DAYTON, Ohio – White Oak Pastures came full circle in the 154 years since the farm was established by Will Harris’ grandfather and great-grandfather. Harris was the keynote speaker at the 2021 Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association’s annual conference. This year, the conference was offered in a virtual format.

Harris said White Oak Pastures is a multi-generational, multi-species farm in Bluffton Ga. They raise five species of red meat; beef, hogs, sheep, goats and rabbits that are processed in a USDA-inspected processing facility on the farm. They also raise five species of poultry on pasture: chickens, turkey, ducks, geese and guineas. These are processed on the farm in a separate USDA-inspected processing facility. The farm carries certifications as Non-GMO, Grass-fed and humane, among other standards. White Oak Pastures provides livestock for weed control on a nearby solar farm.

They also raise organic vegetables, honey and pastured eggs as well as other supportive businesses on the farm.

Harris said the farm has come full-circle since his grandfather and great-grandfather farmed.

“When my grandfather and great-grandfather farmed the land they focused on the land, animals and the community,” Harris said. “When my father took over, industrial commodities became more centralized.”

He said the post-World War II era saw a desperate need for a safe, cheap, abundant food supply because Europe was starving, so the infrastructure from World War II was repurposed for industrialization.

“My father’s generation made it a wild success in that production model,” he said. “Food became obscenely cheap, wastefully abundant, and relatively safe if you didn’t fall over from disease.”

While that model was successful in producing cheap and abundant food, it came with consequences that fell on the back of the land, the animals and rural communities.

When Harris returned to the farm following his graduation from the University of Georgia, he continued to further industrialize the farm as he gained productivity and turned it into a monoculture, relying predominately on cattle instead of a variety of species and crops. While the farm was relatively successful, Harris was not satisfied with the way he was farming and by the mid-1990s he began looking at the impact of the production model he was using. He began making changes to focus on the three tenements of the farm’s focus – animal welfare, regenerative land management and re-enriching the local rural community.

Animal welfare was the first area where he started making changes.

Harris said he believes that not only is it critical to keep animals fed, healthy and comfortable, but it is critical to keep the animals in an environment that allows them to focus on expressed behaviors. He also looked at what he was doing to his land and he saw that the soil close to the woods surrounding his fields had a much more active soil life than the soil in the fields. So he moved his from row crops to pasture and moved his animals from confined feedlots to pasture. Along with that, he wanted to add more value to his products, so he began marketing his finished beef under the White Oak Pastures label and began building their on-farm slaughterhouse to handle the product.

Harris began marketing hogs and sheep as well as his beef, but he also had to change his mindset on how those animals were marketed.

“People don’t buy cows, hogs, and sheep,” he said. “They buy beef, pork and lamb. I support the right of individuals to eat what they want to eat, but don’t tell me that you don’t want to eat meat because it destroys the planet.”

Harris said while they continue to market their meat through grocery stores, they have struggled to stay within that system. When the pandemic broke, they had started an online market, delivering food to consumers. Adding that component to the operation has helped offset declining foodservice sales, even though restaurant sales have been stable.

Harris said changing his farming operation has had impacts he didn’t foresee.

He said changing the way he farmed had nothing to do with climate change, but the change actually had an impact on the climate.

“Pasturing livestock is part of the solution for climate change,” he said. ‘Our cattle sequester more carbon than they are emitting.”

Harris added that by changing the way he farms, the soil is improving with livestock. Decreasing tillage and chemicals improves soil life and is proving to be cost effective. “I farm the way I want to farm,” he said. “I like to see people change the way they farm, but it is not my job to tell them how to farm.

“The changes we made to the land and animals were intentional. The impact on the community was unintentional.”

Harris said that his hometown of Bluffton was hurting, like many small agricultural communities.

“When we started making changes to our farming operation and adding staff, people needed places to live, eat, drink and sleep,” Harris said. “As a result, the town has been rejuvenated. Every community has a Bluffton, but when we change the way we farm, these towns can be revitalized. This is replicable in any part of the country.”