It’s been more than 40 years since Will Harris graduated from the University of Georgia’s School of Agriculture and returned to the family farm near the little town of Bluffton, Georgia. That year — 1976 –– Harris started farming with his father, and together they carried on the farm’s traditions of raising cattle for feedlot finishing and growing corn, cotton, and peanuts.
For nearly two decades they tilled the fields, put down fertilizers, and applied pesticides. As management responsibilities shifted to the younger Harris, he began paying closer attention to what he was seeing in the farm’s soils. It had become a “dead mineral medium” testing below 1% in organic matter and often eroded by wind and water.
Harris believed the farm’s soil could come alive again, with the kind of life he found in the soil in the woods next to his fields. That dark earth and its healthy, crumbled texture struck a sharp contrast to the red color and dead, cement-like look of the soil in his fields. “I wanted my land to have soil that was an organic medium teeming with life,” he says.
In 1995, Harris started focusing on rebuilding the health of the soil. Common sense told him this could be accomplished by mimicking the natural processes at work in the woods, which were free from tillage, fertilizers, and pesticides. “These interrupt the cycles of nature, including those affecting water, energy, microbes, minerals, and carbon,” he says.
Harris gave up tilling his fields; quit growing corn, cotton, and peanuts; and stopped using fertilizers and pesticides. He planted annual forages and then perennials. He intensified the grazing of cattle herds across the fields and added other livestock species.
But soil improvements came slowly. Meanwhile, weeds flourished and finances flagged as Harris and his wife, Von, struggled to hold onto their vision of letting the natural processes resulting from grazing livestock on perennial pastures restore the soil. At the same time, they were working to build the infrastructure that would permit the on-farm processing of meats.
On the worst of their sleepless nights, the couple might not have ever imagined how time, natural processes, and human creativity would eventually converge to transform the farm into its present state of invigoration. Over the years, soil health has exploded. Organic matter in some fields has climbed from below 1% to 5%. Erosion has stopped. Water percolation has increased, while life in the soil abounds.
The reinvigorated soil and the livestock it supports have triggered a remake of the farm’s industries and even its surrounding community. Today, the Harrises’ farm — White Oak Pastures — has grown to 5,000 acres of owned and rented pastures, all developed from degraded cropland. On-farm USDA-inspected abattoirs process meat from cattle, hogs, sheep, rabbits, chickens, geese, and ducks — all produced on the farm — to be sold through national grocery chains and direct to consumers.
A staff of 176 employees produces the animals and markets the meat as well as organic vegetables, eggs, honey, and other farm-made products to retailers and consumers. White Oak Pastures has an on-farm store, operates a general store in Bluffton, and sells meat and other products online across the country. There’s also an on-farm restaurant along with lodging for vacationing guests. A recreational vehicle park for farm visitors is also available.
The farm’s zero-waste mission results in the on-farm processing of slaughter by-products into soap, candles, dog treats, and other nonedible items for sale to retailers and consumers.
The economic benefits of the farm’s holistic production system spin off into the local community, rejuvenating Bluffton, once on the verge of becoming a ghost town, Harris says. “White Oak Pastures is the largest private employer in the county.”
While nearly half of the employees are lifelong residents of the community, the remainder have moved to the region to take advantage of job opportunities consistent with their personal values.
The potential to mitigate climate change is yet another benefit of the operation’s soil-based, whole-farm grazing and production system. In 2017, Quantis, an environmental research and design firm, conducted a life-cycle assessment (LCA) on beef raised by White Oak Pastures. The LCA looked at the energy and environmental impacts of all stages of a product’s life cycle, including the acquisition of raw materials, the production process, and handling of waste by-products. The LCA analyzed the greenhouse gas footprint of the farm, including enteric emissions from cattle, manure emissions, farm activities, slaughter and transport, and carbon sequestration through soil and plant matter.
“The data showed that converting annual cropland to perennial pasture, under holistic and regenerative grazing practices, had the effect of storing more carbon in the soil than cows emit during their lives,” Harris says. “In other words, our grass-fed cattle sequester more carbon than they produce. Grass-fed beef and holistic land and animal management can be tools to help reverse climate change.”
The key is building both organic matter and microbial diversity in the soil. To jumpstart this process on newly acquired fields of degraded soil, Harris and his employees use a technique they call a “hay bomb.” They feed as many as 40 bales at a time to a herd of cattle on a nutrient-deficient field. The manure and urine of the livestock add fertility. Their trampling of the hay residue into the soil surface adds carbon to feed the microbial life.
Next comes the planting of perennial grasses. As these begin growing, so do
the fast-growing annual forbs, or weeds, which threaten to outcompete the slower-
growing perennials. “We use flash grazing with livestock for a short period to control the annuals,” Harris says. Giving the plants a long recovery time after grazing helps the perennials get established.
Subsequent grazings by various classes of livestock occur for short periods alternated by long periods of rest for the pastures, giving the forages an opportunity to recover after being grazed.
“We’re not finished,” he says. “Even on fields where we started making changes 25 years ago, the soil just keeps getting better. It’s more productive, has more soil life, has greater water percolation, and produces more diverse species of plants.”
Keeping the farm’s holistic processes vibrant long into the future is the goal of the Harrises’ two daughters, Jodi Harris Benoit and Jenni Harris, who are presently involved in the operation.
“We want to continue to leave the land better than when we found it, and we want to continue rebuilding our community,” says
Benoit, director of farm experience. “I believe in what my dad learned early on — that pursuing our hopes and dreams is a journey, not a destination.”
As Jenni Harris, director of marketing, looks to the future, she too keeps an eye on the lessons her father learned before her.
“If we don’t figure out how to work with Mother Nature, she will work against us,” she says. “There is no road map to what the farm will look like in five or 10 years. As the next generation, I hope we can continue to evolve on this journey we’ve been on for the last 25 years … growing food that’s better for the land, for the animals, and for our community.”
229/641-2081
whiteoakpastures.com
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