Markets Grass-Fed Beef for soil carbon removal despite high GHG emissions (Methane + Nitrous Oxide) of their grazing method compared to carbon negative methods of building soil organic carbon. CEO is a Shell Oil expat and the company is linked to the Shell Oil-funded Soil Carbon Cowboys.

Leadership

Shell Oil

CEO: Russ Conser, who left Shell Oil in 2013 after 30 years^[1] to spend the last decade in regenerative ranching while coordinating with Shell Oil initiatives in this domain

Advisor: Peter Byck - director of Soil Carbon Cowboys, funded by Shell Oil in 2015 to promote the Savory Method of livestock grazing.

Savory Institute

Advisor: Jason Rowntree - director of Savory Hub at Michigan State University, where he is the lead investigator of a $19 million research grant awarded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research in partnership with the Savory Institute, Nature Conservancy, and USDA.^[2]

Resource Library

Soil Carbon Cowboys

An 11 minute excerpt of the 2015 Documentary Soil Carbon Cowboys (funded by Shell Oil) is the first featured video in Standard Soil's Research Library ^[3]

Grazing Method

AMP Grazing

Standard Soil is currently Google Search's top hit for multi-paddock adaptive grazing, the technical basis of the the Savory Method ^[4]. Following Allan Savory, it incorrectly describes this as "mimicking the roaming bison" despite numerous essential differences between AMP Grazing and the traditional ecological knowledge of truly regenerative bison grazing, including but not limited to:

Open Range vs. Mobile Fencing
Bison as Partners vs. Livestock as Tool
Herd longevity vs. Commodity slaughter
Native species vs. European substitutes
Controlled burning vs. Fire suppression
Indigenous sovereignty vs. Colonial property

Pseudoscience

Soil Carbon

In 2017, CEO Russ Conser falsely claimed that grazing herbivores are required for the soil carbon cycle to work:

Soil organic matter is like a soil carbon battery that provides the underlying energy for the cycling of life. If the grazing herbivore isn’t present, the air-plant-soil carbon cycle doesn’t work right and the battery goes under or uncharged.^[5]

In reality, there are numerous examples of healthy soil ecosystems with high carbon content without the presence of (large) grazing herbivores such as cattle. Furthermore, cattle are in no way uniquely suited to supporting soil organic matter's battery function. More permanent and effective methods of building soil carbon such as biochar, however, actually do perform this function without the massive Methane and Nitrous Oxide GHG emissions of cattle.^[6]

Methane Denial

Aside from a blog post written by CEO Russ Conser in 2018, the Standard Soil website does not address the subject of Methane at all.

In "Reinventing Real Beef," Conser argues that "growing better quality and more diverse forage in pasture" can reduce methane emissions because it leads to "more energy going into the animal and less escaping as methane back out into the air."

While he does not provide a citation for this claim, he later cites a study published in 2018 by Advisory Board Member Jason Rowntree, citing it as "recent research" which "suggests that the production of beef cattle can even be done in a way where the carbon captured in soil significantly exceeds the emission of methane." However, the study itself does not make this claim, but argues instead that improved forage quality can reduce enteric CH4 emissions by 15%^[7]

Two years-later, even the industry-funded (General Mills) study also led by Jason Rowntree concluded that beef produced via Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing emitted more greenhouse gases than it sequestered. Rowntree reached this conclusion even though he used the long-term (100 year) rather than short-term (20 year) timeframe for Methane emissions, underestimating the need to reduce Methane emissions by at least 250%.^[8]

This shorter timeframe is necessary to account for the non-linear dynamics of climate collapse, keep global heating under 1.5C, 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^[9]

Blue Nest Beef

Blue Nest Beef is a brand of 100% grass-fed beef, launched in 2019 in partnership with Audobon^[10]

Its science page cites Soil Carbon Cowboys extensively as well as the Holistic Management book by Allan Savory^[11]

Sources

[1] ttps://www.aeinstitute.org/team-blog/russ-conser

[2] ttp://standardsoil.com/about-us/the-team/

[3] ttp://standardsoil.com/resource/

[4] ttp://standardsoil.com/our-approach/amp-grazing/

[5] ttp://standardsoil.com/charging-the-soil-carbon-battery/

[6] ttps://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/build-soil/soil-inputs/minerals-nutrients/biochar-prepping-soil/

[7] ttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17310338

[8] ttps://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333

[9] ttps://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00004-0

[10] ttp://standardsoil.com/our-new-partnership-with-audubon/

[11] ttps://bluenestbeef.com/pages/the-science

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

Standard Soil

Contents