The Meat Mafia Podcast

Will Harris owns White Oak Pastures and is a transformative thinker in the world of agriculture. In the 1990s, Will took his father's farming practices and began evolving them toward a input, closed-loop system (often referred to as Regenerative Agriculture today). At the time, Will didn't think much about the changes he was making on the farm. That is not to say no thought was put into the changes he was making, but Will felt that the changes he was making were intuitive as opposed to innovative. His suspicions and struggles on the farm led him to experiment with raising his animals as nature intended: in line with nature. The changes he has seen on his farm since then have been nothing short of amazing. Will has returned nutrients back to the soil and enriched the life on his land by eliminating harmful chemicals, and relying on multi-speciation and systems that support natural dependencies.

In 2019, White Oak Pastures partnered with General Mills to create a Life Cycle Analysis of the amount of carbon his farm put back into the soil compared to conventional practices. This is a profound piece of research that contradicts what many people believe about agriculture and its potential impact on climate.

In our conversation with Will, we discussed:

- How did White Oak Pastures come to be?
- Building a legacy on the land
- Welfare farming & its effect on our health
- A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: Changing Our Culture
- Carbon sequestration, the water cycle, and returning life back to the land

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TIME STAMPS

1:04- History of White Oak Pastures
5:00- Starting to change agricultural practices
7:35- Discovering other farms for inspiration
9:25- How do you know you’re making the correct change?
21:26- His friendship with Gabe Brown
22:50- CFAR: Center for Agricultural Resilience
24:20- Future evolutions for White Oak
29:30- Building Community in Bluffton
36:30- Rail against the empire of Big Ag & Big food
38:30- The concentration of power in Agriculture & beyond
44:30- Marketing the product
50:40- Decline of quality at Whole Foods 
53:20- Fix the labeling laws 
56:00- Pride in efficiency
58:00- Supply chains
01:00- Experience through Covid
01:04- The carbon argument
01:14- Externalized cost & outsourcing
01:16- Climate Smart Commodity grant
01:20- Perspective on the USDA
01:27- Subsidies in agriculture
01:32- Growing cow feed: Truly closed systems
01:33- Pork & Poultry: Is it as bad as people say?
01:40- Baring the cost of Big Ag
01:43- Are you encouraged by where we’re heading?
01:48- Building a Legacy at White Oak
01:51- Taking care of yourself 
01:54- What is Will Harris proud of?