Ryan Millsap Learns About Farming the Natural Way with Will Harris
This is the Blackhall Podcast, with host Ryan Millsap. With a vision of how real estate could turn into movies, and how movies could turn into money, Millsap set out to build the state's largest film complex. After checking that box, Millsap returned to his entrepreneurial roots —where real estate ventures, entertainment opportunities, nonprofit support, and golf course business deals rule the day. What's next for Ryan Millsap? Listen up — and you'll find out.
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Ryan: Welcome to the Blackhall Podcast. I'm Ryan Millsap, and today, we're down in Bluffton, Georgia, talking to a true business visionary: Will Harris of White Oak Pastures. Almost 30 years ago, Will -- a fourth-generation cattleman -- decided to stop post-World War II industrialized farming methods and return to the more natural approach employed by his great grandfather in the 19th century. It was a big economic risk, but it was the right thing to do. It's paid off for White Oak, and also for the town of Bluffton, Georgia. I'm really excited for this conversation. So let's jump right in.
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Ryan: Today on the Blackhall Podcast, we have Will Harris, who is the proprietor of White Oak Pastures -- the farm, abattoir, retailer of meats and all things organic here in Georgia. Will, welcome to the program.
Will: Thank you for coming, Ryan. Glad to have you here.
Ryan: It's a beautiful place. We had a wonderful lunch, and it's cool to see this little town and the way you’ve revived it. So, tell me a little bit about what inspires you every day to keep doing this. What gets you up every day to continue farming? Because this is a labor of love.
Will: Yeah. For years, I ran the farm as my dad did -- as a monocultural, industrial cattle operation. And financially, it was successful. We certainly weren't rich people, but we lived very comfortably and made money every year. I guess I went so far down that rabbit hole, I didn't like it much anymore. I started pulling away from it.
Ryan: What happened? When you went down the rabbit hole, what did you find?
Will: I can remember: when I graduated from the University of Georgia with my degree in animal science in 1976, I came home and ran the farm just like my dad did -- as a very linear, industrial model.
Ryan: But what does that mean? There's a lot of people that listen to this podcast. They don't know. They've never been on a farm; never run a ranch.
Will: Well, let me just take you back through the history a little bit. My great-grandfather came here in 1866, and he ran the farm as a multi-species farm. He would have had cows, hogs, sheep, goats, poultry, a garden, and some other things. And his son ran it the same way. They had about 500 acres of land, which was a pretty big farm in that era. And they were vertically integrated.
Every day, six days a week, they would get up before day -- them and their employees -- and process something. They might kill a cow; they might kill a couple hogs; they might kill 100 chickens. Whatever was ready, they would slaughter it. And then an employee would load it on a wagon and bring it to Bluffton, this town here, about two miles from the farm, and distribute the meat or poultry. Then my great-granddad would ride a horse up here on Saturday, collect his money -- and they’d go again. My dad was born in 1920. He took over the farm, post-World War II, in 1945. And he changed it. He turned it from that multi-species farm, vertically integrated, to being just a calf producer.
Ryan: But it ran multi-species for 80 years.
Will: It ran multi-species from 1866 to 1946. So yeah. And I guess it was reasonably successful. I don't know much about the financials in that era.
Ryan: If it survived for 80 years, it was successful.
Will: Well, my dad was that third generation. Usually, the old saying was, “the first generation makes it, the second generation keeps it, then the third generation pees it away.” Dad certainly didn't do that. He ran the farm successfully as a monocultural cattle operation.
I was born in 1954; raised on the farm. And I wanted to do exactly the same thing my dad did. I loved it. I never wanted to do anything but run this farm. When my friends wanted to be firemen or whatever, I just wanted to run the farm.
Ryan: What do you think you loved most about it? When you look back, as a kid, and as you grew up?
Will: The sense of freedom. I was raised pretty feral. I came and went. There were rules I had to obey. But, you know, I pretty much came and went as I wanted to. My adult life career was an extension of that.
Ryan: Yeah. If you're getting the work done, then you’re free.
Will: Yeah. I pay taxes every year, and we were financially comfortable. But, in retrospect, I was a little bit of an abuser. If the label rate for the for the pharmaceutical was 2 cc's, 100, I might have given them 4 cc’s per 100 pounds. If it was a pint to the acre, I might put a quart to the acre. I don't know where that mindset came from, but I had it, and I think probably my dad had it as well. And what that did for me was...
I was a producer. We made money, but the excesses caused me to see the unintended consequences of those herbicides; insecticides. “Cide” means “kill.” I killed stuff for a living, and I was good at it. And I thought that was what I was supposed to do. Literally, every day, when I went to the pasture -- and I went to the pasture every day -- I was looking for something to kill. I ran a monoculture of cattle on a monoculture of Tifton 85 Bermuda grass. And if you weren't part of my monoculture, then I was looking for a way to kill you. The “cides” offered me an arsenal of tools to use, and I was going to use them.
That's the way I lived my life. And it was fine as long as it was fine. But I changed. I can remember -- I don't know what led to the dissatisfaction, except that I was so excessive. But one day, we loaded up a load of calves to go to the Midwest, which I did from time to time. That day, we would have put about a hundred 500-pound calves on that multi-level truck -- two levels, the ones on top urinating and defecating on the ones on the bottom. And I'd done that so many times. But that day, it just bothered me. I didn't like it. They would be on that truck for 30 hours without food or water or rest. I said, “I just don't don’t want to do that anymore.” So I didn't. I just quit doing it.
Of course, that meant I was marketing differently. It meant I was raising them differently. The tools I was using, the “cides,” were things that I chose to move away from. With all those changes I was making, I was literally moving away from something, and not intentionally towards anything.
Ryan: So you think -- what I'm hearing is that your guts were telling you. Like, it wasn't necessarily a rational move. It was more something that you instinctually started to feel. Like, you just didn't like it.
Will: It certainly wasn't rational. I can tell you that. So, yes; you're right.
Ryan: You were following your instincts to something else, but you didn't know what you were going toward. You just knew you were going away from things you didn't like.
Will: I wasn't intentionally going towards anything. I was going away from things I didn't like. But I did just keep moving in that direction. And, as a result, I moved the farm back into a vertical -- still monocultural, but vertical -- operation, because I wasn't shipping the calves anymore, looking for a way to sell them.
Ryan: And when you say ‘vertical,’ you mean you're going to raise them, you're going to slaughter them, you're going to butcher them.
Will: Ultimately, that's what it became. And marketing them.
Ryan: And then you market them and sell them.
Will: That's what it became, because it wasn't day-one. It had to evolve. And so that's what I did. And it evolved into a model that looked way more like what my great-grandfather and grandfather did on this land than what my dad and I had done on the land. I was very, very fortunate. We had some tough times economically. I had no debt. I'd inherited a thousand acres of land, and several hundred cows, and old money. I was not in the cash-flow tight, but I had some years we were just operationally not profitable. But I continued to move in that direction, and I was very, very fortunate, because it would not have worked. It was not going in a workable direction.
I started that process in the mid-90s. By 2000, people were starting to talk about grass-fed beef. Nobody had ever talked about grass-fed beef till then. And that's what we were doing. So, I was able to sell Whole Foods Market and Publix Supermarket the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they marketed as American grass-fed beef.
Ryan: For a premium. They were probably marketing that for a premium.
Will: It was at a premium, yeah. The timing was nothing intentional on my part. It was not good planning; good marketing. It just happened that way.
Ryan: But, somewhere in there, you had really good instincts.
Will: For whatever reason. But it caught traction, and we were able to sell everything we could sell at a premium to those grocery chains. Later on, we added some other grocery chains, and we had some really good years. We had years that we went from making a little money every year on the commodity business to not making, maybe losing a little money, when I was transitioning.
Now, I don't want to tell you that it was incredible profits. But for a privately-owned farm in Bluffton, Georgia, it was better than budget. And we really enjoyed that for a number of years. In 2015, the USDA changed the rule on ‘Product of the USA.’ Prior to then, the rule was that an animal had to be born, raised, and slaughtered in this country to be legally labeled ‘Product of the USA.’ They changed that rule so that, if any value is added in this country, it is a product of the USA. And that opened the door for importation of grass-fed beef by the big beef companies from 20 countries: Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay being the biggest, but 20 countries.
That really caused my margins to drop precipitously in the grocery chain. And we were back not doing well again. We weren't necessarily losing money, but we certainly weren't making much money.
Ryan: And at this point, what percentage of your business was selling to supermarkets versus selling directly to consumers?
Will: Almost 100%. Prior to the pandemic in 2020, two of my three daughters and their spouses had come back to the farm. And this year, one of my daughters started an online store. But it never did much. The company did 25 or so million a year in volume. And that was maybe a couple of million dollars a year. It just wasn’t worth it. But we did it, and it was okay.
But during that pandemic, it just caught fire, and we sold out overnight. It really changed the way we operate. In the year that just ended -- December 31st -- we actually sold more products online than we sold to wholesale customers.
Ryan: That’s gotta feel great.
Will: Previously, before, the online store was 100% wholesale. That business model just ceased to work for us.
Ryan: So, let's go back a little bit. Let's say 30 years ago, you start this process of transition. The early stuff is, you're moving away from things you don't like. Does it ever shift to where you start to feel a different pull? Where now you say, “It's not that I just don't like things; now there's some things I think I really like. Like, I'm finding more joy.” Let's say you're following your joy, not just your lack of joy.
Will: That really did happen exactly as you described. And without me intending to be part of it, we became part of this direct-to-consumer marketing movement that we witnessed for a while. And it's there's still some of it going on. There was a time that I envisioned White Oak Pastures as being an early innovator in that new way of producing and marketing food. I liked that. I mean, it's not that I wanted to be a national company. I know that was never my plan, but I liked the fact that we were fairly early innovators in moving out of that industrial commodity market and towards that more farm-to-consumer movement.
And while I never went on the road, or made it an objective of mine, we became a little bit of a recruiter. If a farmer came to visit us, which they do from time to time, I would be guilty of encouraging them to move to the model where we were. I did it because it was working for us, and I wanted it to work for them, too.
Ryan: Well, and not just working financially. There was something that was going on that was psychological.
Will: Oh, I enjoyed it more. We enjoyed it. And I have three daughters. I'm the fourth generation of my family to own this farm, and I've got three daughters. And, as a young man, I had pretty much come to assume they would not come back. They weren't ‘cowboy.’ We were raised ‘cowboy,’ and they weren’t. I just never envisioned that they might come back. But when I started changing the business model, I could see that that could happen. I didn't do it to bring them back. But I was pleased that that was a potential outcome. And it did. Two of my three daughters and their spouses did come back.
Ryan: When you think about the psychology and the spirituality, do you think they would have come back if you were still running an industrial food complex?
Will: I would bet they would not.
Ryan: There was something about the way that the farm was running that was more interesting, and maybe more spiritually pleasing.
Will: Certainly more interesting, and probably more spiritually pleasing. I was raised very ‘cowboy.’ It was what I enjoyed doing; it was who I wanted to be. My dad was a role model of mine; that’s who he was. And so, again, it was a no-brainer for me. I knew where I was going from day one. But my daughters were born in the 80s, and they were raised the way 1980s daughters were raised. It was ballet and softball and piano lessons and voice lessons. And there never was a focus on the farm. They never worked on the farm, whereas that's what I had done as a kid. So, that just never was part of the plan.
When my middle daughter said she wanted to come back -- well, when she’d just graduated college, she announced to me she was not coming back. I announced to her that that was fine. Well, I was not expecting her back. She went to Atlanta, and worked for a year or so, and actually worked for Buckhead Beef and learned a lot about that side of it -- not to come back, but that's just the way it worked out. My youngest daughter always wanted to come back. And I made her work off the farm for a period of time as well.
Ryan: What did she go do?
Will: She got a job; some sort of a social work with the state. I can’t remember exactly what that was. She didn't like it. But she always wanted to come back. Her older sister did not, initially, but then chose to go back. And then, one of my daughters didn't come back. One of my daughters is a schoolteacher, like my wife. So, all fine.
Ryan: So now, let's talk a little bit. I touched on the spirituality, and I can't help it -- when I think of this story, and hear this story, it feels like there's a spiritual connection to the land and a spiritual connection to the animals that, in this way of farming, feels like it's more in tune with the way things naturally should be. Do you experience that? Like, is there a spiritual awakening that goes along with the awakening of the farm in this more complex interplay dance?
Will: Oh, absolutely. And if you think about it, land is one of the few non-depreciating assets. You’ve got land, precious metals, precious gems, maybe art -- maybe some more stuff. But those are those are non-depreciating assets. They always hold their value. I think it's bigger than that. I think the land and the animals are very perpetual. If you inherit a thousand acres of land and a thousand cattle, 50 years later, you can leave a thousand acres of land and a thousand cattle and have made your living on the abundance of those the whole 50 years you had it. And it's good for another 50, and another 50, and another 50. So, there's something very spiritual about that.
Ryan: Yeah. It's a tie to the eternal.
Will: The land and the animals are perpetual.
Ryan: But are they in an industrial model? Maybe not.
Will: Oh, absolutely not. And in fact, one of the things that is so wrong, and makes it so hard for people who want to get started with this business model, is that we all think in terms of depreciating assets. If you buy land, they set it up for the payments to be over X years, 15 years, whatever. Well, at the end of these 15 years, the land is worth more than it was when you bought it. But it's being devalued as you make payments on it -- and the same with the herd. The land and the herd are just absolutely perpetual. And they absolutely spin off on abundance.
That's the way it works. All the wealth on this planet comes from the abundance that's spun off in a system that's operating optimally. If you think about all that oil and gas and coal in the ground, that is the excess of the natural systems from the era of the dinosaur. It was spinning off that abundance. To manage a farm properly -- to manage land and a herd properly -- you've got to understand what the cycles of nature are, and you've got to help them operate optimally.
There's the energy cycle from the sun. There's a water cycle from the rain. There's a microbial cycle. There's a mineral cycle. On and on, cycle after cycle after cycle, some of which we probably don't even recognize. And when those cycles are operating optimally, it spins off in abundance. But in in the modern business environment, the modern financing environment, we think of things in terms of the quarterly report; the annual report. And that's not the way it works in nature.
Ryan: Well, in that modern business culture, we want predictability. And one of the things that I hear you talking about is this combination. Obviously, we need some level of predictability to have any ongoing business, but you've entered more deeply into the mystery that is this balance that you're tapping into. But you, by your own humble admission, don't even know how it all works.
Will: Well, I do not disagree with you at all, but I would state it a little differently.
Ryan: Tell me how you’d state it.
Will: So, we human beings have tried to make everything apply to the linear model. The abundance of nature comes from a cyclical model, not a linear model. If you're operating a factory that makes automobiles, it’s very linear. And you can expand it up and up and up to whatever level you want to. In a natural system like this farm, it’s very cyclical, and that cyclical system is highly replicable. But it’s not highly scalable. Efficiency doesn't continue to come from expansion in a cyclical model. But it does on a linear model.
Ryan: Okay. So, when you're trying to rebuild this cycle, you start out; you have a monoculture of cows. What do you add next? What is the next thing that you added; the next animal you added?
Will: That's interesting. So, you're right; you described it exactly. I owned the land; I had a herd of cattle. My land was in a monoculture of Tifton 85 Bermuda grass. And any species of plant or animal or microbe that I found growing in my monoculture -- I would use an herbicide, an insecticide. “Cide” means “kill.” “Cide” is Latin for “kill.” And I would kill it. And that fit in the linear, modern food production business that I was in. But it did not fit the natural system that I was operating in.
Ryan: So then, what did you add next? How did you start to get out of that monoculture?
Will: When I had a monoculture of cattle, they would eat certain species of grass -- the Tifton 85 Bermuda grass, and others -- there were some other things that would come up that they didn't want. They just chose not to graze on them. So I would wind up with weeds. A plant you don’t want is a weed. Now, the weeds were actually good feed for sheep, and then later goats. So I added these other species to my monocultural cattle operation.
Ryan: Same fields? Like, they're all wandering together?
Will: I've done a lot of different ways, and often times they would all wander together. Sometimes there's benefit from segregating them, but there's constant movement. Another problem in my previous, monocultural cattle operation that I tended to have was that I favored the animal over the land -- in that would have a lot of little herds of cattle. I had a lot of cows, but I would have a lot of little herds of cattle, because I would segregate them. “These cows are old. They need a little pampering. These cattle are young; they need some extra nutrition. These cattle really have too much Brahman influence. I want to bring another bloodline in.” On and on, segregating them into more and more small herds. And I only had a certain number of pastures, or paddocks.
So, I had resident herds in paddocks. They lived there all the time. And I thought that was fine, until I learned it wasn't fine. Now what we do is, we actually cause a little bit of hardship on the animals to benefit the land. Land needs to have a really hard animal impact, and then a long recovery time. That's the way it evolved. If you think about the American West, huge herds of bison or buffalo would migrate from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. They would travel, bunched up together by predators in tight formation, and move across the landscape, creating an incredible hard impact on the land. But then they wouldn't come back through there for a year. So it would be a long recovery time. And that's the way those plant species evolved. That’s the way the microbial species evolved. And it really built up the land. As a result, the organic matter of the soil would be huge -- you know, five, six, seven, eight percent.
Ryan: Because they're not only tearing the land up with their hooves, but they're leaving behind all the waste.
Will: Yeah. We say tearing the land up, and you're right. But they're impacting it very hard. They're taking that beautiful strain of grass, and because they're bunched up -- so that the wolves wouldn't catch them -- they would impact it really hard, graze it down to nothing, tromp it, urinate on it, defecate on it, and move -- and give it a long recovery time.
That's a natural cycle that created an abundance. The microbes in the soil flourished. The organic matter raised. You know, organic matter -- the carbon in the soil -- is the life of the soil. On my farm here, that three generations of my family farmed prior to me, the organic matter had reached the point where it was only one half of one percent. One half of one percent of organic matter. Today, because of the way we manage the land, it’s 5 percent -- a 10x increase over a 20-year period.
And let me tell you what that means. So, a one-inch rain event is about 27,000 gallons of water per acre. And we get 4- or 5-inch rain events. Now, one percent of organic matter will absorb a one-inch rain event. So, if you've got 5% organic matter -- not if it comes in 30 minutes, but if it comes over a two day period -- if you got 5% organic matter, it will absorb a 5-inch rain event, and we get those. It's not unusual, after a big rain event, to see my neighbor's farm -- muddy water rushing off of it. Not much runs off my land. It's like a sponge.
Ryan: Okay, I'm really fascinated by the evolution. So, you bring in goats and sheep; they start eating the weeds. So now the land is getting properly tended. What are the things that the sheep and goats add, besides eating the weeds.
Will: Well, of course, cows, sheep, and goats are all three ruminants. All three graze the land. They graze different species of plants. Cows prefer grass; goats prefer woody species; browse. And sheep count between the two; a lot of forbs. I used to try to keep them all together.
That's still not a problem, but I find that certain paddocks -- we have 150 paddocks on this farm that we rotate through -- certain paddocks have different times, different plant species growing on them. Sometimes it just calls out for the goats to me. Sometimes it calls out for the sheep. Sometimes it calls out for cattle. So, I call it now ‘prescriptive grazing.’ We put them where I think there's something out there that needs grazing. They need the plant material for nutrition, and the plants need to be grazed to keep it in balance.
Ryan: That sounds like it requires a very astute shepherd. Right? Somebody has to have the intuition. Somebody has to be paying attention to the paddocks. Somebody has to make that call.
Will: Yeah. Well, I go to the pasture every day, and it's a big part of what I do. My son-in-law now is more in charge of the herds and flocks than I am. He has developed that same understanding of what needs doing. And it's not rocket science. It's a matter of being focused on what's going on out there, and understanding what the capability of the animal species is to correct it.
Ryan: But it requires an attunement, right? That isn't natural. If you drag some really smart guy from the city, how long does it take him to find attunement? It's going to take months, years, before he's in tune with what the land is telling him; what the animals are telling him. But you're hearing all of that.
Will: Well, attunement is your term, and I get it. But, to be a good grazer, you've got to be focused on a lot of different things. I went to the University of Georgia and majored in animal science, and I learned soils. I took three soils courses, and my professors were experts in soils. They had PhDs. And those guys learned more and more about less and less. It's very siloed knowledge. I’m not being critical of how smart they are. They're brilliant. But they know so much about a very narrow spectrum of what's going on in nature. They depend on the forage guy, and that forage guy's got a disease specialist, and then there's an insect specialist, and there's a fertility specialist, and then we can get into the cow itself. There's a nutritionist, and there's a reproductive physiologist
So, all these -- the knowledge is just very siloed. And I think that's a problem. I think that that's part of being linear and not cyclical. It did not disturb me at the time. I thought it was great, in fact. But I would have professors that, two years before, were teaching in Maine -- and two years later, they were teaching in New Mexico. They were teaching me in Georgia. And that makes an assumption that the ecosystems all operate very similarly. Well, I’ve got the big tip for you; just quietly -- the ecosystems don't operate that similarly. The cycles of nature are consistent. But what goes on in an ecosystem may be very different from what goes on in an ecosystem 20 miles away, much less 2000 miles away. So I think that, to be a good grazer, a good land steward, knowing a little bit about many, many, many things is way superior to knowing so, so much about one very narrow discipline.
Ryan: Okay. So, when do you introduce the birds, and why? What do the birds add to this ecosystem?
Will: The birds added a lot of fertility, and they're very important. Economically, we're not doing well with our birds. I raised chickens, turkeys, geese, guineas, and ducks, and really enjoy raising them. But economically, it has not been good. I can remember, when I was drunk on success, doing so well with the grass-fed beef early on, I said, “Wow, we're doing good. And people eat twice as much chicken as they do beef. Just think how good I can do if I add that.”
So I spent a little over $1 million to build a USDA-inspected poultry plant. I’d already built a USDA-inspected red meat plant. And I couldn't make it work. I was buying 5000 chickens a week -- little, tiny, one-day-old chicks a week -- and raising them the best I could, and processing them myself. I did everything myself, but I couldn't make money. And it was a real problem for me, because it was enough dollars that it was significantly impacting the profitability of the farm.
I was asked to speak at a convention in Boulder, Colorado; the American Grass-Fed Association. We stayed in an old cowboy hotel. The ‘Boulderama’ was the name of it. It was in the 1800’s, still. And in the dining room, on the wall, there was a framed menu from the 1890s. I was walking around the room, looking while I was waiting for my food to be served. And it said, “Beef dinner: $0.88. Pork dinner: $0.98. Poultry dinner: $1.18.” It was the opposite of what you would think. And the reason is because the chicken lent itself to industrialization more handily than the hog, and the hog lent itself to industrialization more handily than the cow.
So, we were able -- my dad's generation, and my generation -- to take the cost out of chickens more than hogs, and hogs more than cows. And I hadn't really considered that. So, my break-even, when I was raising a lot of chickens, was like $5 or something a pound. And at the time, you could buy chicken at the grocery store for $0.99 a pound on sale. And so, it just doesn't work economically. But I do believe in it, and we’ve still got a few chickens. We’ve still got some poultry. But I couldn't afford to do it on the scale that I was operating on with cattle, because the consumer is so used to that ridiculously cheap poultry price we pay.
Ryan: But there's no way you could have a poultry price that cheap if you're running chickens in this holistic way.
Will: Yeah. So, we're talking about the industrial model for the production of meat chicken. And in the industrial model, it's just cheaper. But I don't think those costs go away. I think that we just throw them outside the production system. We're about 80 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. All the shed water off my farm goes into that stream, into the Chattahoochee River, to the Apalachicola River, to the Gulf of Mexico. And there is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that’s as big as a state, from the runoff.
Ryan: Of the “cides.”
Will: From the “cides.” The fertilizer, and the “cides.” And the cost of that dead zone -- how much is it? I mean, millions or billions, or how much? How much is that? But it's not being borne by the food production system that created it.
Ryan: Yeah. It’s nature absorbing that loss.
Will: All of us, still.
Ryan: Right now, it's still a small enough dead zone that we're not feeling the impact.
Will: Except Apalachicola oysters were a thing when I was growing up. And you can't harvest wild oysters down there anymore. And I could go on and on. Global warming. Who's paying for that? Everybody. Who's creating it? Not everybody. They tell me that they find pesticides in the polar ice caps. Nobody put them there. It went into the environment, and it’s there. That's the cost. But it's not being absorbed by the cheap food system that's being served.
Ryan: Well, that's a liability. Right now, what it is is a growing liability on the global human balance sheet, right?
Will: Well, what about extinct species? What about the species of... forget animals and birds. I’m talking about microbes that we've driven into extinction by the use of these “cides.” Who's paying for that? All of us.
Ryan: Eventually, all of us.
Will: But the cost of that cheap food -- everybody's not sharing in covering that cost.
Ryan: So, I'm listening to you talk. I've got a question; a theoretical question for you, which is: If the ecosystem of the farm works better when it has a shepherd who understands the land, and a shepherd who understands the animals, and how those work together best, and moves them around -- then the question is, how far should a human being be allowing their food to travel outside of their natural ecosystem to be at optimal health?
There's obviously knowledge around honey. Right? How all the honeys are different, all the regional honeys are different. And, if you want to have a natural aid against asthma, and a natural aid against other allergies, eating honey that’s from your region can play a part in that. What I'm wondering is, what's your theory -- if you have one -- on whether or not a human being could be healthier if it was more in tune with its natural geography, only eating from that natural geography?
Will: You know, that makes a lot of sense to me. But I really have learned to limit my comments to the land, the animals, and the local rural economy. When I first started marketing my beef, I hired a young woman to do my website, and I put everything I knew in there about food safety, and health, and nutrient density, and so, so many things that I really had strong opinions on. But I was not an expert in that. So I can remember the day I got embarrassed just in general about that. And I went through, and I pulled everything in our website off that wasn't something that I think I'm an expert in: the land, the animals, and the rural economy. So, what you're saying -- I have opinions on these things.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm thinking more of... I'm listening to you, and your natural instincts led you to abandon a successful way -- a financially successful way of farming -- to take up ways that you'd never used before. You were moving away from things you didn't like toward things you really liked. And over time, what that resulted in was an outcome that not only was financially feasible, but might be healthier, right? Certainly, it was more psychologically, spiritually, and -- in your particular family -- maybe more rewarding, because it brought you guys together in a way that you could farm in a way that was satisfactory to everybody’s psychology. Right?
So, there's a lot of happiness that was born out of you following your instincts. I'm just trying to tap into that; to think, “Well, what other things do you have instincts about?” You may not be in control; you don't know with certainty. But what's your instinct about whether or not humans might be healthier if they ate more locally?
Will: I think humans would be healthier if they ate more locally. But I don't think that's the first and worst problem. I think eating real food would be. If you go to the store and look at the stuff that's there for you to buy, most of it doesn't qualify as what my granddad and great-granddad ever would have thought of as food. I think that that's probably the first and worst problem that we have.
But I do want to address the economic side. What you said just made me think about this. So, you're sitting in Bluffton, Georgia, in Clay County, Georgia. Clay County, Georgia was the poorest county in the United States of America in 2020, according to the USDA. We're the largest employer in the county. We’ve got about 160 or 70 employees, and my payroll is $100,000 every Friday -- in the poorest county in America. So, the economic impact of what we do here is so much stronger than it was with what I used to do.
I think a lot about economic disparity. I was born in 1954. And when I was growing up, I believed -- and I still think it's true -- that there was real wilderness in the Yukon, the Amazon, in Africa. And I longed as a kid to visit those true wildernesses. And I'm 69. So, 60-something years later, I really don't think there's any wilderness left. There may be a little pocket here and there, but no real wilderness is left, and I guess that's okay -- except it makes me think about what's happening with rural areas.
You know, even today, there's still a rural America, a rural Europe. There’s rural areas, but the food system that's feeding us is impoverishing rural America to the point that I believe that, in the in the era of my children -- probably my grandchildren -- there won't be any rural left the way there's really no wilderness left today. And I think that's horrible. I think that that's something that people don't seem to even have the understanding of, much less the will to see to it that we re-enrich rural areas.
Ryan: Well, what we're missing... so, when you were a UGA, you studied animal science. I don't know how many years before that, it used to be called animal husbandry. Now, that husbandry aspect was much more of a priesthood, right? You were learning a shepherding that was more of a... you were being indoctrinated. Maybe not indoctrinated. You were being initiated into a priesthood of farmers.
Will: That sounds noble, and I like it, but I can tell you what a more defensible position is. When it was husbandry, it was very cyclical. When we turned it into science, it became very linear. And that's what we did with the industry. Even in the era of my great-grandfather and grandfather, it was a cyclical system. My dad turned it into a very linear system, and I made it even more linear until I started moving back into a far more cyclical system.
Ryan: Well, the reason that I wanted to refer to it as the initiation into a priesthood is that I'm thinking about... when you say that we're losing the rural, what really concerns me is not just the different use of the land, but that we're also losing this priesthood. We're losing this farmer priesthood that actually adds so much to society -- not just in the food that is created, but in the connection to the land and the animals, and being able to translate that to the rest of society. If we lose that priesthood, then we lose a whole area of knowledge that may not be just scientific knowledge. It may be a spiritual knowledge that is making us more bankrupt as a culture.
Will: Certainly, the example I gave earlier -- how this farm went from over 5% organic matter to a half percent organic matter, and now back up to 5% organic matter -- is evidence of the destructive force that that has. I think that we're a long way from having significant change made in that.
There was a time, when I started changing my farm, that I was moving away from something and not towards anything intentionally. It led me to move toward this cyclical embrace of nature and the natural production system. I liked it, and it was profitable for me, and it brought two of my children back. And there was a time that I really embraced encouraging others to move in this direction. But the economic reality has caused me to be much more quiet about that.
You know, the fact is, due to the timing of our change -- and the fact that I did inherit equity, good equity in a business -- we were able to make that transition; make that change. I found myself urging others to do the same. And, in doing that, I found myself encouraging others to do something that might be destructive economically for them. They might not be able to do that. They were 20 years after me. And they may not have started out with as much equity in a business as I was blessed with.
Ryan: But let's do this thought experiment. Imagine we were sitting in Washington, and we were a group of wise elders who were trying to look after American culture. And we asked ourselves the question: “Where we sit today in the world of agriculture -- is that where we want to be?” Now, let's assume that we said “No; this is actually not where we want to be,” and we needed to come up with a 50-year plan. A 50-year plan for how we could return our culture to a better state, agriculturally, and in so doing, also return to our culture an agricultural priesthood -- that their social job was not just to produce meat and vegetables, but also to be our guides in staying in tune with the planet.
What would we do? We're not asking people to just go out and make an economic investment on their own, counter-culturally. Instead, let's say we try to take the culture in a different direction. How do we start to encourage? How do we start to maybe even capitalize young farmers to be able to do this kind of stuff that might be so socially good in the long run?
Will: Well, I think that what you just described as having happened -- being desirable to happen -- kind of is happening, but with nothing to do with Washington DC. The fact is, I think that in the minds of many sophisticated, informed consumers, there's that movement in that direction.
Ryan: Just taking the bull by the horns.
Will: Yes, but I think that the idea of that kind of leadership coming from Washington, DC is out of the question. I’ve been to Washington a lot in my life. And every time I went, it was for the purpose of trying to influence some politician to do something. I've never put a point on the board, and I don't think I'll ever go back, because I don't think points can be put on that board. I think that there's so much money coming from lobbyists -- from big ag, big food, big tech -- that that's just a dead-end street. I think that not only will they not be part of the solution, they will be part of the roadblock. So, I think that spending much time and effort deciding how to gain a favorable result working through Washington is absolutely wasted.
Now, I tend to be a little bit of a pessimist in my old age, because I've seen so much that didn't go well. And if you had asked me a few years ago if I thought the consumer movement towards the environment and food production and animal welfare would catch much real traction, I would have said “Probably not.” But I've been pleased, and surprised, that it has. Now, I see a problem with it: that there's so much money in the food business, the pesticide business -- the forces that are counter to good food production -- that the messaging has changed, and become very powerful. When a consumer walks into the grocery store and looks at the shelf, there's just so many good messages up via from so many brilliant marketing people that they're just absolutely confused.
Even I, who does this for a living -- I’ve become very confused about the certifying agencies. There are some that have very high standards; some that are just smoke and mirrors. And it's not easy to say “This is a good one, and that’s not a good one.” So, the confusion on the part of the consumer is intentional. The confusion that consumers have is created very intentionally. And it's amazing to me how efficacious it is.
Ryan: All right. Let's do a different thought experiment. You have a nephew. I mean, I don't even know if you do or not, but in this pretend thought experiment, you have a nephew who has spent the last 15 years of his life living in New York doing finance. And he wakes up one day and says, “I need to change my life.” He calls you up. He says, “Uncle, I need to change my life. I want to start eating really clean. I want to make sure that the food that is coming my way is raised the way that you raised things. How do I go about doing this? Where do I start?”
Will: That's a good question. And I have a good answer here. I would tell that nephew from New York that he needs to go out and find a farmer that he trusts, who raises food in a manner that is pleasing to him. Don't worry too much about certifications, and whatever else goes with that. Find a farmer. And it would be great if he could get in his Volvo, or BMW, and drive out and meet the farmer. But it’s not necessary. One of the great things that's come from social media is that you can really get to know a lot about a farm just by reading about it. As long as you know that visitors are welcome, it’d be great if you could go and verify it yourself. But if you read what the farmer says, and you know that there are ten, or 50, or 100 people, or three a day going to the farm, that's okay. That's okay.
So I think that, for that imaginary nephew in New York, finding a farmer that he trusts -- as local as possible -- is the answer. And I think that it’s the answer both for the farmer and the consumer. Utilize that farmer to move further away from that industrial model. Everybody wins.
Ryan: How far do you guys ship your meat?
Will: Sadly, 48 states. But I don't want to. The fact is, I built a USDA-inspected red meat plant and a USDA-inspected poultry plant and a commissary; a bunch of other things. And I really need to sell $25 to $30 million worth of product to make my business work. And I can't sell $25 to $30 million worth of stuff in Bluffton, Georgia, or Clay County, Georgia, or Georgia. I've got to reach out further. That was not my intent. My intent was to serve as small a radius as I could, and help other people find traction to create small areas around themselves.
That's the way I wanted it. But what's happening is okay -- not my desired grand plan, but it's okay. I can live with it. And my children can probably make a living the same way. We still continue to help other people who want to learn to farm this way. We formed a nonprofit, 501C3 called CFAR -- Center for Agricultural Resilience. We actually have schools here where we teach farmers, or farmer wannabes, how we do what we do. There'll be a poultry production, or gardening, or hog production sessions. We have an intern program. We bring in six interns four times a year. We have interns -- not necessarily young people. We’ve had interns my age before. But interns come in, work three months, and learn a lot. They can't leave here and start a farm, but they learn a lot. They’re closer to it than they were when they got here. So, we are going to continue to do what we can do to help move the needle -- and the needle will either move or not.
Ryan: So you do about 25 million top line, about half of that direct consumer?
Will: This past year, for the first time, a little over half of it was direct to consumer.
Ryan: It's pretty amazing.
Will: 15 years ago, it was 100% wholesale.
Ryan: So, you’ve got $13 million of revenue coming from individuals who are buying direct. How many people does that represent? You have any idea how many?
Will: My daughter owns that business; she could tell you. I don’t know.
Ryan: I should do a podcast with her, just about that side of the business. All the consumer-facing; I think that’s really fascinating.
Will: Well, I'm glad to be in line first, because after you do her, you wouldn’t want to do me.
Ryan: Hahaha. Okay, so let's do a little bit of a commercial -- in the sense that somebody just listened to this whole podcast. Now, let's say they want to try your meat. Where do they go do that?
Will: We sell to Publix supermarkets. We sell to Giant Eagle supermarkets. We sell to several others.
Ryan: Yeah, several others. But what if they just want to buy it direct?
Will: whiteoakpastures.com.
Ryan: And they can go on there and order all the meats?
Will: Yeah.
Ryan: And you ship it direct? Does it come in an ice pack? How does that work?
Will: Dry ice, yeah.
Ryan: And it's overnighted?
Will: Well, it depends on where you are. Three days.
Ryan: Three days, you can handle, though. The dry ice can handle three days? It's all frozen.
Will: Yes.
Ryan: Okay. Good, good.
Will: Also -- you can run this or not. But we wrote a book called ‘A Bold Return to Giving a Damn.’
Ryan: I like this. Of course that’s going in there. Tell me more about the book. So, it's called ‘A Bold Return to Giving a Damn?’
Will: It is.
Ryan: Can you get on Amazon?
Will: Yeah, I think so. The way that it came about is kind of interesting. We were contacted by Penguin; Viking; Random House; some agents who work for them. They said they were interested in buying a book on White Oak Pastures. And I told them, “I'm flattered, but I can’t write a book.” Again, I think it's cyclical, not linear. I probably read a book when I was at the University of Georgia in 1976, but I hadn’t read one since. So, I just wasn't prepared to do it.
But they were very persistent, and they actually offered to hire someone to write the book. I still wasn’t too crazy about that. But we interviewed 2 or 3 authors -- potential authors -- and wound up really liking a young woman named Amy Lee Graven, originally from England, living in California. A real student of regenerative land management -- that’s her lifestyle. And she's the same age as my daughters; in that range. I kind of fell in love with her a little bit. She came here and spent time on the farm, and for over a year, we had a ‘date’ every Friday afternoon for a phone conversation. It would be from 1 to 3 hours, and she would wear me out.
She’s a sweetheart. It was all the little “Hey, how you are you?” Then it would take about 60 seconds. She’d say, “Okay.” And she’d start asking questions. Very specific bullet questions; linear. I would respond, and I could hear her pecking in the background. She would record, and she had some kind of computer program going for her. I would respond, and every once in a while she'd say, “Wait a minute. That's not what you told me on June 3rd.” “What’d I tell you?” She’d go back and read it to me. “No, no, no no, no, that was a different issue.” You know, we’d get it straight. But she was just very great to work with.
Ryan: So, I take it you were very pleased with how the book turned out.
Will: I was. I was very concerned about it. But I think she did a great job. And I wound up reading it for the audio part.
Ryan: You read the whole thing? Like, I could go right now and download it on Audible and hear your voice reading the whole book? I'm doing that for sure.
Will: I’ll tell you what. It was supposed to take five days. It took about eight days -- because, you probably hadn’t noticed, but I’ve got an accent.
Ryan: Where's it from?
Will: The engineer that was doing whatever they do with it? I’d read a line, and he’d say, “Read it again.” I’d read it again. He’d just wear me out. He’s a nice guy. We finally got it done.
Ryan: Well I can't wait to hear it. I love listening to audiobooks, and it’s even better when the author reads it themselves.
Will: Well, there won't be another one. If you listen to this one, you’ll be through. You ain't got to worry about that anymore.
Ryan: All right. Well, we're out of time, but this has been fantastic.
Will: I have really enjoyed it.
Ryan: Yeah, I have, too. I'm gonna look forward to doing a podcast with your daughter, too.
Will: Good. Yeah.
Ryan: Well, thanks again for being here. Absolute pleasure.
Will: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
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