WW Cattle – feeding families nationwide

Hailey Heseltine
ECB Publishing, Inc.

In the United States, farmers account for only about two percent of the population. The other 98 percent rely on these farmers to help feed an entire country, thereby providing them with the fuel they need to survive and thrive.
Jefferson County has always been a heavily agricultural place. For centuries, farmers have called this land home and used it to nurture crops to ultimately nourish their community, and though the county has changed immensely over the past 197 years, agriculture still remains an important staple of our home, as many farms are operated here by hardworking Jefferson County residents.
One such farm is WW Cattle, which is co-owned by Douglas and Benjamin “Ben” White, a County Commissioner. WW Cattle began in 2016, when the father-and-son duo decided to make expand and officiate the work they had been doing with hay and cattle for years.
“We have always had a few cows at home,” Ben White explains, “and when Daddy retired he wanted something to do, so we decided to start building the herd up.”
At the time, Ben White worked mostly with Waukeenah Fertilizer. He also had been working with hay for years, as he had bought a tractor around 2010 and began doing work with it to generate additional funds. He cut hay, baled it, sold it and did whatever other work with his tractor he could find.
“It kinda just grew from there,” he says, and so hay became WW Cattle's first crop.
Prior to the farm's official beginning, they only had ten cows and baled about 500 rolls of hay per year. Since then, they have expanded to have around 100 cows and bale about 2,500 rolls of hay per year over their several properties. In 2022, as the farm continued to grow tremendously, Ben White decided to quit his job at Waukeenah Fertilizer to work on the farm full-time.
However, hay and cattle are not the only pursuits of WW Cattle.There are sometimes setbacks with the weather as well as lack of local land availability, which makes it difficult for the farm to expand, but when faced with difficult situations, WW Cattle adapts and expands. After purchasing land in Lamont but discovering the soil was inadequate for what they had originally planned, they decided to plant pine trees. White describes it as a “long-term investment” due to pine trees' slow growing nature compared to many other crops, but he believes that the payoff, though distant, will be worth it in the end.
The 100 cows on WW Cattle are all beef cattle, specifically angus-base crossbreeds, which they sell back to the company they source from, Imperial Wagu, after breeding the cows and raising the calves. White explains that that they have recently “started breeding back to a wagu bull” in the hopes of raising and selling hybrid calves.
“Mainly, we want to keep beef alive in Florida,” he says, explaining his mission, “and to raise good tender calves to help feed America.”
There are also other facets of WW Cattle's mission to feed America and participate in their community. They also do agricultural spraying with drones for less accessible areas, as well as have a lawn care business.
“Daddy always told me that in order for a stool to stand, you've gotta have three legs,” White says, “so we have things to supplement the business, and it's all part of the farm.”
Another large part of White's community contribution is his role as president of Jefferson County's chapter of the Florida Cattlemen's Association; he and many other dedicated Jefferson County farmers contributed greatly to the recent revitalization of the local chapter.
WW Cattle is mostly family-run, with the exception of one full-time employee and a few seasonal helping hands. White gets to have the experience of working alongside his wife, Lydia, and their three children, Benjamin, Hazel and Henry.
“As [the kids] have been getting older, they've been getting more and more involved,” White says, “and it's been really fun, exactly what I pictured.”
He hopes all his children will become well-educated and have the freedom to choose their own path; he is also delighted to be able to work with them, and hopes WW Cattle will be able to be “something they can always come back to” in our humble little town.
“I've traveled from coast to coast,” White says, “but that ride back home, when I pull across the Jefferson County line, is always the best part of the trip.”
White has lived in Jefferson County all his life, and as such, feels attached to our community. It is the place he runs his business, raises his family and enjoys time with friends. As such, he feels proud that, as a farmer, he can help feed the nation, and furthermore, his community. Perhaps Monticello is just a small dot on a map, and farmers are such a small portion of the population, but it does not make them less remarkable. In fact, these things form a chain that is the backbone of communities and even countries, and WW Cattle is proud to be a part of that chain.