Russ Conser
see: Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research for more details to port here
Manifesto calling for a "renewable food revolution": <https://medium.com/@russconser/manifesto-for-a-renewable-food-revolution-59c384f62a73>
Bio - Ended 30 year history @ Shell (retired in 2013)[1]
Gave a Shell Alumni talk on regenerative agriculture (holistic management) in 2022[2]
President of the Grassfed Exchange: <https://grassfedexchange.com/>
Russ Conser is the CEO of Standard Soil.[3] He is also the CEO of Blue Nest Beef, a joint venture of Standard Soil and Audobon: [4]
Pseudoscience
Soil Carbon
In 2017, as CEO of Standard Soil 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
In a 2018 blog post for Standard Soil titled "Reinventing Real Beef," CEO Russ 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]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.aeinstitute.org/team-blog/russ-conser
- ↑ https://shellalumni.org/events/93190
- ↑ http://standardsoil.com/
- ↑ https://bluenestbeef.com
- ↑ http://standardsoil.com/charging-the-soil-carbon-battery/
- ↑ https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/build-soil/soil-inputs/minerals-nutrients/biochar-prepping-soil/
- ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17310338
- ↑ https://plantbaseddata.medium.com/the-failed-attempt-to-greenwash-beef-7dfca9d74333
- ↑ https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00004-0