Strong Enough to Change: White Oak Pastures and Farming for Future Generations

Humans of Nonprofits is a storytelling series that explores how nonprofits shape and support the lives of everyday people. Each story shares an authentic, lived experience, revealing the many ways nonprofits intersect with individuals across all backgrounds, beliefs, and communities. Regardless of politics, religion, gender, or geography, nonprofits are a vital thread in the fabric of daily life.

“Thirty years ago, I walked around here every night looking for something to kill. Literally,” said Will Harris, in conversations with us. “Now, I walk around every night looking for ways to keep things alive.”

A fourth-generation farmer and owner of White Oak Pastures, Will didn’t set out to start a nonprofit. Quite the opposite, in fact.

His family’s 158-year-old farm in Bluffton, GA, spans 3,200+ acres and sells artisanal goods and humanely raised meats in 48 states. In 1995, he made a decision that changed everything, walking away from industrial cattle production and beginning a long, uncertain shift toward what would become one of the earliest regenerative agriculture models in the United States.

The shift was not a sudden transformation. It was a long, uneven process of unlearning, moving from control to relationship and from outputs to systems. Over time, the farm evolved into something else entirely: a nationally recognized model of regenerative agriculture and the home of the Center for Agricultural Resilience (CFAR),  a place-based educational nonprofit dedicated to demonstrating resilient agricultural practices, rethinking agriculture, and revitalizing ecosystems.

A Different Agricultural Future

People first found White Oak Pastures in the search for high-quality food. Customers bought its beef, pork, poultry, and other products, and then they learned the story behind them. The 160-year-old family farm in rural southwest Georgia that had walked away from the industrial model and rebuilt itself around regenerative land management, humane animal husbandry, and the revitalization of a waning rural community.

At first, the story spread word of mouth. Then it moved through regional food circles, farmer networks, journalists, podcasters, documentary filmmakers, food writers, climate reporters, and national media outlets, all looking for examples of a different agricultural future. White Oak Pastures became known not because Will set out to build a platform, but because the farm was doing something rare, tangible, and compelling enough that people wanted to see it for themselves.

In the beginning, the visitors were only a minor disruption. They showed up unexpectedly from as far as Sarasota, FL, or Nashville, TN, or further.  They had bought White Oak Pastures’ food and wanted to see how it all worked.

Bluffton, GA, is rural. Really rural. About an hour from the nearest town, it has no airport, no hotel, no highway. There is no reason to just pass through.

Then more people started coming. On the farm, the work was still work. Animals needed tending and decisions still needed to be made. There were no spare two hours in the day to give a tour to each new visitor. And how can you really walk someone in just two hours through a process that had taken decades to figure out?

But generational farmers, aspiring growers, and curious onlookers just kept coming.

“I was honored, but I didn’t have time,” Will said in his matter-of-fact way. “So, I figured I’d better do something about it.”

White Oak Pastures hired new staff to guide visitors. They built The Farmer’s Table, a farm-to-table restaurant in a town of fewer than 1,000 residents. They created physical and organizational space for teaching to happen alongside the daily work of the farm.

What emerged was not just a farm. White Oak Pastures had become a place where people came to answer the same question Will had once asked himself: Is there another way to do this?

Is there a way to farm that does not strip the land of value, but instead rebuilds the soil and contributes to a healthier ecosystem? For Will, the answer he had found was regenerative agriculture. Rather than simply maintaining or sustaining the land, regenerative agriculture seeks to restore and improve it. It offers a sharp contrast to industrial agriculture, where production is often organized around maximizing efficiency and output, sometimes at the expense of soil health, biodiversity, animal welfare, and the surrounding ecosystem. The scale of that model is visible across much of the American agricultural landscape, where fields and factory farms can stretch for miles, highly productive but often profoundly disconnected from, and damaging to, the living systems beneath it.

Will described the extractive logic in unapologetic, memorable terms: “It’s like peeing in your pants to stay warm. Short term it’s OK, long term it’s not.” Regenerative agriculture begins from a different premise. The land is not simply a resource to be used up, but a living system whose health determines the health of everything built upon it.

Translation, Not Replication

White Oak Pastures thrives, in part, because of Bluffton’s rich soil and its 50+ inches of rain. The same principles might apply elsewhere, but their expression will vary. Regeneration efforts in the U.S. South may prioritize soil biodiversity through grazing patterns, whereas regeneration goals in West Africa may prioritize reforestation through regreening.

That place-based reality is central to how Will understands regenerative agriculture. “The answer is not something that can just be copied and pasted,” he carefully explained. “You can start a regenerative farm anywhere,” he said. “But it would operate very differently because the ecosystem here is not the same as even 30 miles away.”

Still, people from all over wanted to know how to duplicate White Oak Pastures’ approach. Will understood that their success hinged on translation, not replication. The question was no longer just: How do we do this here? It became: How does anyone else learn to do it at all?

CFAR emerged as an answer to that question. It did not come from a grand plan; it grew from a practical limitation. The demand for knowledge had outgrown the farm’s capacity. “We simply couldn’t afford…to fill the demand for knowledge,” Will said pragmatically.

Many nonprofits’ genesis lies in passionate, entrepreneurial people who see a need in their communities and feel compelled to respond. Yet the founder’s experience and expertise can greatly shape how that response takes form. Will knew where his expertise lay and where it did not. “I didn’t know how to start a nonprofit,” he acknowledged.

CFAR was not created to scale White Oak Pastures. It was founded to create space for others to learn how to rethink their own ecosystems and create change in their own communities. Today, CFAR trains anyone and everyone in regenerative grazing techniques, from mass producers to hobbyists.

“We are not a road show.” For Will, this kind of farming is not something that can be packaged and sent elsewhere. It has to be seen, studied, and experienced on a real, working farm. That might be the most important lesson CFAR offers: much of what people try to scale resists simplification.

We often think of food banks as food distributors and of soup kitchens as connecting directly with consumers, but food and agricultural nonprofits span the food chain. CFAR represents the reality of most food and agricultural nonprofit organizations: over 50 percent were created to support agricultural producers.

CFAR also leverages tools unique to food and agricultural nonprofits to manage White Oak Pastures visitors, so Will can remain focused on managing the farm and the land.

Building for Change

Will’s book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, recounts his journey to bring regenerative farming to rural Georgia and beyond. Though he’s a trailblazer, Will is no longer alone in efforts to repair the damage left by industrial agriculture. The U.S. invested $700 million in regenerative agriculture in 2025. And farmer-managed natural regeneration, a form of regenerative land management, has been adopted in 40 countries.

Toward the end of our conversation, we asked Will what he hoped would survive him. What will endure through the generations of daughters and grandchildren he will one day leave behind?

Will replied slowly, intentionally. “This farm is 160 years old. My job is to make sure it’s perpetual.” But a breath later, he paused, letting go of the idea of control. “If they need to get rid of the cows, hell, get rid of the cows!”

That might be the real work of sustainability. It’s not about preserving what you built but about leaving behind something strong enough to change.