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Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures, has been a guest on Sustainable Dish many times. This time, he is joined by his daughters, Jenni and Jodi. They are part of the 5th generation in this 6-generation family farm in Bluffton, Georgia. They’ve helped turn White Oak into more than a farm but a tourist destination.
On this episode of the show, I chat with the Harris Family about how White Oak Pastures has evolved over the years and revitalized the town of Bluffton. Not only do they ship their high-quality meat all over the US, but they also offer:
- Home goods made from byproducts from their herds,
- Workshops and educational events for those who want to learn more about regen ag
- A full-scale restaurant that serves 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, featuring ingredients fresh from the farm
- And an RV park and cabin rentals so you can see it all for yourself
Will latest project is his book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations in the Future of Food. It’s out now!
I am asking my community to go out and get the book immediately. First-week sales are critical in helping a book get on bestseller lists. This is not simple for the accolades. When a book is distinguished on these lists, it brings the media, which means more attention to the regenerative agriculture movement. Let’s work together to get the word out.
Then come back and listen in while I chat with Will, Jenni, and Jodi about:
- Transitioning White Oak Pastures from industrial farming to regenerative farming
- Jenni and Jodi’s roles at the farm
- What White Oak has done for the town of Bluffton
- The Center for Agricultural Resilience (CFAR)
- White Oak as a zero-waste facility
- The lodging side of the business
- Learning the logistics of selling online
- Running a resilient business
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 268: White Oak Pastures
Resources:
100,000 Beating Hearts by Peter Byck
Center for Agricultural Resilience
A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations in the Future of Food
Connect with White Oak Pastures:
Website: White Oak Pastures
Book: A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
Instagram: @whiteoakpastures
Facebook: White Oak Pastures
YouTube: White Oak Pastures
X (Twitter): @whiteoakpasture
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. Go to sustainabledish.com/join and check it out!
And if you’re looking for a guide to get your diet back on track so you feel your very best, plus learn more about meat’s role in a healthy, sustainable, and ethical food system, check out Sustainavore.
This is my signature course to help you eat for your health, the planet, and your values. For more information, head to Sustainavore and sign up!
Show support for the podcast by visiting our sponsors:
LMNT is my favorite electrolyte company. It’s a delicious blend of sodium, magnesium, and potassium to keep you hydrated better than water alone. It’s sugar-free and has no dodgy ingredients. Electrolytes are also important in regulating your immune system, helping to keep you healthy during the colder months of cold and flu season.
You can place your order and free sample pack of flavors with any purchase at sustainabledish.com/LMNT
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at globalfoodjustice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Sustainavore Ad)
If you’re looking for a guide to help you get your diet back on track to help you feel your very best and to learn more about meat’s role in a healthy and sustainable and ethical food system, then I highly recommend you take my Sustainavore course. I’ve condensed all of my knowledge in human nutrition and agriculture and have made it accessible to everyone in eight easy modules. There are quizzes, tips, and motivational emails to keep you on your journey. It also comes with a free cookbook and other great bonuses. So, eat for your health, the planet and your values. Head to sustainavore.com today and check it out.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the Sustainable Dish podcast. And I am so happy to not just have Will Harris, but his two beautiful daughters here with us as well to celebrate this amazing day, which is their book launch day. And I want you all to run out and get it and I want to talk about it here on the podcast. And for those of you who have never published a book before, the very first week that the book comes out is the most important week for kind of like establishing its success rate, with not only New York Times bestseller list, but also with Amazon. And so if you’re even thinking about getting this book, you need to get it today, hit order today. Get it now to give these guys a leg up and make sure that their sales are super strong so that everyone hears their story. And these guys can succeed from their book as much as they’ve done such great work on their farm. So thank you for being here.
Jenni Harris
Thank you for having us, Diana.
Will Harris
You don’t have to worry about us asking for help on our next book. Cuz we’re not gonna have a next book
Diana Rodgers, RD
No.
Will Harris
This is the book.
Jenni Harris
Yeah. If you’re going to buy a book about White Oak Pastures, you have to do it now. This is the only one there’ll be.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, so why don’t you each go introduce yourselves and talk about what your role is here on the farm or there on the farm.
Will Harris
Will Harris. I’m the fourth generation of my family to operate this farm White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, and I’m ably assisted by my two daughters here. You are:
Jodi Harris-Benoit
Jodi Harris-Benoit, and I’m the Director of Tourism here on the farm.
Jenni Harris
And I am Jenni Harris, and I am the Director of Marketing for White Oak Pastures.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I just can’t share enough about how much I love you guys, you, you know hosted me several times for workshops. I trusted you with my son, my firstborn during COVID, and I am so impressed not only with the work, Will, that you’ve done on the farm, and also regenerating the community there in Bluffton, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. But with Jenni and Jodi to the hospitality is top notch, it is just such a welcoming, warm place to stay, and you feel just so taken care of. And during the workshops, we also would take a group over to visit with Jenni and just see how incredibly sophisticated the work is that goes into all of the marketing and all of the shipping. And I mean, it’s not really a piece of the business that you might think or me as a visitor would think is fascinating. But it is fascinating only because there’s just so many details. And it’s, again, it’s so like top notch state of the art. So let’s maybe start with a little bit of the history of the farm that you cover in the book, and then we’ll dive into everything else.
Will Harris
So but I do want to acknowledge that I did return your son unscathed. Possibly, he knew a few new words. But that couldn’t be. But he was, other than that he was in good shape. He was fine.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And a few admirers, I think too.
Will Harris
Yeah. And the girls loved him. So White Oak Pastures is our family farm founded by my great grandfather in 1866. Then run by my grandfather, then run by my father, then me and now these two young ladies and their spouses.
Diana Rodgers, RD
All right, that was the short version.
Will Harris
The longer version is we pat… we’re in southwest Georgia, Bluffton, Georgia, almost Alabama, almost Florida. We pasture-raise five red meat species: cows, hogs, sheep, goats, rabbits and we also pasture raised five poultry species. We hand butcher them over two USDA inspected plants, one poultry, one red meat. We have a store. We have a restaurant. We have an RV park. We love having guests. we have overnight accommodations here. And that’s the longer version.
Jenni Harris
I think was one of the things that should be mentioned that you might be getting to is that in Bluffton, we’ve sort of rebuilt a food system and then we can talk more about the decentralization of food and how it manifests itself in Bluffton. But you know what dad did, and he probably won’t talk about himself. But he was a very early innovator in the grass-fed beef movement. So he inherited a very nice farm and realized that he wanted to do things differently. You know, he wanted a specific way to raise calves and specific way to treat the land. But in doing so he wasn’t able to extract that added cost back out of the market. So we had to build a new market, which was the grass-fed beef local food movement. And he was an early innovator. He did that in the mid 90s. And throughout the early 2000s, develop the brand White Oak Pastures, which ultimately was well received by a couple of grocery stores, Whole Foods and Publix, which gave us the ability to build processing on the farm. So you have today the thing that makes us I think most unique is that we’re a vertically integrated food system. We pasture-raise livestock, we process them in our own farm processing plants. And then we distribute them to either grocery stores or in consumers that care about good animal welfare, land regeneration, and the rural revival of towns like Bluffton.
Will Harris
The history of the farm is my great-grandfather and grandfather would have run the farm in a very traditional full the pre-industrial revolution, Agricultural Revolution era, a lot of different species, a lot of vertical integration here on the farm. My dad took over the farm post World War Two, it became a monoculture of only cattle, very industrialized. He ran the farm successfully that way all his life. I went to the University of Georgia graduated in 1976. I came home and ran it very industrially as a cattle operation for 20 years, then we started moving it in this direction.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. And so there was a big push to industrialize and get big or get out. I mean, it’s not that they were looking to harm land or anything. That was just the way the ag industry was moving. And so but again, as you mentioned in the 90s, that was a pretty early time to go regenerative before that was even a buzzword or anything. Can you talk a little bit about it? Was a, you know, not an overnight transition to 100% the way you do things now, but will you talk a little bit about why you shifted and how that happened?
Will Harris
So I became just fairly quickly disgusted after nearly 20 years, I became fairly quickly disgusted with the excesses of the industrial model, and didn’t really have a good business plan. I just started moving away from it very quickly and very intentionally. And as you pointed out, grass-fed beef was just something people were starting to talk about in the mid-90s. We were able to sell Whole Foods Market and Publix’s the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they marketed as American grass-fed beef in that era. So it was much from the perspective of marketing was much easier then than it is today. Today there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace. It’s really, it’s really tough. The bad news was though, I had to figure it out. There were no books about grass-fed beef in the mid 90s – how to grow, how to raise it. But we did. We figured it out and we’re still figuring it out. And it’s a good move for us. Prior to mid-90s, I had three or four minimum wage employees about a million dollars in volume a year. Today we’ve got about 170 employees and do 20 – something million dollars in volume a year. The business, oddly, the business is not much more profitable today than it was then. But it’s a lot more impactful today than it was.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. I want to talk about the economic impact and then also the ecological impact. And you know, the farming industry has seen you know, loss of human labor and more machine and human labor for farming is really the backbone of Rural America. And you have really revitalized Bluffton, which is I believe at one point you said it was the poorest county in the United States or maybe a battle, you know, closest to… that a battle…
Jenni Harris
A battle to the bottom.
Will Harris
A race to the bottom.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah.
Will Harris
I was in Clay County, Georgia, and it is or has been the poorest county in the United States based on the government figures. You know, when I started moving the operation from what it was to what it is, the focus initially was on the welfare of the animals. But very quickly, the impact on the land became obvious and important to me. So that became something we really focused on. The economic benefit to the town was never on my radar. I was born in 1954, the town had been in decline all my life. And I thought that was just the way that was. And then looked up one day and said, this is kind of getting nice around here. We got a lot of employees. We pay them. I’m not proud of what we pay our employees, but it’s well above the county average. It’s not what I want it to be, but it’s a lot more than the other employers. So the town’s actually made a very nice little comeback. And I hope that’s something that will be emulated again, and again. And again, cross the country.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and a little bit of your story. We’ll make sure to put the link in there from Peter Byck. It was 10,000 Beating Hearts. Was that the name of it?
Will Harris
100,000
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes. 100,000 Beating Hearts. I always get those two reversed. 100,000 Beating Hearts from Peter Byck which is a great about 10 minute long or so video, really featuring you and really highlights the economic impact that you’ve done there. But it’s nothing like when you physically go to the farm and actually see, you know, the fact that I know exactly where you guys are sitting right now. Will you kind of just for visually explain to us like, I mean, you guys are the town, pretty much.
Will Harris
Well, there are only three employers in town. There’s post, the post office, US Post Office is only open a couple of hours a day, five days a week. There’s a friend of mine owns a peanut buying business that only operates about six weeks a year during the harvest season. Then there’s us. And Bluffton only has… Bluffton’s got less citizens than we have employees. So not just about everybody in Bluffton that works, works for White Oak Pastures. There’s people that don’t work. We started 20 years ago buying houses and lots and store fronts as they came up for sale. We just didn’t have a plan initially, they just… they sold so cheap you can buy… I bought that whole city block right over there for $10,000. And it was a jungle but it was a city block inside the city of Bluffton. And we’ve continued to do that. And we certainly don’t own it all. We own a lot of it. And I really am optimistic about doing something with the town. I think we can make it a very pleasant little town. We got plans. You know, we’ll just see how it goes.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So you’ve got… you’ve taken over the church and is now the center for CFAR. Will you talk a little bit about CFAR?
Jenni Harris
Yes. So in the fall of 2021, dad really wanted to take our educational arm to another level. And, you know, for us the establishment of our 501C3, the Center for Agricultural Resilience was to do that. And we don’t believe that regenerative agriculture is very scalable, but we do believe it’s very replicatable. But in order to be replicated, we feel as the share in what we’ve done in Bluffton not as a how-to course but as a here were the obstacles here. Here’s what we did to get around them type of experience sharing is really important. So we founded that – founded CFAR in the fall of 2021. And we put on probably six or eight educational workshops a year and that’s up – Jodi can talk more about that than I can but it you know it really is an interesting group of workshops because we’re kind of all bound with food. You know, whether you’re a farmer or a consumer or a legislator, you participate in the food system and we’ve had a lot of fun trying to structure who the target market is and how to capture those people and how to get them to Bluffton. And, you know, the experience that we can share. So anyways, it’s, it’s been a great thing for us.
Jodi Harris-Benoit
Yeah. So like Jenni said, we, you know, have probably six to eight workshops that are hosted by CFAR, here at the farm. And those vary from solar grazing to, you know, an immersive introduction to, you know, regenerative agriculture. And then we do a fundamentals, which is the why, you know, we do what we do. And this is all just simply the laboratory for that. And then we also have really enjoyed this past year bringing guest speakers to the farm, not that we’re homesteaders, but I find that our consumer crowd really enjoys participating in the beekeeping and, you know, the butchering, which we all do outside the general store, you know, and just the things that you could do in your backyard. And not that we pride ourselves on being really good at that model. But we really enjoy bringing people who may be experts like Diana Rogers in nutrition, you know, I’m here to teach about it and partner with him.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and it was so cool. Like, when I did my workshop, I thought for sure, it was just going to be people interested in just maybe the homesteading or nutrition. But you also had a lot of people that wanted to meet Will, and wanted to learn more about farming. So we have a nice mix of young farmers. So I’m glad they have dedicated education programming for them now to teach more people how to replicate region ag. And of course, it’s going to look a little different depending on where in the country they are. But that’s sort of the beauty of using your brain as a farmer. So we haven’t mentioned the restaurant and the store too. But it’s, you know, you guys took over… Was it an old mercantile before? Is that correct? What was it?
Will Harris
The store was the General Merchandise. Mr. Herman, Bass’s General Merchandise.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And you guys have done such a good job of I mean, there’s, you can buy leather products, which I mean, the leather industry is really not doing well these days. I mean, even you know, electric car companies, in an effort to be more sustainable are removing the only sustainable organic piece of the car, which is the leather. What’s that?
Jenni Harris
I said, so that makes a lot of sense.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I know. It’s just as much sense as is everything else in that world… in that tech world of trying to, you know, make everything better and as you’re doing it destroy things at the same time, right? But you’ve got this amazing restaurant. You’re also doing some really cool stuff, not just with the leather but you’re also taking I mean, so… and a lot of my listeners know this but less than half that animal of a beef, cow, steer is edible, but the rest of that animal there’s other important parts of it and you guys have really developed ways of utilizing pretty much everything. Will you talk a little bit about what’s going on at your processing facility.
Will Harris
So we do endeavour to operate as a zero waste facility. We have a pretty thriving business with organs as well as the meat from animals we slaughter. Hides, we have tanned or we make rawhide pet chews – just not to mention, there’s only about three or 400 pounds of edible product in a cow, beef – in a cow. So there’s a lot of stuff. We market bones. And then we have a composting operation. We generate about nine tons a day, five days a week of just absolutely inedible product, even as pet food. And that’s composted and it’s spread back on land. We have 3200 acres of land that we raise our animals on and nearly 2000 acres of solar voltaic land that we also maintain this pasture land with sheep going. So all that is recycled back in nature. Here’s it’s all about full utilization, showing gratitude to the land and the animals what they provide for us.
Jenni Harris
We didn’t talk about tallow Do you want to tell them about the soap?
Jodi Harris-Benoit
Yeah, so Jenni’s wife, Amber is our Director of Specialty Products and you know obviously fat does not compost very well and so you know, we take the suet that which is a clean fat around the kidneys of the cow and we’ll render that down to make tallow candles, soap, salves, chapsticks, everyone really enjoys and you know, our cooking our tallow in our own restaurant, which has been exciting.
Jenni Harris
You’ve heard about how bad seed oils are for you, haven’t you? You’ve heard about that, right?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Sometimes.
Jenni Harris
We’re starting to use some animal fat in our restaurant too.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s awesome. Yeah. And my favorite thing that you guys make in addition to the candles which smell amazing, is the lotion, the tallow cream, it’s like a cold cream, what do you call it?
Jenni Harris
It’s a whipped moisturizer.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Whipped moisturizer. So I have it in the lavender scent and the plain. And especially at the end of the day, in the winter, or when I’m doing pottery, which really dries out my hands. And I’ve tried a bunch of other tallow products and this one doesn’t feel greasy. It doesn’t smell like I’m covering myself in beef fat, which is a lovely thing. It’s really, really great.
Jenni Harris
But we’re all like over 60, we use it on our skin. So you can’t make health claims. We’re all very old.
Will Harris
I’m 95.
Jodi Harris-Benoit
I’m not.
Diana Rodgers, RD (LMNT ad)
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Diana Rodgers, RD
You know, I wanted to also mention, again, that people can stay there, which is really, really cool. And that now you have an RV park too. Will you talk a little bit about, you know, it’s not just for the workshops, but people can just go online and book. Will you talk a little bit about the experience of staying there.
Will Harris
So when I first went into this business, I was unprepared for the number of people that would come to see us. It was pleasant, and I was delighted to have them. But I just didn’t expect them and was not set up to deal with them. But we have over the last 20 years, taken steps to prepare ourselves and one of the things is we are literally 50 miles from the nearest place to eat the nearest restaurant. And this is low-end fast food type places. So we built the restaurant. And we later had people that would come to see us and it’s 50 miles literally to a Holiday Inn or a place that most people would stay. So we had… we provided lodging. And it’s just… it’s just evolved over a period of time, but it’s just probably… and every time we went in one of those businesses, I would say, Well, this is probably going to lose a little money, but maybe we can afford it, and we need to have it for the greater good of building our brand. And eventually all these little businesses have risen to the point of breakeven. So it’s good. We think we offer a pretty pleasant experience by having for people that come here.
Jenni Harris
Lodging for us really kind of took off when COVID hit. Before then it’s very hard to get to Bluffton, and it felt like getting people to Bluffton was very hard, but when you know COVID hit and people felt sort of like prisoners, you know, they lived very conveniently close to a bunch of places that they could not go inside of. They sort of retreated to rural America. So we saw a real increase in visitors in 2020 and 2021. And that really jumped started. I think Jodi would agree, jump started the lodging and tourism business, which was one of the silver linings for the COVID pandemic.
Will Harris
We serve three meals a day, seven days a week. And did so through the pandemic. We have a red meat slaughter plant and our poultry slaughter plant and we operated every single day it was supposed to through the pandemic. So it was kind of a non-event for us.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and if you’re lucky, you may even stay in the cottage on the lake with the alligators in it – where Will used to bathe. And you can go out at night and shine your flashlight out and see eyeballs staring back at you. And there’s not many places where you can go and actually pay for that experience.
Will Harris
So, we’ve never… we’ve never lost a visitor – ever.
Jodi Harris-Benoit
And that is the most popular cabin here on the farm is the one on the 15-acre farm.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And it’s really cool. And it was really fun when I came down with Jules Horn and Sam Garwin. And we all stayed there that was really, really fun. And as you mentioned, because the area around you is not super wealthy and might not necessarily have the access to afford the meat that you produce, shipping is really the number one way that you are able to stay in business. And so, Jenni, could you talk a little bit… I mean, it is really fascinating, everything. Did you… I forget what you studied in college. I mean, I know that Jodi studied hospitality, but did you study business operations because you are like so impressive when you talk about it?
Jenni Harris
Well, you’re very nice. I studied the go into the bar after hours is what I studied. I don’t think you can really count what I did in college, I did get a marketing degree, but I was definitely not focused on it. You know, I’ve always loved e-commerce. It’s always been something that I felt was a really relevant thing for us being in the middle of nowhere. You know, without question, we have to get what we do to Metropolitan places. You have… consumers don’t consume where farmers farm. And so for us, the challenge is, how do you get it there? And so we started shipping meat pretty quick. When I returned home, to work full-time on the farm in 2010. And it was a pretty humble effort, you know, we were doing, you know, 30 to 60 orders a week. And we were proud of every single one of them. But there was really no marketing component, no acquisition component. It was just we had a website, you know, when we serve whoever stumbled on to it. But in 2014, we decided that we wanted e-commerce to be a meaningful part of the business. So we invested in a responsive website. So I don’t know if you remember what that means. But like, if you look at it on an iPad, versus a big computer versus a phone, you know, it’s dynamic, and it moves with it. And that was our first like, Okay, we’re going to spend, you know, several thousand dollars to make this happen. So we’re going to have to set some KPIs and some goals. And so we did that. And we had some early, you know, key points that we wanted to maintain, and we were able to do it. And it was it was spending that money and setting those KPIs that gave us sort of the trajectory to smash future goals. And so, in 2020, I guess 2020 or 2021, we launched our Shopify site, which really was perfect timing, because I think we wound up doing about $2 million in revenue in 2019. And in 2020, as you know, things just kind of went crazy. And we did over six, just in 2020. So from 2019, closing at 2 million to 2020, closed at 6 million. It was not a very graceful thing for us. We had a lot of mistakes, but we learned a lot of lessons, and we got good at what we did. And we’ve continued to grow since then. But we’ve got a real strong marketing component to it. Now, you know, we couldn’t really say anything through the pandemic, because we were struggling to keep up, you know, there was really no need the market because we couldn’t possibly touch the demand. But we’re now having to work for it. And you know that that’s fun, too. So we’ve got a very active email subscriber list that we, you know, we segment into different areas based on your location and where you live, and where we’d send your order. We’ve got a very active text messaging marketing strategy. We launched our own app this year, which has been a lot of fun for us to be able to send push notifications. And we were also very active with regard to podcast interviews, and, you know, and sharing our stories. So we’ve really tried to tackle a lot more channels this year. And we’re hopeful that our customer acquisition will show it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And are you currently shipping across the entire United States right now, or?
Jenni Harris
We can. So the way we have to do it, because we’re shipping from Southwest Georgia, which is a very extreme corner, that more than half of the United States for us is express and express is really expensive. So for us, we really focus in on that ground network. If you live in the Express network, we can. We still will happily take your order and be grateful for it. But it’s hard for us to make that cost effective for us or them. So we’ve really focused on the East Coast, and our ground network. And so it’s pretty much you know, you know, New York to Miami to you know, Ohio, Texas, that’s sort of our bubble.
Will Harris
It’s never been our goal to make White Oak Pastures a national company, right? We need a certain amount of volume to make our business work. To see on how big we can blow it up is not on the agenda. We really promote other farms doing what we’ve done in their own geographies. And we’ve got farms that we support. You know some of them.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right
Will Harris
We have to sell a certain amount of stuff to cover our costs, but to just to see how big we can make it is not… that’s not on the agenda.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, which is not something most people would admit to, you know, or I guess not admit, but…
Jenni Harris
It’s an odd strategy.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, but it just seems like you know, everyone else is just as big as possible – growth, growth. growth And you guys have really kind of honed in on, you know, what’s the sweet spot for having a sustainable business not only ecologically but also like probably for your sanity too?
Jenni Harris
Well, we think in terms of resilience, you know, what happens is if? You know, and so resilience is expensive, and but when we can afford it, we want to, you know, and so we’re working now from a capacity perspective to saffen certain parts of the business. So that if, you know, UPS does strike, you know, we have an option, you know, we’re not left with more than half of our revenue, not able to be had because, you know, UPS is on strike. So I think one of the strategies for us, you know, it’s never been about growth. Well, I say it’s not… it’s not about growth, it has been about growth when we were trying to do
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s not about unlimited growth.
Jenni Harris
That’s right. When we were trying to reach capacity, our processing plant, you better believe growth was front and center. But for us, it’s all about how, what is the safest business for us? How can we, you know, continue to operate and know that we’ll be able to continue to operate if the worst thing happens.
Will Harris
And you know, we are farmers, that’s our skill set. We’re not executive officers. We don’t want to have a business so big, we got to hire a CEO to run it for us.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s right.
Will Harris
That’s just not part of the plan. And you and I talk a lot about scalable versus replicable. This business is not highly scalable, it’s not meant to be. It’s highly replicable. Let somebody else do it somewhere else.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. And again, even farms can look very different. I mean, where I was farming, you know, we have local people, we didn’t need to do shipping. So it really just depends on where you are, what the land can handle, you know, and before we go and really push the book on people hardcore, I just want to, I’m just remembering this one really interesting point, when I was doing one of my workshops at your farm, we were out, we were learning the EOV process out in the field. And I’m not sure if you’ll remember this well. But there was a… we were talking about how the field might look like a field of weeds to a typical farmer. And even one of your neighbors might have looked out on one of your pastures thinking it’s just completely full of weeds and other unwanted things. But you were talking about this as part of the diversity of what you’re actually encouraging. There was a young woman who came forward and raised her hand, and she said she was from Georgia extension. And she was sent to the workshop to check it out to see what was going on. And she said, I 100% admit that when I first saw this pasture, I thought it was weeds. And now I get it. And I thought that that was really, really cool. You know, so the ecological impact is real. It’s big, and you are influencing a lot of people. I don’t know if you want to add to that at all.
Will Harris
If you do come from industrial agriculture, as I did, as that young lady had, the beauty of that monoculture is what you’re looking for. It’s really pretty to see row after row after row of identical plants growing. It’s just… it’s just… it is mesmerizing. There’s something beautiful about it. But it is as unnatural as an ice cube in a fire. And it’s not supposed to be that way. And what once you change your perspective, your vision changes. And you see beauty in all that diversity.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and it just goes back to the resilience piece. So the more complex and resilient the pasture or the business, the healthier it is, right? So it goes to all it goes to the pasture, it goes to the business. And you guys just complement each other so well, with all your different skill sets. And again, I’m just I’m so happy to be affiliated with you guys, to be endorsing you. I don’t know if you want to add anything else before we you know, drop the book and basically force everyone who’s listening to this podcast to go out and order it.
Jenni Harris
I do want to say one thing, you know, we’re farmers, and we feel like we’re experts at that. But we can’t just be farmers. We can’t just say here’s what we do. And this is why you should support it. You know, we need people like you and consumers like the ones listening to this podcast to embrace it, you know, food system is a collaboration between those who produce and those who consume and everybody in between. And so, you know, for us, we are farmers, but it’s just half the battle. You know, it’s just part of the food system. You know, it takes passion make consumers that demand it done this way, so that we can continue to do it. And it takes really smart, influential people like you to help educate people on what we’re doing. So it goes without saying that we can only do what we do if you continue to do what you do, and your listeners continue to do what they did. And if your listeners want to see more of what we do, then they need to buy more of these types of products, not just from us, but from their local farmers. So that, you know, they have the confidence to make investments into, you know, diversify and add resilience into their models. Yeah. So I don’t want to close a single opportunity like this without saying that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thank you. Yeah. All right. So the book is A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations in the Future of Food by Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures. It is available wherever books are sold. If you can find this in your local bookstore, those sales count even more than Amazon sales to a New York Times list, because I want to try to help you guys get on it. So if Amazon is your go to place, certainly order it there. But bookshop.org. Powells, your local bookstore, diversify your purchases people, because brick and mortar sales are really important also to these books, counting towards making sure and it’s not just all the accolades of New York Times, but if this book makes it, then the press that will come from all of this will just help the overall movement of region ag get closer to more mainstream. So you’re really by buying this book, you’re helping the whole entire cause of regen ag make a giant leap forward.
Will Harris
We mentioned all the farms in the book, you know, in this little section of the United States that we feel like are part of the leadership changing things.
Jenni Harris
Yeah. And we, by the time this goes live, Diana, there will be a landing page set up specific to the book. So they know exactly where they can buy. The URL, it will be white oak pastures.com, forward slash book. And that will, that’ll lead to a page that, you know, tell us a little bit about why Dad chose to write it and what he hopes that it does, where people can buy the book, and the other farms that he mentioned that, you know, that we believe are part of the leadership.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wonderful. Yeah, you guys are part of the Savory Network, you’re actually a Savory hub there at White Oak Pastures. And I know you have some really strong friends out in the world of regen ag, and you’ve just done so much to, I don’t know, I’m gushing so much. But I just… you’ve done so much to help spread the word about making sure that people return to more natural ways of farming. So thank you for all the work that you’ve done.
Will Harris
Along those lines, 25 years ago, when I started moving in this direction. And I felt that I was an early innovator in changing the direction of food production. And operating like that for a long time. And I don’t in recent years, I’ve come to question whether it’s going to work out that way or not. It really hadn’t taken off the way I believe that it woulda, shoulda, coulda. And I just don’t know, you know, if the consumer gets to decide, the government really doesn’t decide, USDA doesn’t decided. Consumers are going to make that determination.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s it, everyone. So, everyone who’s listening, this is up to you. I want you to go order the book. And while you’re at it, pick up some meat and book a stay. Try out their food. You could meet Will if you’re lucky, and Jenni and Jodi and I hope to get back there real soon. So thank you so much for your time, everyone.
Will Harris
Thank you so much, Diana. Appreciate it.
Jenni Harris
Thank you, Diana
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hey everyone, Diana here, I wanted to let you know that after many years and over 1 million downloads of the Sustainable Dish podcast, I’ve decided it’s time to direct my attention to other projects, including the Global Food Justice Alliance. It’s been a true honor to interview so many important leaders in the health and agricultural fields. And I’ve loved every minute of it. So, October 31, 2023, will be the last episode. Thank you so much for all of my dedicated listeners out there for your attention, your time. Thank you to Emily, my podcast editor, and to James Connolly, my co-host. Be sure to follow me at Global Food Justice and also at Sustainable Dish. You can get my newsletters, help contribute to the mission that I’m working on to make sure that all people have access to nutrient-dense, animal-sourced foods. Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get free downloads and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
