Joe Rogan Experience #1893 - Will Harris

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. WHWill Harris0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) All right, we're up and running. So you are actually the second Will Harris I've had on the show. I should just tell you. My friend Will Harris is a documentary filmmaker. He does, uh, MMA films, does films about UFC fighters.

   3. WHWill Harris0:23

      Hmm.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:24

      And, uh, he's been on recently. So people see the name Will Harris, so like, we have to make a distinction.

   5. WHWill Harris0:28

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      There are more than one, and you're the different one. You're the farmer.

   7. WHWill Harris0:31

      Well, may- maybe next time I'll be your friend too.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:35

      (laughs) Well, uh, I first saw you on television doing one of those very quick interviews where there was, um ... you know, it was a, they were, they were t- talking about all these issues that you like to discuss, but they only gave you a couple of minutes.

   9. WHWill Harris0:48

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       And it was really hard, 'cause you, you have a relaxed way of talking, but you were very interesting. And I was watching, so I was like, "This is a stupid format." Like, "What ... I wanna hear what this guy has to say. He's obviously has a lot more to say." So, that's why we're having this conversation.

   11. WHWill Harris1:02

       Well, thank you for that. That, that ...

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       Thank you.

   13. WHWill Harris1:04

       That's, that, uh, event you're talking about was Fox, uh, N- News.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Yeah.

   15. WHWill Harris1:10

       A guy named Stuart Varney invited me to be on, and he kicked my ass pretty good.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       (laughs)

   17. WHWill Harris1:18

       And I, I, I, I accept culpability in it. You know, I, I don't watch TV much, and I, I've never watched Fox News.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:26

       Never?

   19. WHWill Harris1:27

       No. And I should've ... I mean, I should've prepared myself, but I didn't. You know, I, I, I took it at his word. I got an email from this Stuart Varney saying he wanted me to be on a segment, five minutes, explaining why I didn't think it was good for, uh, Bill Gates to own so much farmland. So, I said, "Well, that's good." You know, I mean, I, I have definite opinions, folded opinions on that, and I wanna share 'em. So, uh, I, I sat down and wrote up a, a four-minute explanation of, of, of facts of why I thought that's not good. And I thought I was gonna get to go through my stuff. And, uh, he asked the question, and I started explaining it. And I'm profoundly Southern. You know, I, I, I speak slowly. And I was doing what I thought he wanted me to do and said, "But why, why?" You know?

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:26

       (laughs) Everything on those shows is just, "You gotta get to the point. Get to the point. Get to the point." Th- it fevers people.

   21. WHWill Harris2:34

       If we, if we-

   22. JRJoe Rogan2:34

       Okay.

   23. WHWill Harris2:34

       If we'd been in the cow pasture, I'd have pinched his fucking head off.

   24. JRJoe Rogan2:38

       (laughs)

   25. WHWill Harris2:38

       (laughs)

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:38

       Well, unfortunately, that's his job. He's got producers in his ear. Like, I guarantee you, they're telling him to move things along quicker. It's like-

   27. WHWill Harris2:45

       It's a shitty job.

   28. JRJoe Rogan2:46

       It's, it's unfortunate, but it's a terrible way to disseminate information. And, uh, could we just like ... let's start it from the beginning, like, who you are. Um, tell, tell us every- everybody about your farm and how everything's run, 'cause it's very interesting.

   29. WHWill Harris2:59

       Good. So, I'm Will Harris. Uh, I'm the fourth generation of my family to own and manage White Oak Pastures. Uh, I have, uh, two daughters and two in-laws who are there with me today, helping run the farm. And we have s- I have seven grandchildren, so the sixth generation has owned the farm. Own- uh, that's been in my family since 1866.

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:24

       Wow.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. WHWill Harris15:00

      upon the stockman with his livestock.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. WHWill Harris15:02

      So, we, I changed the way I, I changed the way I raised, at that time, only cattle. I was a monocultural cattle man at that time. You know, I, I quit feeding, uh, feed ... You know, we, we used to literally feed chicken shit to cows, chicken litter, or you put enough corn and enough molasses in it, and then you give 'em enough subtherapeutic antibiotics to keep 'em healthy, and you can get incredibly cheap weight gains. And it's legal. It's fine.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:33

      Chicken shit. And what, now, what's the benefit of that? Is chicken shit high in calories? Like, why is it-

   5. WHWill Harris15:37

      Chicken shit's high in nitrogen, which is protein.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:40

      Mm-hmm.

   7. WHWill Harris15:41

      And there, and there does, there are calories there. You, it's just a ... It's from confinement, chicken houses.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:47

      Oh, wow.

   9. WHWill Harris15:47

      There's a lot of wasted feed in there.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       Wow.

   11. WHWill Harris15:50

       From a purely nutritional perspective, if you view the world myopically through that view of just the nutrition going into that animal-

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:02

       Right.

   13. WHWill Harris16:02

       ... it's a, it's a, it, it's a great feed mostly 'cause it's cheap and it works.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:07

       Hmm.

   15. WHWill Harris16:07

       But it's not the thing to do.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:09

       Yeah. It's disgusting.

   17. WHWill Harris16:11

       So I quit doing those kind ... M- most of my trans-

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       Is that common?

   19. WHWill Harris16:16

       I did it. Yeah. I mean, d-

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:17

       But do you think that's probably commonly-

   21. WHWill Harris16:18

       ... I w- I, I, I went to, I have been to, uh, courses at Auburn University where we were taught how to do that, so.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:26

       Wow. So o- o- one of the, the horrors of, um, animal agriculture was the great ... The, the moment in England and, and, and Europe where this mad cow disease spread through the land-

   23. WHWill Harris16:39

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:39

       ... where I had a friend who I think it was a, a decade plus later, after he had been to, uh, England, like, uh, there was something about his medical report. He had a, a list that he lived there during the time that he ate ground beef 'cause so many people (laughs) had gotten mad cow disease-

   25. WHWill Harris16:56

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:56

       ... from people feeding cows, cows.

   27. WHWill Harris16:59

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:59

       Like, that's how th- that came about, right? They were feeding-

   29. WHWill Harris17:02

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       ... cows cow brains.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) …

   1. WHWill Harris30:00

      maybe late '90s. I, I don't, I don't really know. L- maybe. You know, I g- I quit these things gradually. I don't know what day I quit that. But, uh, you know, I tell people that there are days I would kill a man for a load of am- ammonium nitrate fertilizer 'cause it's just so good.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:18

      (laughs)

   3. WHWill Harris30:19

      And similarly, I have a new non-native invasive plant on my farm. New to me. It's called tropical soda apple. It's from the Caribbean.They speculate it came up here in bird droppings.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:34

      Oh, wow.

   5. WHWill Harris30:35

      And it's, it's r- it's, it's related to the tomato, but it's very invasive. And, uh-

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      Is it edible?

   7. WHWill Harris30:41

      Uh, not by you and I. I mean, I've tasted it, it's not good. But it's a nightshade.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:47

      Okay.

   9. WHWill Harris30:47

      But, but, but birds, cows, hogs, sheep, goats, coyotes, everything, eats those little berries. But it's not, it's not a good plant, because it, it, it literally dominates the landscape. So, uh, I'm, I'm battling it right now on my farm. And I'm using... I, I, I've got a, something I'm excited about now, but I've been using, uh, organic, uh, apple cider vinegar and soap to fight it. And it's not very efficacious spraying it, it's not very efficacious at all. I mean, it, it, it eventually, if you keep spraying it, you'll kill it. But it takes a lot. You know, I could give it a breath of Roundup and it would die. But I don't want to use Roundup for the reasons you stated.

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:41

       Yeah.

   11. WHWill Harris31:41

       You know, I, I, you know, I, my, my employees, my family, my animals would be out there, the ones doing it.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:47

       Yeah.

   13. WHWill Harris31:49

       So, uh, uh, I, I've resisted the incredible temptation, like I'd, I'd kill a man for a gallon of Roundup.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:56

       (laughs)

   15. WHWill Harris31:57

       But, uh-

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:59

       Is there any other way?

   17. WHWill Harris32:00

       Well-

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:01

       Could you grit it off and do it by hand?

   19. WHWill Harris32:03

       I'm glad you asked. So, one of the ancient Greeks said, "For every pestilence that nature sends, she sends the cure." And I absolutely subscribe to that. That's part of the balance, the cycle, the symbiosis you mentioned earlier.

   20. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       Right.

   21. WHWill Harris32:19

       So, uh-

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:20

       Is there a bug that eats them?

   23. WHWill Harris32:21

       Yeah, there you go.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:22

       Oh.

   25. WHWill Harris32:22

       So there's a, there's a, uh, a professor at the, uh, University of Florida who has brought in a beetle from Paraguay. And she assures me that it, it eats nothing but tropical soda apple. So I have bought... Or no actually, she gave 'em to me. Uh, I offered to buy. So she sent me some beetles and I've turned them loose, because I-

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:45

       Oh, boy.

   27. WHWill Harris32:46

       I don't-

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:46

       Sounds like a horror movie. Like this is the beginning. (laughs)

   29. WHWill Harris32:49

       Yeah. Well, you know for-

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:50

       Whoa! They're cool looking.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Hmm. …

   1. WHWill Harris45:00

      is higher. When you as a consumer ask me as a farmer to give up all the tools that reductionist science gave to take cost out of production, you add cost back to production.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      Hmm.

   3. WHWill Harris45:14

      Now, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna amend that. I stand by it, but I'm gonna amend it and say direct cost.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:20

      Direct cost, because-

   5. WHWill Harris45:21

      Direct cost.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:21

      ... long term, you're destroying the soil.

   7. WHWill Harris45:24

      The externalized cost, like-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:26

      Yeah.

   9. WHWill Harris45:26

      ... destroying the soil, like losing antibiotics-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:29

       Hmm.

   11. WHWill Harris45:29

       ... like extinction of species, like the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Like if you believe in climate change, and I do, how much does a good hurricane cost?

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:39

       Hmm.

   13. WHWill Harris45:39

       You know, how much does, how much does a good, good, uh, 100,000 acre wildfire cost? And the... those externalized costs are not borne by the multinational companies or the people that incur them. You know, the, the, the-

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:57

       Right. They're borne by the average citizen.

   15. WHWill Harris45:59

       By me and you and everybody-

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:00

       Yeah.

   17. WHWill Harris46:00

       ... that pays taxes and-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:01

       Yeah.

   19. WHWill Harris46:01

       ... and gets sick.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:03

       So that's a hidden cost.

   21. WHWill Harris46:05

       Externalized, yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:06

       So when you are around all these other people that are doing it in the industrialized way, and you're doing it in your sort of regenerative way, it doesn't have any influence on those people? They see that you're... you have a more natural approach to farming, it seems more prosperous, you're getting all this attention, people want to talk to you. It's a fascinating subject, and people gravitate towards it as a potential option. Nobody's looking at the factory farming system going, "Oh, wow, you stuff all those pigs together. Tell me more about that. What do you do? You take all the chickens and you make them live in these abnormal cages and..." No one's excited about that. But when people talk to you, they're excited about it. Like, "Oh, that's interesting. So you can just let the chickens roam around, and you let the hogs roam around, and you let the grass grow for the cows to just graze around on, and this is how you sustain a farm." That sounds intriguing to people, because one of the big dilemmas about being a person who eats meat is contributing to this horrendous factory farming system. That's what scares people.

   23. WHWill Harris47:09

       All right. That's a great question. I got a great answer.

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:11

       Okay.

   25. WHWill Harris47:11

       So let's, let's just be crystal clear that these practitioners, these farmers that are farming industrially in that commoditized, centralized model are not bad people.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:24

       Right.

   27. WHWill Harris47:24

       At all. Not bad people at all. You know, big food, big ag, they, they, they may be evil. Multinational corp- corporations. I think it's the equivalent of, of big tobacco in the '60s.

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:37

       Mm-hmm.

   29. WHWill Harris47:37

       But those practitioners out there on the ground are good people. So why do they not move over in, in the model that you said, you know, all the... uh, why do they not change over? And the answer is, first, they're three or four generations into farming this way.

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:59

       Hmm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   We're definitely on a…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      ... that is the dance, right? Efficiency and resilience. And it's only ... what you're talking about when you're talking about people, uh, examining the soil and r- realizing the oxidation, realizing the damage to the carbon in the soil, what are the steps that we can take to mitigate that other than d- having farms run regeneratively like yours? Like, if someone wants to continue with that industrialized model, but they're using all these herbicides and pesticides and it's destroying the soil in some way, w- what can be done to, to correct that? Or, or are we on a path that we can't get off of where we're not gonna have good topsoil anymore?

   2. WHWill Harris1:00:37

      We're definitely on a path where we're not gonna have good topsoil anymore.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:40

      Definitely.

   4. WHWill Harris1:00:41

      No, there, there's no question about that.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

      So what happens when that takes place?

   6. WHWill Harris1:00:45

      Uh ... you know, w- we'll become far less productive as an agricultural industry, and, uh ... can I k- c- can I, can I go back?

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

      Yes, please.

   8. WHWill Harris1:01:00

      Go ... okay. So-

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:00

      Go wherever you want, sir.

   10. WHWill Harris1:01:01

       All right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:02

       I won't, not in ... does it ... have you done a podcast before?

   12. WHWill Harris1:01:05

       Uh, not like this.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       No. Well, the- (laughs) this is the best part about it is you can go anywhere you want.

   14. WHWill Harris1:01:09

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       So.

   16. WHWill Harris1:01:10

       All right. So, uh, have you ever heard of Savory Institute?

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:14

       No, I have not.

   18. WHWill Harris1:01:15

       All right. Y'all, y'all look at it. Uh-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Savory Institute.

   20. WHWill Harris1:01:18

       Uh, it's not like... Yes. It's not like, it's not like savory food. It's a guy named Allan Savory. He's a farmer from Zimbabwe who is touted as being the father of regenerative land management, s- pasture and range management. And Savory International is a, uh, uh, group that is devoted to that. And my farm is a Savory hub. I actually went to Zimbabwe and took my training under Allan Savory some years ago in regenerative land management.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

       And this is after years and years of industrial farming?

   22. WHWill Harris1:01:54

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       You still needed to, like, take courses? Like, what did you need to learn there?

   24. WHWill Harris1:01:58

       How to completely rethink about it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:00

       Mm-hmm.

   26. WHWill Harris1:02:01

       So, uh, and we can talk more about that, but what, but the main thing, point I want to make is in, in the Savory thought process, uh, we talk about, uh, the difference in a, in a complex system and a complicated system. So, this, this microphone thing we're working on here is a very complicated system. And this, uh, computer this young man is working on over here is a very complicated system. And to me what that means is, there's a lot of shit going on to make it work. And when one component quits working, it don't work no more.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:45

       Mm-hmm.

   28. WHWill Harris1:02:46

       And reductionist science works great on those very linear, complicated systems. A factory is kind of the ultimate complicated system, very linear and very, uh, lends itself to scale, which lends itself to efficiency. Uh, so a- and that is the model that my dad's generation, and later my generation, applied to agriculture. All right, let's talk about agriculture. My farm, like your body, is a very complex living system. There's a lot going on in both of them to make it work. But if one component quits, everything kind of morphs, and it keeps working. Right? So in that, in that scenario, uh, it doesn't lend itself to reductive science as well because of the unintended consequences, that, that, that, that morphing we're talking about. Living systems are complex systems. Reductive science easily becomes misapplied to those systems because it has those unintended consequences that are not easily recognizable. We talked about some of them.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:04:10

       Right.

   30. WHWill Harris1:04:10

       You take, not you, somebody taking steroids or me using fertilizer and pesticides on my land. Reductive science applied to a, a living system, living systems are very cyclical. They're not super scalable, they are super replicable. You can have more of them. So this is finally getting back to your question about feeding LA.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

   Is there a way…

   1. WHWill Harris1:15:00

      yes, correct.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      Is there a way to do that to turn farms into more self-sustaining, the way yours is?

   3. WHWill Harris1:15:06

      Well, that, that question assumes the government wants to do that. And-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      Well, if the government wants, uh, the environment ultimately to be healthy, that seems like the only way. You just... (laughs) They should someone should send 'em that video of your river, 'cause-

   5. WHWill Harris1:15:20

      So-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:20

      ... that's crazy.

   7. WHWill Harris1:15:21

      So let m- let me, let me explain how the Farm... The Farm Bill is an incredible farm program, farm bill, right? It's an incredible cost to the government. But let me tell you how it's written.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:33

      Okay.

   9. WHWill Harris1:15:34

      Big ag and big food decide what they want, and then they hire lobbyists, and those guys go to Washington and write the program, or get the program written through aides, congressional aides or senate aides. And then it's, it's p- passed that... So, so if big ag and big food don't want to change, it's not, it's not gonna happen through the government. To exacerbate that, now, this is... You know, I don't want to get sued by anybody, so I'm just going to tell you what I believe.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:16:15

       Okay.

   11. WHWill Harris1:16:16

       Uh, you know, y- in the case of USDA, those bureaucrats, for the most part, I'm sure it's not all, but many of those bureaucrats that, that become very senior in USDA, po- and I'm sure it's Defense Department too, post-retirement, they get really great jobs with big ag and big food.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:16:39

       Mm-hmm.

   13. WHWill Harris1:16:40

       And I think that there's a, and I can give you some examples actually, but I think there's a culture of catering to, uh, big ag and big food because of the rewards that beco- come post-retirement. You know, we, uh... I'll give you an example. So we had a, uh, an issue, uh, when I first started raising poultry outside in the pasture. Uh, we had a predation problem by bald eagles. Uh, it was kind of a, it was kind of a good sign in a pervert way, because we, we didn't have bald eagles. They were outside my ecosystem. We put poultry on the ground, we had bald eagles. And when the bald eagles first came back to my ecosystem, they were pre- predating on my birds and just hammering me economically. Now, we finally figured out how to prevent it operationally. But for a couple of years there, 2015, 2016, uh, we had huge economic losses because of eagle predation of my pastured poultry.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:17:52

       Wow. Like how many, how many chickens got killed?

   15. WHWill Harris1:17:54

       Dozens. Dozens per d- they, they weren't, they weren't killing 'em eating. They were just killing 'em and having fun.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:18:00

       Really?

   17. WHWill Harris1:18:01

       Yeah. It was just... It was bad. That was-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:18:02

       Dozens a day?

   19. WHWill Harris1:18:04

       Yes. Now we did figure-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

       They were just having fun?

   21. WHWill Harris1:18:07

       Yeah. They're-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:18:08

       Were they eating any of 'em?

   23. WHWill Harris1:18:09

       Oh, yeah. They were eating some of 'em.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:18:11

       And, but some of 'em they were just killing for a goof?

   25. WHWill Harris1:18:12

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:18:13

       Wow.

   27. WHWill Harris1:18:13

       So, so, so n- now you're-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:18:16

       What did you do?

   29. WHWill Harris1:18:16

       Na- nature is not cruel.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:18:19

       (laughs)
7. 1:30:00 – 1:30:47

   (laughs) Isn't that crazy?…

   1. WHWill Harris1:30:00

      for every pound of Impossible Burger you eat, you gotta eat a pound of mine.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:30:05

      (laughs) Isn't that crazy?

   3. WHWill Harris1:30:07

      Ugh.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:30:08

      Because if you had asked the average person, they think that that stuff's good for you and it's good for the environment, and that if we don't get away from beef... It's, it's just like people have these narrow perspectives, these narratives that get fed to them, and so they just repeat it over and over again. But obviously when talking to someone like you w- who's an actual farmer, you realize how complex the organization is and how much time is involved and how much effort's involved. Very few people have put a lot of thought into like what it takes to be a farmer. And what you're talking about, how it's high investment, low yield, and a lot of work. And most people, I don't think, are aware of it. They just want to get a f- a cheeseburger.

Episode duration: 2:26:48