Blue Nest Beef takes the long view
Three decades of working in alternative energy solutions for Shell taught Russ Conser a lot about pulling carbon out of the air. Now, with a direct-to-consumer beef delivery company he launched a year ago, he focuses on one of the cheapest ways to do that: grass.
When grass is allowed to grow tall, it grabs carbon from the air, filters it down and passes it to microbes in the soil that convert it to nutrients that keep the soil rich for farming.
Through the Fulshear-based Blue Nest Beef, Conser partners with cattle ranchers using conservation practices certified by the National Audubon Society that allow grass to grow and grassland ecosystems to flourish — declining bird populations included. The small but growing online retailer, which has three employees, has shipped boxes of beef to around 1,000 customers across 47 states.
Conser’s startup had only been in business a few months when the pandemic hit, saddling him with shipping challenges and delays. He found himself having to replace boxes lost in the mail, and shipping companies struggled to keep up.
“In the spring it was a really big tailwind,” he said. “It challenged us.”
The company pulls premium beef from 200,000 acres of bird-friendly grasslands, largely in the Midwest, where agriculture has contributed to widespread devastation of bird species. Blue Nest Beef ships cattle from ranchers to a meat processing plant in Minnesota that Conser said did not experience the kinds of coronavirus outbreaks that addled national meat supply chains earlier in the pandemic.
Left to their devices, cows pick their favorite grassy areas and munch. Left unattended, they tend to pick a favorite spot and munch it so low the plants struggle to grow back.
Ranchers using regenerative agriculture practices instead steer cattle away from overgrazing their favorite areas.
The ranchers Conser partners with raise cattle in a way that replaces carbon in the ground, he said. “That was intriguing to me.”
“They’re basically relying on this natural cycle. Think of it like the macrobiome,” Conser said.
“The birds are the treasure and the measure of a functioning ecosystem.”
As with alternative energy decades ago, he said he wanted to get in on the ground floor of regenerative agriculture. He wanted to participate in an economy that rewards ranchers for raising cattle in environmentally friendly way. It may be cheaper to buy meat produced in meatpacking plants, he said, but doing so supports a broken system.
“We aggregate the supply from these ranchers that are doing good things for the environment,” he said. “We like to say we’re here to make the right thing the easy thing.”
Blue Nest Beef sells meat at higher prices than you’ll find in the supermarket. Its most popular box includes 13 pounds of brisket, tenderloin, flat iron, top sirloin and ground beef and costs $179.
“Our primary focus is urban consumers seeking a high-quality product that’s also creating a positive impact on the world,” Conser said.
While vegan diets and synthetic meats are catching on as Americans grow increasingly leery of industrial meat, Conser said there should also be an appetite among consumers for meat produced sustainably.
“The reality is we have 330 million Americans, most of whom are nowhere near a farm,” he said. “If we can engage them in a supply chain that’s making positive impacts for society then we all come out ahead.”