APPPA: Helping Pastured Poultry Farmers Succeed since 1997
Mike Badger, Executive Director of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA), discusses the history and mission behind APPPA as well as the upcoming APPPA Conference.
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Allyssa Knutson: [00:00:00]
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. We've got a great conversation for you today with one of the most influential organizations in the country. When it comes to pastured proteins! Today, we're excited to welcome Mike Badger, the president of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, or APPPA for short Mike, welcome to get things started. Tell us about the origins of APPA, the founder, when it started.
Mike Badger: [00:00:22]
Yeah. Thanks Alyssa for having me on. So APPPA started in 1997, with a bunch of Asher poultry farmers, there were fairly young movement that at that time just as a way to connect get network, then share ideas. There was, we didn't have a strong internet presence back then. It was there, but not quite like we experienced it in 2020.
And so the organization really set out to build relationships with farmers all across the country who were exploring this model. And the founder of the, lead founder was Joel Salatin in 97, because he has, he had written his early. Writings on pastured poultry in the early nineties. And he started getting a following.
People, started picking up on what he was writing about and it sounded great and it was appealing. And really what people were doing was opting out of the conventional farming model and consumers are opting out of the conventional chicken model, if you will. They were looking for something different and that's what pastured poultry offered.
And that's where it started. We started with a grant. The Heifer Project in Arkansas was involved with getting it started and we just took off from there.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:01:33]
Since its founding, how has APPPA evolved over the years from more of a regional organization to a national influencer res with respect to pastured poultry?
Mike Badger: [00:01:44]
Yeah. So it's interesting that we've always been pastured poultry focused, like very niche. That's the one thing that we've started focusing on and that's the one thing that we focus on today. And it was always a national presence. When the group started. And one of the challenges that we had early on was just simply getting information, sharing information was important and meeting people who were doing this was important.
So it started really as a networking and clearing house and networking information. I'm sorry, a networking group and a clearing house of those ideas and processes and fast to help them model grow, help farmers grow. And today, one of the things that has changed is the internet has made information cheap.
It's very easy to find one of the challenges with that is if the information you find isn't always good and sometimes conflicting. So what we have evolved into is we still provide a lot of technical details about how to raise pastured poultry. We focus on, making, making farmers literate in the model so they can make decisions and really recognize pastured poultry for the business that it is. And when we do trainings and programmings, there's a real strong business component to it, which a lot of times involves math and numbers and things like that.
But it's also that decision-making process and we're still very much a networking association and putting people together and connecting people is remains a very strong mission.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:03:13]
Can you tell us about your members? Are these members, hobby farmers with a small flock or are they more large commercial operations as well?
Mike Badger: [00:03:23]
Yeah so the interesting. And when you look out into the world, you'll see a lot of people that are raising pasture- raised chickens and eggs and things like that. A lot of times they're just doing it for their family. So they're doing it under that small scale, maybe for the family, just to feed the family and a couple of friends.
That's not really our core audience. When we go out for membership, and people come to us, I should say, they're the people who are already doing pasture poultry who think this is a business, whether that's a business alongside, maybe something else on their farm or whether it's a primary enterprise.
So that's really the key differentiation from an APPPA member versus what you might encounter elsewhere out there is, we are looking for people who are treating this as a business and not really narrows the, the pull down. But, and flock size runs the gamut. We have farms who run, a couple of hundred thousand broilers a year, all the way down to maybe a thousand or 500 in the really small scale.
It all depends on how it fits on their, their farming they, there's a big goal setting piece of this, there's how does, what you're wanting to do fit into your farm? And that kind of drives the, how big am I?
Allyssa Knutson: [00:04:39]
And I expect that you probably talk to your members quite a bit and perhaps survey them on occasion to you. What can you share about the most beneficial aspects of APPPA membership?
Mike Badger: [00:04:51]
Yeah, hands down. I think it's the people just connecting people, having, giving people a place that is, allows them to connect and share information and help each other. So that's the biggest benefit whether we're doing our conference or whether we're doing our member or on-going member discussion, we have a private email group or forum. And I like to tell people that it's one of the situations where members pay to help you, because that's kinda what it. It's all about, it's a transparency thing. It's there's just the comradery and the connections you build in that closed ecosystem is really important. Cause you can go out on the web and find a lot of places to connect with other people, raising pastured, poultry.
There's there's a lot of power in a $50, $60 filter, which is our membership fee. And that kind of cuts the cream, so to speak. And in terms of what we offer, the discussion group that we offer is very vital. That's the ongoing connection with most of our members, we publish a bi-monthly newsletter, which is more of our general information like technical resources, association, updates, research, those kinds of things that producers would find of interest, not necessarily of need right then. And then our signature event, I think is the the conference that we host in January.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:06:17]
How would you describe the conversation amongst APPPA members over 2020? How has the pandemic affected your members?
Mike Badger: [00:06:25]
I think the conversations are all the same. Along the same vein as like what in the world has happened. And when will it end? And in amongst those broad topics, there's just people trying to sort out what it means. What's the next step, it's, I think the pandemic has lasted a lot longer and the impact has lasted a lot longer than most people were planning for or expecting, back in March of 2020. How has it affected members? There's it's unevenly that's for sure. The hardest hit were are, were our members and producers who focused on restaurants, you know and a lot of our folks do. And it just depends on how much of your marketing mix was in one channel or another.
But generally speaking, if you were, servicing restaurants and chefs and that kind of even other wholesale markets, you really take a pandemic, take a bite out of your business. It, you shredded your sales. And I've heard people will say as little as 10% of their wholesale market remained after, through the summer kind of thing, which is tough.
If you were in the direct market sales, direct to consumers, whatever that looked like, whether it was farmer's markets or deliveries or shipping or something like that, you enjoyed a strong growth in many times an exponential growth they're not necessarily exponential, a three, three X, four X, two X over what you were the year before.
That has moderated a little bit as we came through the end of 2021, but generally I'm hearing it from everybody that they're up. That channel is. Is up it's strong. And the people who were in wholesale markets or were working very hard through 2020 to pivot and get back into those direct channels and have a direct connection to their customers.
And it's interesting. The pandemic sped up a lot of stuff. One of the things that sped up was that change because we were hearing last year in our conference in Jacksonville, it would have been the 2020 conference that our farms were our bigger farms who are doing them primarily wholesale we're pivoting back and making that transition back to the direct to consumer model more with more earnest and they were before their other market influences, but I think the pandemic forced a lot of people to pivot. And the fortunate thing for a lot of our farms is they're small enough that they can pivot. It's not necessarily easy, but they have a chance, right? They can, they have hope when like some, maybe a large integrator who has to shut down an entire processing plant and euthanized birds, they do, they can't retool their facility. So our folks have at least a chance.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:09:14]
What have you found to be the most effective tactics? For APPPA members transitioning their business in 2020, maybe if you just want to dive a little deeper into that?
Mike Badger: [00:09:24]
Yeah. So it's that's a little tougher, you know what I think we've seen just to, just from a sales model is we've seen it as does the, There's already a trend towards delivery and frozen food to your doorstep kind of thing through UPS or FedEx or something like that. I think the pandemic has accelerated that and made customers more comfortable getting food in that way.
The Amazon model, if you will, or even meeting somebody at a drop point once a week in town to get a pickup, because there's a convenience factor and this business has really never been about selling chicken or eggs or turkey or anything like that. It's always been about the relationships that you can build with your customers. And I think in 2020, when you go through a pandemic like that, there's a chance there for the opp, for that relationship to grow stronger to blossom. And that's really the key to it all is just maintaining that relationship. And it can be hard when you're stressed out.
And you're trying to figure out how to add more capacity because everybody just bought out your own. Your whole year's worth of inventory and a single week, which is some of the stories you hear, obviously. And I'm sure you've heard them too is from at Barn2Door. That's the kind of stuff that happened.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:10:53]
So as many APPPA members are probably coming off a large holiday push, and they're looking ahead to the new year. They're looking ahead to 2021. What is the advice you are giving your members in terms of planning ahead and looking to the coming new year?
Mike Badger: [00:11:09]
Yeah. That's I think right now, the people we're just trying to figure out how to plan, how what is 2021 going to look like? And if there's one piece of advice that, the hindsight is always wonderful. We have, and we have just like the rest of humanity, right? We have these, we have different personalities in our group and some people, by the time January 1st hits, we'll have their entire production season mapped out.
Other people will order their first batch of chicks three weeks before they need them. And a lot of times that has worked in 2020 that didn't work. If that was you in 2020, you got hosed because then you couldn't get the stuff you needed. So planning is definitely I think is a lesson learned for a lot of people in 2020.
Following that closely is going to be things like, how much risk are you willing to. To take on here knowing, not knowing necessarily how long demand may be elevated, how well did you keep up with your new customers? Did you, were you able to retain a section of a group of your customers?
And so I think some of the other advice was that we, as we were going through 2020 started really thinking about the people who were running out of inventory, running high demand, and just making sure that they take care of their customers who are loyal customers before the pandemic showed up and just, again, providing that relationship to them.
And realizing that relationship is probably worth preserving and it's probably worth maybe turning away a new customer. So you can be loyal to somebody who supported you for the last year, five years or whatever the case may be. And then are the new people you get, how can you retain them?
And I think that's a harder question as we go into 2021. I know there might be some things you can do from marketing perspective, but really just how can you service those customers and keep a percentage of them coming back when life goes back to normal, if you will.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:13:05]
Definitely. And speaking of, pivoting and being able to pivot to change kind of the business operations based on the current climate we're in. Last year, Barn2Door was pleased to sponsor and attend the APPPA conference in Florida in January of 2020. I can't believe that almost a year ago in 2021 however, the APPPA, the conference is going to be virtual.
So maybe if you could tell us a little bit more about the upcoming virtual conference, what are your goals for this event? Knowing that it's in a different format than in past years.
Mike Badger: [00:13:36]
Yeah, so it's crazy because our conference will be entering the fifth year that we've been holding it. And in years, one through four, I marketed pretty heavily against the idea of. Living your pasture poultry business online really marketed the need to be in person, right? There's just no better way to be in, to learn and devote time to your business than to be focused and being in person really does that. So we're not going to be in person, obviously. So this year we got to figure out how to do that virtually, and we're going to try our best to replicate what we do in person, which really are the signature part of our conferences is the peer to peer discussions.
So last year, for example, 2020, we went into the conference, the opening day of our conference with about one third of our programming slots filled. We had some pre-conference courses, but then our main conference only one-third of our track was filled out. And the rest of it happened on the first morning of the conference.
So based on what our attendees wanted to talk about and vote on, and then we broke people up from there. And that's the model that we work on. We're going to try to replicate that virtually. I think we can do it. Zoom has some features that will enable us. Our event platform has some features to streamline that a little bit.
So that's still the goal. And and one of the big goals when we started this, the conference was just simply to provide programming for around pasture poultry that just wasn't available anywhere else. And one of those. Concepts is for our experienced producers, the farmers who are five years, maybe plus of experience 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.
When they go to a typical winter conference, they're just, the program is not up to their speed. It's not what they need. All their time is spent in the hallway, talking to the other people like them. And we wanted to replicate that hallway time, which is the format of our conference. And that means we treat those attendees more. We focus more on a lot of business concepts and a lot of just vision type of things, and really pushing the envelope and to make sure we get a good mix of people. We bring in some introductory programming. In the first couple of days at the conference, that's our presentations, that's where we break out the PowerPoints and we have somebody stand up there and talk and go through slides and present something. And then our main conferences mixes everybody, but it elevates the conversation in the level to a more intermediate, at least in more advanced type of topic.
And we still make some room in those breakout sessions for well-rounded discussions about how to raise a chicken. But yeah. That's not our, that's not our focus. And we believe very strongly that the best way to learn about any of anything pastured poultry is to be in the room with those couple of hundred people who will be at that conference because they are the people who make the effort to be there who have done it, they're invested and they're invested in themselves and in the community.
And that's really what we are striving for when we think about what APPPA is, and. And what we're doing. So we're the one thing that I would say virtually gives us the advantages we're gonna, let's brings down the barrier to entry significantly. We're going to run a very inexpensive registration and there's going to be no travel costs.
There's going to be no food costs. You just have to block out a couple of hours on your schedule for a couple of days and you can experience virtually . And Hopeful that experience will lead people to say, Hey, I'm going to make this a priority in 2022. And I'm going to come meet these people in person.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:17:27]
Definitely. And I think people are looking for that connection, especially right now, but networking, just going back to how important it is to build those connections and especially, in the industry and with farming for farmers to connect. So other than being virtual what else is going to be new or different? About the 2021 APPPA conference?
Mike Badger: [00:17:48]
Yeah, that's a hard one. Cause we intentionally tried to keep it simple in our programming. We are one of the neat things we do. Like I mentioned the pre-conference courses. We do run courses that are going to do an introductory course this year. To pasture poultry, like we have every other year, which is just like a 101 type of husbandry and management course, but we also started focusing on heritage breeding, like poultry breeders in this last year.
And so we're going to have a track dedicated for, to them for the first time and really have a couple of opportunities for breeders and growers to maybe connect and form some relationships and see where that can go into the future. So that'll be pretty exciting. And I think one of the big opportunities we have with the conference, one of the new opportunities is the ability to run probably what's going to be a mixed format conference in years coming a mixture of online and a mixture of in-person. And even leveraging some in some technology for our in-person people. And I think that's where we're going to take this year to figure out and, get good at hopefully by the time we're done with our conference, we'll be good at it.
But usually that comes from usually all the, Oh my goodness. We've got to fix that now it's wrong tug kind of technology problems this, I think it's a turning point for the way we're gonna do our events and. And I think that's an, that's a scary but exciting opportunity.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:19:17]
Mike, just last question, where should folks go to register for the upcoming APPPA conference? And if you could also share some details about it and how much it will cost the registration process.
Mike Badger: [00:19:28]
Sure thing. So you can register at apppa.org/conference. And registration will be $99 per person that will include the recordings and our format. Talked about a couple of times will be combination of the presentations and the breakout sessions in a run over four days. So we'll do January 15th and 16th as our pre-conference quote-unquote days are our courses, our presentations, and then.
On the 18th and 19th will be our main conference where we do the more free form discussions. And we'll look at, and some of those things won't be, actually be decided until we get our attendees assembled and go through some process of figuring out what's on people's minds. Yeah and so that's the exciting part. And the one thing I can say is our agenda. We will probably have a pretty complete agenda as completed as it will get by the first of the year. But people don't necessarily sign up for this conference because of the agenda. If that makes sense, they sign up like I said, because of the experience and the people they get to associate with.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:20:39]
For sure. And is there anything else that you want to share about APPPA the upcoming conference? Anything else, top of mind for you?
Mike Badger: [00:20:47]
No, I think APPPA, as I mentioned, as I stressed, I can't underscore this enough. We're just really about. Helping farmers succeed with their pasture poultry. And it starts with the people and it flows down to the details, the knowledge, and, that's we're a lean group, but we try to swing above, are above our belts, so to speak, we try to really put our thinking about what you need and program around that. And just about everything that we do.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:21:20]
Definitely. Mike, I just want to extend my things to you and the entire membership at APPPA, here at Barn2Door, we're delighted to serve many APPPA farmers all across the country who promote humanely, raised pastured poultry, and we encourage you to join Mike and the Barn2Door team at the upcoming APPPA conference on January of 15 to the 16th and the 18th to the 19th. As Mike mentioned this coming new year as shared, you can go to apppa.org/conference to register online today. And when does that registration process close, Mike?
Mike Badger: [00:21:52]
We'll take registrations at least until the 15th we cause we were recording. We'll probably see if we can find figure out a way to take registrations through the 19th, they're there years past we've had deadlines and tiers and things like that this year, like I said, a little simpler $99, whether you're a member or not, and we'll, we're running all the way up to the conference time.