Arts
As the COVID-19 pandemic places unique stresses on US meat processors and their supply chains, concerns about the resiliency and diversification of our food system are growing. Consumers, farmers, and activists are calling for a reexamination of an industrialized system that puts its workers, public health, and the environment at risk.In this special episode, meet one farmer who de-commoditized, de-centralized, and de-industrialized his sixth-generation family farm. Will Harris of White Oak Pastures (Bluffton, GA) has been a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement since the mid-1990s. For a quarter-century, Harris has worked to build a farm that is a thriving, self-sustaining ecosystem, complete with processing abattoirs that gives White Oak Pastures full control over its end product. It has become the largest privately-owned employer in its county, breathing new life into the 200-year-old farm village in rural Georgia.This episode was recorded in February 2020. Kat Johnson paid a visit to Will Harris at White Oak Pastures, where a rainy tour of the farm (including a newly built solar farm), allowed a unique look into the impacts that regenerative practices are having on the land.