Regenerative Farmer Will Harris on Whole Foods and Green Washing

So I tell you this, the Whole Foods Market is continuously my biggest customer. They used to be my, virtually my only customer. But my relationship with Whole Foods has been cooling for a decade. And eventually I won't be in there anymore. I will, will. My sold Whole Foods Market, the first pound of American grass-fed beef that they marketed as American grass-fed beef 20 years ago. And it, at the time, it was so lucky. And it just, it caught traction. And they wanted to buy all I sold. But today it's a very different Whole Foods. And we won't be there alone. What's the issue? You know what green washing is? Green washing. Yeah. No. Sort of. Green washing is big food advertising, using words to make consumers believe that the food they're selling is the same as what I'm producing, even though it's not. Hey, is that, if you got that global animal partnership Whole Foods video where you can show it to show, please. So green washing. Green washing, okay. So what's this meat rating system about? Let me put it this way. Step one is like. Step five is like. So step five, let's get a New York strip and definitely a filet. And do you have? What the hell does that mean? I can't tell you how much that anchors me. Tell me what that means. That makes me so goddamn mad. Is that their, that's their question? That, I mean, that is their video that they made? Yeah. That was their hour class. So, let me, let me, let me see. How, come on. It makes you laugh. It makes me laugh. I'm sure it does, sir. I mean, it makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. I don't know, 15 years ago or something. I don't know how long ago. And I went to the first meeting, producer meeting they ever had in Denver of the Whole Foods had for the Global Animal Partnership, rolling it out. And it was all about this, I thought, and by the way, I thought it was a great idea at the time. This animal welfare system, so that step one, which is low-hanging fruit, a little bit better than industrial, two, three, four, five. Five was great animal welfare, no physical alterations, can't castrate, whatnot. We used to castrate everything born on my farm that wasn't named Harris. We quit castrating all the things we had to do to achieve step five. It was explained to us at the time that we want to bring the industry into higher animal welfare, which was right up my alley. I did too. We've got to have this step one, two, which is low-hanging fruit, pretty much anybody. It's like hitting your foot in the door. More companies are expected to move up the continuum to everybody's step four or five. I thought it was great. Sounds great. I embraced it and became a step five plus. I don't think they have just a very few in the country. We want them. They never would pay us any more for our product. As a result, in the meat case, everything was step one and step two, maybe it was step three. They did allow producers, mostly big multinational corporations, to come in at step one and step two and languish there. Fifteen years later, they're still step one and step two, which is not the way it was supposed to work. Now, even though there's five steps, they talk about how it's all great. It's not all great. If you're going to do it with your hands and mouth like that guy, step one is like, step five is like, you're not ... It just pisses me off. I would imagine. But you go to Whole Foods and look and ask them, okay, how much step four and five you got back there? Probably not much. Most of it ... Here goes. Jamie's got it here. Step one, no cages, no crates, no crowding. Step two, enriched environment, things to do. Step three, enhanced outdoor access. Step four, pasture-centered based on an outdoor system. Step five, animal-centered, no physical alterations. That means castration and all that. Then step five plus, which is you, animal-centered, entire life on the same farm as shoppers can know exactly what the animal was raised for, the meat they are buying just by looking for the ... What does it say? For the color-coded step rating on the product label as of October 1st, 2014, step five program includes 2,451 farms and ranches that range from step one to step five plus and raise more than 147 million animals annually. But they added everything together there. Step five and program, look how they did that. Step five and program includes 2,451 farms and ranches that range from step one to step five plus. By saying that and includes these 2,451 farms, they're not saying how many of them are actually step five. They're like kind of fucking with you with the numbers there. I can tell you, it's not many. It's not 2,451. Well, they're great. But that's step one to step five. One and two. I'm not saying there weren't that many farms. I'm saying there's not ... Not that many step five. The distribution would be greatly skewed. If you go to a Whole Foods and say, hey, I want that. How many you got? It's less, far less. They have to get very specific meat from places like you. Well, I think the reason they had that particular segment now is because they didn't have much step five back there. So that allowed them to say, hey, man, it's all good. It's all good. It's all better than anywhere else you're going to get. That's greenwashing. That's greenwashing. That makes sense. It devalues what the step five plus does. It's a kind of a ... It's a moronic way of describing it. Lots of different Whole Foods than the one I started with. Is it because it's corporate now and it's because it's owned by big companies and it's all about when you're involved in a gigantic corporation like that, it's about maximizing profits ultimately. Yeah. Everything you said is right. The way I would state it is that industrialized farming and big food distribution co-evolved together. Prior to the end of World War II, there was no industrial farming and there were really no great big food companies or retail companies, local pigly wiggly or whatnot. But they weren't. Those all co-evolved. Big ag, big food and industrial farming co-evolved together to what it is now. The guys that are managing the meat department's Whole Foods really need to pick up the phone and say, send me 48,000 pounds, a truckload of 48,000 pounds of six ounce full-aise to the following five distribution centers every week for the next month. Thank you. Well, the wheel harris' of the world won't ever see 48,000 pounds of six ounce full-aise. The only people that can do that are Tyson, Cargill, JBS, Smithfield. So that's that co-evolution. So the only way this is going to work to do it your way is if someone's deeply committed to change. Yeah, let me say this. I also sell to a grocery chain called Market District, one called Moms, one called Publix, one called Kroger. And I don't feel as used as window dressing by those stores. So you feel that like your way of doing it is almost like it's a trick. They're trying to pretend that most of their meat is gotten from people like you. That's my perception of what you just saw. It seems like that was the perception that I got from it too, based on the way they used that giant number and said it's anywhere from step one to step five plus. They kind of lumped everybody in together. I actually sold Publix supermarket prior to selling Whole Foods. I sold them before I did Whole Foods. And they Publix, it's not an advertisement. They have ordered consistently from me every single week for 20 years. They put it out there. People buy it or not. There's no bullshit. There's no smoke and mirrors. No green washing. No green washing. It's just honestly buy it or not. And again, Whole Foods is still my big customer. This is probably going to get me thrown out if it does. Do you think they will? I don't know. You just don't seem to care though. Well, it ain't much of a nice kissing business. I like it. They didn't do anything they wanted to do. I mean, we'll have to work a little hard and sell a little more online. But you'd prefer that to bullshit. Yeah. There was a time that my office, but yeah, that's a very different company.