they'll chew on the hide. And, you know, there's a lot that goes into like the hair indigestion and pushing it through the stomach. But that's the way animals evolved. And the first thing that they eat, we so pretentiously want ribeyes and New York strips and filet mignon, when in reality, the most nutrient dense parts of the carcass are so far from that the liver and the heart it's a lot with hunters unfortunately when I go hunting I always take the liver

and the heart from the elk and some people just don't do it they just leave it there it's unfortunate because it's the best stuff for you but elk liver is rough that's an acquired one do it. They just leave it there. It's unfortunate because it's the best stuff for you. That's right. But elk liver is rough. That's an acquired one. You got to season that, cook it with onions, and it's like, you got to be ready. You got to be ready. That's a flavor.

Take it like a capsule. Well, you know, it's interesting because the Comanches used to eat it raw with bile on it. They used to eat bison, raw bison, and they would flavor it with bile. Wow. Yeah, they would squirt bile on it. That's incredible. I don't know why. I mean, it has to be some sort of an evolutionary thing where they realize that that's the most nutritious,

that has the best benefits, it's best for you. I don't know whether it aids in digestion. I don't know. Well, there are tribes in Africa that still drink blood. Yeah. That's not as rough, though. Blood. They drink blood.

They drink blood mixed with milk. Blood doesn't taste that bad. You know, I've drank blood before. It's not that bad. But it's bile? That's another level. And you have to wonder how cultures evolve their their their taste buds and their preferences um anthony bourdain told me that the most disgusting food that he had ever eaten was um this fermented shark

that he ate i believe it was in iceland and he said it's a delicacy to them and they treasure it and they they eat it and he said you eat it it's rough he like, it is so foul and so disgusting, but they like it. And it's a weird thing. Acquired tastes are very bizarre. Because why would you acquire that taste? Who came up with that? Yeah, what is that? I used to think that when I was a kid.

The first time I ever had a taste of whiskey, I was like, what? This is not Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid is so much better. I remember thinking that as a kid. If I had a glass of Kool-Aid or a glass ofAid is so much better. I remember thinking that as a kid. Like if I had a glass of Kool-Aid or a glass of whiskey, who the fuck is going to take the whiskey? You got used to it though, didn't you? You get used to it. It becomes an acquired taste.

Now I really like an old scotch. I like it. I actually like an ice cube, a nice 18-year-old scotch. It's good, you know? A glass of Buffalo Trace with an ice cube in it. I enjoy it. But how? How does one acquire taste for something that's initially so disgusting?

And why? You know, I get it with whiskey because it gets you lit. I do not get it with certain foods. Like, I guess fermented shark, it was probably a survival thing. Yeah. They probably, like, needed some food that they could store for long periods of time when they weren't going to have any food, especially in places like Iceland. It's a very rough climate. That's right.

But that's neither here nor there. If people could eat a little bit of liver in their diet, I mean, I have friends that are very health conscious that only eat it for the health benefits. They don't enjoy it, but they'll eat one ounce of liver every day. That's right. Freeze it, cut it into little cubes, and drop it in the back of your mouth. Yep, you can do it that way. Just get through it. Tell you like a capsule. But boy, you put some liver in front of Marshall,

she just can't eat it fast, and she plunges on it. I've fed him some elk liver. I'll slice off a piece and give it to him. And he's like, come on, come on, you got some more? You got some more? Like, this is incredible. It's like instinctive. It's in his DNA that that is what he wants. I had a boxer who is still to this day like my BFF.

She died like three years ago and I'm still not over it. But I trained her with liver and I would go to the kill floor at the plant, get some, cut it into little bites and I'd train her until she puked and then she'd be ready to go again. That's crazy. Yeah. Food training is the best way to train a dog. Especially with liver. Yeah. Especially with liver. It is fascinating that we've moved away from that to the point where people crave the least healthy things like, you know, fucking Cheetos. You know,

like we, I don't know what it is. I don't, I guess, well, I think specifically in the case of, like, really unnutritious food that you can buy, junk food, is that these scientists have engineered these things, the right amount of saltiness, the right amount of sweet and flavors that, you know, what's the Pringles thing? Bet you can't eat just one. Yeah, I see. Yeah, and kind of you can't. Pop one and you can't stop. Yeah.

Oh, my God. For me, it's Ruffles. Because of the thickness. You buy half a bag and you don't get mad about it. Oh, my God. I can't stop. I can't stop. I just keep chewing them down.

I know it's terrible for you. Doritos. That's another one. Like, what is on Doritos? Cool Ranch Doritos. They have never met a Cool Ranch in their fucking life. What is a Cool Ranch? I don't know ranch in their life but what is a cool ranch oh yeah that is a cool ranch that's right cool you guys have a cool ranch that's a cool ranch

yeah it's a different thing yeah but you're not going to see white oak pastures doritos no you're right yeah it is interesting how our our food system has been hijacked and how – The expectation for food to be so incredibly flavorful. Yes. That's the expectation now. Yes. And you do get accustomed to it. You get accustomed to certain sort of tastes. And that's one of the reasons why people think that wild meat is gamey.

That's the concern, whether wild meat is gamey. And most of that, when they talked about wild game, it's really just a poor handling of the meat. It's allowing the meat to get too hot to sit in the sun, not cooling the animal down, not getting it on ice fast enough. That's really what dragging it through the sagebrush after you've slaughtered it. You know, that's really what it is. Yeah, culturally, we eat grits and drink sweet tea and eat fried vegetables. There's a lot of cultural stuff there.

Yeah, a lot of cultural stuff. And then you get accustomed to those foods, and they become comfort foods. And unfortunately, a lot of those comfort foods are really terrible for you. You know, one of the things that Gary, that when we discuss these things, when I discuss these things with experts, I'm always blown away by things that I didn't know before. And what Gary Brekow was talking about the other day was folate and that these enriched flowers that are enriched with folate, which is very different than folic acid, which is naturally occurring. Or it's the opposite. Folic acid is what's not, right? What is it? One's a really big deal to pregnant it is normal folate is yeah, I made it backwards

Yeah, I saw I made it backwards Folate is naturally occurring but folic acid is not and your body doesn't process is the same so when you're getting all these enriched flowers They're enriched with something that your body doesn't want. Your body's like, what is this shit? And that's why so many people, on top of the fact that a lot of,

you know, they've changed the way wheat is grown to make it more high yield, so it's got more complex glutens in it, and then it's enriched with folate, or folic acid, rather. Yeah, it's terrible for you.

Well, again, we're not really growing food anymore. We're growing food like ingredients that can then be manufactured into something that's put into a package with a shiny label that may or may not be indicative of what's actually in the package. And then we serve it to people at something that they can afford. Yeah. Well, I'm very, very, very thankful for people like you, that you folks have, first of all, made this incredibly difficult decision to take your farm and to convert it over much cost and heartache and a lot of pain and a lot of back-breaking work to turn it into this regenerative farm. And then you've gone out and told the world and you've shown that it could be done. And you've shown, especially through these videos where people can see it and through these conversations that we've had where people can become educated that we don't you don't have to eat that way.

You don't have to live that way. And you're not supposed to. It's not good for you. It's not good for the world. It's not good for the environment. It's it's it's not good for anybody. And that if it wasn't for people like you that made this decision, it's a very difficult decision to do this, I think the conversations that we've had, the conversations you've had with other people, and writing this book, and having these people understand these things has changed the way most people think and feel about food itself.

Thank you, Jamie. Made a little spill here. But I'm very, very thankful that you guys have done this. And also Joel Salatin, who's been on this podcast before, has a very similar type of operation at Polyface Farms. And I know there's some other ones too, so shout out to them as well. But if it wasn't for you folks, I mean, who knows? Who knows where we'd be at?

I think people would be stuck without a solution because even the term grass-fed beef when i was a kid you never heard about grass-fed beef that wasn't even a term that people were familiar with it's a fairly new understanding and i think that if it wasn't for people like you that are out there shouting it from the barn tops you know i would say rooftop but this is you know you're doing it the right way. I appreciate you guys very much. Well, thank you for those kind words, but I really don't feel like we deserve them.

The quality of our life has increased so dramatically. And really, it's almost the opposite. I don't feel like anything we've done, we've done for other people. We did it for ourselves. But I'm delighted that other people have benefited from it. And now what I wish is that more farmers could share in the improved lifestyle that we now enjoy. Not necessarily economic, but otherwise. And I wish that that would make more of this food available for more consumers who would embrace it.

I mean, everybody's boat floats on that rising tide, but it's just really hard to get it started. It's just really hard to get it started. It's just really difficult. And, you know, sadly, the good news is that there are those of us out there, not just us, but a number of us, that have shown that it can be done. The bad news is it's probably harder today than it was 25 years ago. Why is it harder? than it was 25 years ago.

Why is it harder? Because the industrial food company is moving to come into the space. Like this whole thing. To greenwash product. Greenwash product, yes. With imported product and words that are so loosely defined and not indicative of the attributes that they represent. Like free range. Yeah.

Yeah, and product of the USA, what you highlighted earlier. But, you know, if we could move the way we produce food, consume food in this country, the consumers would be so much better off, the producers would be so much better off, the land, the water, rural landscape. It's just win, win, win. And today, the winners are big multinational food producing corporations and high-tech corporations. And I've got to imagine that for you, the personal satisfaction of running a farm the way you do has got to be much greater. It's got to feel much better on your conscience. It's got to feel much more natural.

Yeah. And it's every sense of the word. You know, to be in that one click in that path of food production, food delivered from the farmer to the consumer, I don't think anybody ever enjoys that. It's just the hand that's dealt us. But when you take control of your own tiny, tiny little food production system, it's just great. It's just great.

And the evidence here is I've got – Jenny's here with me, but I need to mention, I've got another daughter, Jody, who came back here, her wife, Amba, my son-in-law, John, they wouldn't have come back if I was an industrial beef producer like I used to be. They wouldn't have wanted to, and I wouldn't have encouraged them to. But the fact that we've made these changes has created an entity that, while we're not blown away with profits, it's just very, very pleasant to be part of. That's beautiful. Well, thank you very much for being here, both of you. Really, really appreciate you and appreciate what you're doing. And tell everybody to get this book.

It's called A Bold Return to Giving a Damn. Will Harris, White Oaks Pastures. Thank you very much, sir. Made your business card. All right. Beautiful. That was actually a rib bone of a cow. Nice.

And then so the meat went, obviously, to be sold as grass-fed beef. The bones were boiled for stock. So we sell some broth. And then the leftover of that we turn into business cards. Dad's got one that he's been carrying around for a very long time. It lasts for years. That's a crazy business card. And he'll say, if you want to get in touch with me, you better take a picture.

That's awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here. Appreciate you. Bye, everybody. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here. Appreciate you. Bye, everybody. Thank you.