If you’re still buying your beef from the bargain basement supermarket chain in your neighborhood, it’s time to step up your game. Nine times out of ten, the meat you get from those places is the cheapest the the company could buy, grown halfway across the country in an industrial cattle farm.
We get it though — tracking down a butcher that sells locally-raised, grass-fed, hormone-free beef is a chore. But not to worry; there’s a new startup gaining steam that’s devised a better method to get meat on your plate.
It’s called AgLocal, and when you get down to it, it works basically just like Netflix. Not like 2014 Netflix though — think more like 2008 Netflix. It’s a subscription service, but instead of delivering you goofy romantic comedies in the mail each month, the company delivers locally-sourced, pasture-raised meat.
Rather than buying meat from a commercial farm and shipping it hundreds miles, AgLocal purchases directly from independent, family-owned farms. Not only does this save them a bundle on shipping and distribution, it also generates far less pollution.
The company basically serves as a sales, marketing, and distribution channel for small, family-owned farms, which helps them compete against industrial agriculture operations. As an added bonus, the meat that comes from these farms is typically far healthier. Unlike factory-raised animals that get pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, pasture-raised animals roam freely and eat a natural diet, which gives their meat more protein, vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and less saturated fat and calories.
It’s pretty much win-win. You should definitely check them out. Pricing starts at around 85 bucks per box.