Vertically Integrated Farming

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are serious benefits to raising and processing your own cattle on your own ranch. Not only does it simplify the process of slaughter, but it also consolidates roles of ranching. This, and the benefit to consumers is how vertically integrated farming has a positive impact. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3Pltszd Botanical Interests Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3ZrRUU7 Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/3ZlAQ2c EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/3LvygB0 Connect With Will Harris: Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy. In the mid-1990s Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before. Instagram Website Facebook YouTube Twitter Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We talk a lot in the garden about stacking different systems, right?
0:07.0	If you have your own raised bed garden or in-ground garden, maybe add some compost, maybe
0:12.1	take your food scraps, throw them to the chickens, take the chicken droppings, put that back
0:15.8	into the garden, but, you know, at a scale like our guest's scale, will of wine of pastures,
0:23.7	it might be a little bit different.
0:24.7	So I'm curious, well, you know, as you transitioned over to this regenerative cattle ranch and
0:29.6	also other animals, honestly, quite a big scale, when you talk about vertically integrating
0:35.6	that farm, what does that actually look like?
0:39.6	Well, when I made the decision to move the farm into a high level of animal welfare in
0:50.1	regenerative land management, I could do that in the pasture.
0:58.0	But then I added to, I increased my cost of production at the time I was a monocultural
1:04.2	cattleman, we've added up a species since.
1:08.8	And if, if I had to sell them into the commodity market, I couldn't make it work, my cost
1:13.4	of production was greater than the cost I could get out of the animals.
1:18.8	So the answer for me was either to go back to the industrial commodity model, which I didn't
1:25.9	want to do, or to find a way to market the beef for greater value to reflect the greater
1:34.9	production health.
1:35.9	And that's what I did elect to do.
1:39.2	And so, to do that, I had to fill a USDA-spectrum sloth with.
1:46.7	There was not one available to me at that time.
1:51.7	And it's still pretty tough.
1:53.2	People still struggle to find slaughter capacity.
	...

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