American Agriculture And You

Going Beyond Sustainable to Regeneration

White Oak Pastures wasn’t always the picture of regeneration. From 1946 — when his father was still running the farm — to 1995, the farm used industrial farming methods and chemicals. Harris had just one focus — how many pounds of beef he could produce at the lowest price possible. Now, in addition to a focus on animal welfare, Harris is focused on going beyond sustainable farming to land regeneration.

“We believe farming must not only be sustainable, it has to be regenerative to rebuild our soil,” White Oak Pastures’ website reads.

At White Oak Pastures:

• Holistic planned grazing methods naturally sequester carbon, control erosion and increase organic matter in soil

• A life cycle assessment found that their farm is storing more carbon in the soil than their grass fed cows emit during their lifetime

• Former commodity crop land is acquired and regenerated into perennial pasture every year

• They’ve partnered with a nearby 2,400-acre solar farm to provide planned livestock grazing and regenerative land management

Rather than reverting to regenerative agriculture, in which livestock and crops are integrated into a symbiotic, complementary system that mimics the way nature works, corporate entities along with specific agrochemical companies are using gene editing, genetic engineering, chemicals and other “technologies” to create hybrid seed lines, crops resistant to winds, flooding and droughts and other lab-created agricultural elements. As Harris noted:

“The likelihood of the further misapplication of technology is the reason that I am opposed to our land being managed by Bill Gates and anyone else who does not understand how to harvest the abundance of Nature. The proper land steward must respect the cycles of Nature.

… The technocrat's answer to all of our food production problems has been the integration of linear, siloed, reductionist-science-based scalable technology. This approach has proven to be highly effective for complicated linear systems (think computers and machines).

It has also been proven that these technologies are equally disastrous when applied to complex cyclable systems (think farm, eco-system, your body) … If Mr. Gates wants to come to White Oak Pastures or to send someone, come on, I'll show you how I manage my land.”