Sustainable environmental practices are the core of White Oak Pastures, the largest grass-fed beef operation in Georgia, which also produces lamb, poultry, and is the state’s largest organic farm certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Our system allows the animals to engage in instinctive behavior,” Harris said. “The chickens are loose in the pasture, scratching and pecking. The cattle are on grass all their life. From an animal welfare perspective, there is no doubt that the meat we produce—beef, lamb and poultry—is better because our animals lead a better life than animals reared in a conventional environment.”

The herd is not fed grain, nor does it receive artificial hormones or antibiotics.

This commitment to animal welfare extends to the environment as well. White Oak Pastures claims many distinctions, among them an onsite, USDA-inspected beef processing plant (only one other farm in the country has one), as well as a zero-waste, Certified Human poultry abattoir. Both plants are powered by solar energy, and Harris does not use chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

“I believe my farm and plants have a very, very small carbon footprint. I think we sequester more carbon than we generate,” he said. “My land has gone from having practically no organic matter to having about 4 percent organic matter.”

White Oak employs 75 people, making it one of the largest private employers in Early County. “It’s a very good workplace. No one makes minimum wage. Everyone’s on a bonus program, and we offer health insurance.”

Things weren’t always this way. Harris’s transition from conventional methods to his current practices didn’t happen overnight. “I bred beef very conventionally and used all the industrial tools, and thought I was good at it and enjoyed it, but I had an increasing distaste for it and liked it less and less,” he said.

“I didn’t enjoy industrial production as much at 50 as I did at 25,” Harris explained. “I started reading about sophisticated consumers that wanted to eat meat that was raised differently, and I felt like I could do that.

The first thing he did was stop feeding his cattle corn and using hormone implants and antibiotics. “And I thought that was all I would ever do,” he said. “Years later I gave up chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Again, I thought that was all I’d ever do.”

Harris operation continued to evolve as he added his beef and poultry abattoirs, systems that were designed by Dr. Temple Grandin, the internationally recognized authority on humane animal handling and slaughter.

While Harris is committed to his current practices and believes it is a better way to doing things from and environmental and animal welfare perspective, he does not think he is changing the beef industry.

“I think raising meat the way I do is a niche, a growing niche. But it will always be a niche,” Harris said. “At one point I thought it might be a real trend that would really impact a high percentage of the production of meat in this country, but I don’t really believe that anymore.”

Many consumers base their food purchases primarily on convenience and price, and there’s nothing wrong with that, Harris said. But those buying White Oak products are more aware of agricultural practices and differentiate between sustainable methods and those considered industrial.

“The people that buy my product are sophisticated consumers that have studied the food production system and made some decisions about how they feel about animal welfare and environmental sustainability and the de-commodifying of food,” he said

Harris summed up his philosophy in one phrase: “Nature abhors a monoculture.” Variation, he said, is at the heart of nature, and Harris has integrated that approach by adopting the Serengeti grazing model, in which complimentary animal species, like cattle, sheep, birds, turkeys, chickens and geese, are rotated side by side through the pastures.

“Look at any vacant lot or any field that’s left fallow,” Harris said. “You’ve got all different kinds of plant and animal species living together, depending on each other in different ways.

“But in modern industrial farming we try to have monocultures. A feed lot with a 100,000 cattle out on it – theoretically it’s easier to manage. Well, it is easier to manage if you’re going to use copious quantities of fertilizer and artificial feeds and pesticides,” he said. “But in doing all of that you’re working against nature. Make no mistake, you’re fighting nature. And I just don’t believe you’re going to win in the long run fighting nature.”

White Oak Pastures products can be found in Whole Foods markets across the Southern and Eastern U.S., in Publix stores and online at: http://whiteoakpastures.com/

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