White Oak Pastures
As the owner of White Oak Pastures, Will Harris boasted to The New York Times in 2015, "We cheat to win," and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of his "heroes."[1]
The land at its margins is shadowed by great forests of pine trees, each holding hundreds of pounds of carbon, which once stretched unbroken across the landscape. Bald eagles who attempt to nest in them are hazed and harassed into leaving.[2] The nearby highway is paved over an ancient First Nations footpath. Harris inherited the land from his great grandfather, who settled it in 1866,[3] shortly after the Muscogee people were forcibly displaced along the Trail of Tears.[4]
Greenwashing
As a major supplier for General Mills, White Oak Pastures is "not just a small local farm, but actually part of a powerful and massive multinational company, and an important arm of its branding and marketing." [5]
In a 2019 report on White Oak Pastures' carbon footprint, funded by General Mills and published by Quantis, the ranch's importance to rebranding & consumer psychology was made explicit:
Regeneratively grazed beef can likely escape the stigma of extremely high carbon emissions attached to conventional beef. General Mills, Epic and WOP should consider how to tell this story to ensure brand enhancement[6]
According to this Quantis report, White Oak Pastures application of Allan Savory's Holistic Management was so effective that the ranch was producing "carbon-negative beef!" Yet this bold claim was refuted only a year later by a second study funded once again by General Mills, which reported that while White Oak Pastures may reduce carbon emissions relative to other cattle operations, it was still a net emitter of carbon.[7]
Despite General Mills' own privately funded study refuting the "carbon-negative" assertions of White Oak Pastures, both the ranch and the Savory Institute have continued to cite the erroneous findings of Quantis' report.[8][9]
Yet even General Mills' new study was found to have "significant lapses that grossly exaggerate or misrepresent the true SOC sequestration capacity of their farming techniques" despite finding that "“Beef cattle account for about 95% of animal and 52% of land emissions on the ranch.[10]
The study also only used a 100-year timescale to evaluate the heating impact of methane, underestimating its impact by at least 2.5x over the next 20 years. Yet this shorter timeframe is necessary to account for the non-linear dynamics of climate collapse and stop feedback loops from triggering runaway global heating. The latest research shows that immediate and massive emission reductions are required to ensure we avoid this scenario, especially of methane due to its greater impact over shorter timescales[11]
Furthermore, Jason Rowntree, the principal investigator in the new study, had erroneously declared he had no conflicts of interest, despite sitting on the board of the American Grassfed Association and having received research grants from corporations such as McDonald's also seeking to rebrand their beef as 'regenerative.'[12] Other contributors to this new study include individuals associated with EPIC provisions, a "frontier founder" of the Savory Institute; an employee of General Mills; and a contributor to the previous Quantis study in 2019.[13]
Such industrial conflicts of interest in this new study have also been implicated in its dependence on other industry-funded research (funded by the Beef Checkoff program and based on information and direct participation from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association) for its low estimate of emissions: 17 CO2e/kg, compared to "non-industry studies that show 29 CO2e/kg, especially those which factor land use impact that have a mean global average of 60 CO2e/kg."[14]
Savory Network
According to their website, White Oak Pastures is "proud to be named 1 of only 23 Global Savory Hubs" organized by the Savory Institute and participates in Savory's Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program as a "frontier founder".[15]
According to Allan Savory, scientific evidence against his methods is irrelevant because holistic management "cannot be peer-reviewed." He has made this argument several times, perhaps most recently on Twitter in March of 2021[16] in defense of its application by White Oak Pastures on behalf of General Mills in response to evidence of greenwashing through false claims to produce "carbon-negative beef." [17]
Shell Oil
In 2020, White Oak Pastures and Silicon Ranch Corporation (Shell Oil's U.S. solar platform) announced a partnership to "bring holistic planned livestock grazing and regenerative land management practices to nearly 2,400 solar farm acres."[18] Shell Oil's solar installation on the White Oak ranch is the "first new-build of its regenerative energy holistic approach.[19]
Shell Oil has invested in greenwashing through Holistic Management & its promotion since funding the documentary "Soil Carbon Cowboys" in 2015.[20][21]
Wage Theft
In 2021, White Oak Pastures settled a class action lawsuit for $100,000 of wage theft paid back to its workers [22]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/dining/at-white-oak-pastures-grass-fed-beef-is-only-the-beginning.html
- ↑ https://whiteoakpastures.wordpress.com/tag/bald-eagles/
- ↑ https://bittersoutherner.com/will-harris-white-oak-pastures-farm
- ↑ https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210710172431/https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.544984/full
- ↑ https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42
- ↑ https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/climatecollaborative/mailings/1633/attachments/original/PPT-FINAL-Regenerative_Mapping-min_compressed.pdf?1579205603; p. 41
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00004-0
- ↑ https://medium.com/@unpopularscience/the-regenerative-ranching-racket-fe6cce917a42
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://whiteoakpastures.com/pages/savory-hub?_pos=1&_sid=8b39d043f&_ss=r
- ↑ https://twitter.com/allanrsavory/status/1368586780790906885?s=21
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/solar-farms-will-capture-greenhouse-gases-to-store-in-the-soil-300987117.html>
- ↑ https://www.siliconranch.com/regenerative-energy-more-than-electricity/
- ↑ https://robbwolf.com/2016/03/18/sustainability-part-2-the-game-changers-of-small-ag/
- ↑ https://jacobin.com/2022/03/big-agriculture-funding-regenerative-ranching-amp-grazing-soil-carbon
- ↑ https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employees-working-in-slaughterhouse-3337332/