Will Harris: Fourth-generation farmer and owner of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, a leading regenerative-agriculture operation that hand-butchers pasture-raised animals.
What this episode covers
Will Harris describes converting his family's industrial monoculture cattle farm into a 3,200-acre regenerative operation raising five poultry and five red-meat species in symbiosis. He argues that misapplied technology born from WWII munitions factories, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics and hormone implants broke the natural cycles of soil, water and carbon. He explains that ruminant animals managed correctly actually sequester carbon, citing a life-cycle assessment showing his beef removes 3.5 lbs of CO2 per pound while Impossible Burger emits the same. He critiques big food greenwashing (Whole Foods' Global Animal Partnership step ratings), USDA capture by big agriculture, and the narrative that cattle destroy the earth. He frames his work as replicable but not scalable, sustained by committed consumers and the local economy he revived in one of America's poorest counties.
The guest's own work
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
Penguin Viking Random House
“we actually sold the book rights to White Oak pastures... it'll be published this time next year and it's called a bowl return to giving a damn”— Will Harris
White Oak Pastures grass-fed beef
White Oak Pastures
“I'm Will Harris I'm the fourth generation of my family to own and manage White Oak pastures”— Will Harris
Praise the Lord (lard)
White Oak Pastures
“all of the pork fat goes into lard we got a product called Praise the Lord”— Will Harris
Big reveals from this episode
- Feedlot cattle are 'unnaturally obese,' slowly dying of obesity-related disease; if pardoned from slaughter they'd live only a year more.
- His farm's soil organic matter rose from 0.5% to over 5%, sequestering roughly 100,000 pounds of carbon per acre that was once greenhouse gas.
- A life-cycle assessment shows his grass-fed beef sequesters 3.5 lbs CO2 per pound while Impossible Burger emits 3.5 lbs per pound.
- He's been fighting USDA for years over ~$190,000 owed for bald eagle predation losses, suspecting big poultry influence.
- He sold Whole Foods their first American grass-fed beef but now accuses them of greenwashing via the Global Animal Partnership step rating.
- His farm grew from 3 employees to 180 with a $100,000 weekly payroll, reviving Bluffton, Georgia from a ghost town.
- Ammonium nitrate fertilizer came from repurposed WWII munitions factories, with salesmen handing farmers free bags to hook them.
Worth remembering
- A video shows water runoff that is clear on his land but muddy brown on his neighbor's conventional farm, split at the property line.
- He fights invasive tropical soda apple with a beetle imported from Paraguay instead of using Roundup.
- Kudzu can be eradicated by grazing cattle, sheep, goats and hogs that eat it to death.
- Bald eagles 'spree killed' dozens of his pastured birds daily until electric netting kept guard dogs in with the flocks.
- One inch of rain on an acre is about 27,000 gallons; 5% organic soil can absorb a five-inch rain event.
- Slaughter generates about nine tons of 'nutrient stream' weekly, all composted back onto the land for zero waste.
- Hormone pellets are implanted behind cattle ears to speed growth, a multi-billion dollar industrial practice.
- A single oyster filters 50 gallons of water a day; Apalachicola Bay oystering was banned as numbers collapsed.