Growing and Eating Meat as Nature Intended

Left, Russ Conser. Right, Todd Churchill

Blue Nest Beef, in partnership with the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program, has hit upon a way to deliver highly nutritious meat and restore the ecosystem at the same time.

By Robert Yehling

We’ve all seen the ecological devastation of our nation’s addiction to meat and poultry. From nutrient- and topsoil-leached farms to destroyed woodlands and grasslands, the health costs of eating feedlot products, and the draining of our water supply, our dependence on a meat-based diet is the costliest, least environmentally conscious food supply operation on the planet. Further, the high cost and low profit of running these operations — even with USDA subsidies — has resulted in the loss of 90% of family farms in the past 40 years, replaced by huge agribusiness outfits.

Whether or not we care to admit it, we’re at a crossroads, not only on our food supply, but also the ecological impact and our abilityg to sustain meat-based diets in the future.

Welcome to a solution that takes us right back to the way farming used to be: regenerative agriculture. And with that comes Blue Nest Beef, a forward-thinking operation that has partnered with the Audubon Conversation Ranching Program to produce grass-fed beef and chicken that not only is healthier for our bodies, but is done in a way that restores the ecosystems of the participating ranches themselves. All while giving those family ranchers higher margins than the status quo.

The point? To restore grasslands to ecologically balanced blends of grass, woods, wildlife, bird life and water retention, while also providing nutritionally superior beef and chicken that dances on the taste buds of anyone who tries it. As Chief Marketing Officer Todd Churchill deftly notes, “Why does a rancher have to choose between raising beef and benefitting the ecosystem? Why can’t it be both?”

“We’re in a very difficult place in our ability to feed people healthy beef and chicken,” Blue Nest CEO Russ Conser pointed out. “We’re also in a tough position environmentally, with millions of acres of land now farmed out, and farmers and ranchers relying more and more on fertilizers, herbicides and growth hormones — which makes the product less healthy and the land less productive. And, we’re harming the ecosystem.”

“Because of that, we came up with this idea of working with the people who know best -- the family ranchers who’ve been growing food for decades — to produce highest-quality grassfed beef and chicken. Not only that, but using the principles of regenerative agriculture to fortify and return their ranch ecosystem to a natural balance. And how can you best tell if a place is ecologically balanced? By the bird population. Which is where Audubon comes in.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, all of it great news for the land and our future food supply. First, regenerative agriculture has a simple premise: restore the grasslands to their pristine natural

state, where birds and beasts roam together. Also, instead of using chemicals to artificially prop up the growing potential of soil, restore that soil with organic material — which retains more water and allows deep-rooted plants and crops to grow, bringing in natural allies like earthworms. For instance, one acre of soil regenerated with just 1% added organic matter (compost, decomposed or turned-under plants) will retain 27,000 additional gallons of water.

When beef naturally graze on these birdfriendly pastures and grasslands, without being artificially boosted by growth hormones, not only does its nutritive value jump through the roof — but the exquisite taste often leaves people realizing they are experiencing the full taste of beef and chicken for the first time.

“We’re not doing this to get wealthy by selling a little bit of beef at very high prices,” Churchill said. “We want to start a movement that fundamentally changes how we raise our food, that it’s possible to both raise incredibly nutritious food and heal the ecosystem. You don’t have to choose. You don’t have to buy into a subsidy program that requires you to farm in a way that harms the ecosystem — and our health, since the beef absorbs the fertilizers and herbicides, and the growth hormones their feed, and the stress on their own bodies … and then we absorb all of that when we eat.”

“For sustainability, we have to figure out how to produce food like this, on regenerative farms, at a high enough quantity and low enough price so that ranchers can make a good living while also helping to restore the ecosystem.”

Conser, a longtime innovator and tech expert in the Fortune 500 world, and Churchill, a longtime regenerative rancher, have teamed up on quite an initiative. Blue Nest Beef currently works with ranchers in Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas to source meat from their collective 200,000+ acres of Audubon-certified ranches. All are family ranches, ranging from 1,000 acres to the sprawling 140,000-acre Rockin’ 7 Ranch in Wyoming. The ranchers are paid a high premium to provide beef to Blue Nest, which then ships it out to a quickly-growing customer base around the country. While the price point is elevated now — as it is in the early days of any truly innovative technology or product — the two executives said it will come down as more ranchers sign on and the scalability is increased.

“There’s a danger in the regenerative agriculture movement to define what is and is not regenerative,” Churchill said. “Our strategy is very different. We’ve come out with a pay price for ranchers which is 45-50% over the commodity market price. We don’t know that we can support that price forever, but we can for sure in the next 4-5 years. We want the word to get out that ranchers can become Audubon certified and then sell to Blue Nest. When they do, it’s an incredibly profitable premium and worth whatever investment you have to make to make the changes necessary to produce the cattle we want to buy.”

“When this happens, our scalability will increase and the prices to consumers will come down,” Conser added.

Interestingly, Blue Nest Beef benefitted in rancher participation, customer base and public awareness during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. When meat supplies became strained in the early months of the economic shutdown, and consumers were forced to cook more at home, they started looking for the last thing one normally seeks in online shopping — meat.

Enter Blue Nest. “The general surge of online ordering for food has been advantageous to us,” Conser said. “Meat is generally the last to be ordered online, but it’s definitely picked up. We’re still early on in building awareness with the public, so we haven’t even scratched the surface of the public’s appetite to buy online.

“We also directly addressed people now forced to cook more at home. Last Fall, Todd put together an interesting series of cooking classes, to cook quality restaurant-level food at home with our product. We have a digital virtual library of cooking classes now, everything from chickens to steaks to roasts. We’ve pivoted our whole line to either order once, or subscribe to save for repeat ordering with our mixed boxes.”

Those mixed boxes have both catchy names and stories, all evolving from a single offering just a year ago. For instance, the highly scrumptious Savannah Product sampler box of steaks, roasts, chicken and ground beef “brings the grasslands and woodlands together,” Conser said. “The theme is to sell regenerative beef and chicken and tell a story of a different food system.” Other available packages include the Flying Beef Bundle, Meadowlark Beef Box and the Prairie Ground. (See our review of Blue Nest products on page 53).

In discussing the novel concept of regenerative agriculture (not novel at all, really: it’s how all farmers grew food until agribusiness exploded in the last century), Conser brought up an interesting comparison between the state of

regenerative agriculture today, and that of the embryonic days of renewable energy.

“Regenerative agriculture feels like renewable energy did 25 years ago,” he said. “A small Idaho farmer had a solar panel on his rooftop because he wanted to be off-grid. It wasn’t until private developers and markets created power purchase agreements on large-scale projects that these things started coming together. Right now, regenerative agriculture consists of hundreds or thousands of small farms figuring out how to move farm animals, have websites, do marketing and the rest. The supply chain needs economies of scale if we’re ever going to bring regenerative agriculture into the mainstream. Otherwise, we’re going to have a bunch of people proud of solar panels on their rooftops, so to speak.”

To get to the equivalent of renewable energy’s ascension from 1985 to 2021, Churchill feels widescale public education and awareness of the ecological and health benefits is an essential step.

“To change behavior, we have to make the right thing the easy thing, and vice versa,” he said. “We continue to see more and more evidence that regenerative agriculture is the right thing for the planet. Blue Nest Beef is an experiment: how do we make the right thing the easy thing for consumers? We can’t do much for cost effectiveness yet. But our longterm vision isn’t to have a small boutique expensive beef company. It’s to prove to the world that beef raised regeneratively is better beef. Better to eat, better for human health, for the planet, for the cattle, and for the rancher.”

Meantime, more and more ranchers are signing up to produce Blue Nest Beef as its profile grows into that of a true sustainability innovator in the food sector. ■