Overcoming the Challenges Facing Pasture Poultry with Mike Badger, APPPA
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're excited to welcome back Mike Badger, Executive Director of the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association. Listen as Mike talks about how APPPA has been working to provide American Pasture Poultry Producers the resources they need to overcome the unique challenges they face as poultry Farmers.
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Rory: 0:26
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Rory, your host. We've got a great conversation for you today with the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association or APPPA. APPPA Is a non-profit trade organization that encourages the production, processing, marketing and purchasing of poultry raised on pasture. I'm delighted to welcome Mike Badger, the executive director of APPPA. Welcome Mike. It's been a while since we've had you here on the podcast, could you maybe start just by introducing APPPA and kind of how it came to be?
Mike Badger: 0:54
Well, first of all, thanks Rory for having me on the podcast and for allowing me to represent APPPA. APPPA came into existence in 1997, formally. It started as back then as just a way to get grassroots people who were kind of piling onto this new idea called pastured poultry, that Joel Salitan was championing and the organization kind of formed from that need of those people to get together and share resources and share ideas and help one another, grow a better pasture raised chickens. And that's pretty much where we started and we've held pretty tight to that mission over the last 25 years.
Rory: 1:27
That's great to hear and that's awesome to hear that you guys have kind of maintained that consistent mission, but what are some ways that maybe that mission has kind of evolved since its origin?
Mike Badger: 1:36
Yeah, sure. So one of the things that early on, and even I'd say that the real shift has happened here in the last five to seven years. Before that, we needed a lot of information about how to raise good chicken. The husbandry, the management, feed, the processing. But as information becomes more readily available, we're seeing that the need for our, our members and really the community at large comes down to business. A lot of business training related topics and really getting more out of their husbandry, their management and just how they raise chickens. So the, the technical level, I think that APPPA engages is higher than it was you know, just five years ago and certainly we tend to focus more on some business subjects.
Rory: 2:17
How did you get involved with the organization?
Mike Badger: 2:19
Yeah. So my role currently is the executive director. So I kind of manage everything day to day. I started back, I don't know, about 10 years ago. I started raising some chickens, doing it pasture raised. And one of my friends said, Hey, you should check out this organization called APPPA, so I looked them up, joined. But also that time I realized that they had a job opening for an editor, for the newsletter and I applied for it. And I got the job to edit the bi-monthly newsletter. So that's how I came into APPPA and kind of took over the executive director role when the previous one left.
Rory: 2:50
could you maybe go into a little bit on how APPPA has helped pastured poultry farmers? You kind of touched on how recently you guys have been building more information around the business of pastured poultry.
Mike Badger: 3:00
Well, I have two primary answers to this. One is in the business side of things. We usually take a deep dive into the numbers. So when it comes to production numbers, like just understanding how much feed does it take to get that one pound of chicken or that dozen of eggs, what are your management decisions that you make and really try to show those relationships. And that's part of where we tie that back into the production. One of the other things that we do is marketing, leadership, and just general business management, a lot of that stuff ties into our conference. And then some of that information then trickles out throughout the rest of the year to the membership, usually through our bimonthly newsletter, which is 28 pages. So it's not just you know, a quick throw together publication, but it is kind of our journal of record of the Pasture Poultry Industry and of APPPA. In Jacksonville in 2020, our last in-person conference, you know, we brought in a lean manufacturing consultant from Rhode Island to lead several workshops throughout our conference about lean principles and how that could be applied to the farm. Because he had been working with one of our members and training and consulting really helped out this farm become more efficient and just the way they approach it. And so that's examples of some of the stuff that we do. We kind of look for things that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see when you go to a Pasture Poultry Conference.
Rory: 4:13
How is APPPA able to help a farmer that might be coming maybe more of a conventional farming background start to implement those pasture poultry methods on their farm?
Mike Badger: 4:21
Yeah, that's a tough one. The two systems really aren't complimentary. You know, you would think that the conventional farmer, an integrated farmer who has a, you know, maybe a stationary house capable of holding 20 or 30,000 broilers, you know, they might see the opportunity to come into a niche like pasture poultry. I do take those calls from time to time, but usually the couple of the bottlenecks that they show up right away is that housing that they have already that infrastructure, that loan that they're paying down, isn't really conducive to raising pastured poultry. It doesn't fit within the model because pasture poultry is first and foremost about movement across pasture. So that's the first obstacle. The second one is, you know, when you raise 30,000 chickens for an integrator, a couple of trucks show up, a crew of hardworking young people show up and they'd throw them on a truck and in half a night and they're gone. And that farmer has one customer, one point of sale, and they just take what they get. But when you move into the pasture poultry space where it's direct marketing, it's a different game. And you know that very well with working at Barn2Door, right? That's what you guys do is help farmers understand that. And the scale-up process tends to be a lot longer and more drawn out than just building a barn and stocking it four, six times a year with tens of thousands of birds.
Rory: 5:30
Yeah, certainly a lot of roadblocks, but definitely some benefits too. I know something that we talk about, if you're doing conventional farming, you probably have one buyer. But as you go direct, you do get the benefit of managing your contacts and being able to have real buyer relationships, which is a huge advantage. What are maybe some of the other advantages to raising pasture poultry that farmers don't necessarily realize before they either make that switch? Or if they're just starting to get into it, they're like, oh, look at all these added benefits or this is easier than I thought it would be.
Mike Badger: 5:57
I don't think anybody ever says it's easier than they thought it would be. But uh, I think some people get connected to it. They see freedom in it. They see the power in it. But some of those benefits, you know when I'm talking about pastured poultry, I'd like to usually frame the big picture in pasture is it's more than just a photo opportunity. It's really has purpose. And it starts with the health of the bird. One of the reasons that a lot of pastured poultry producers can raise birds without antibiotics and other medications and manage their diseases is through a healthy pasture rotation. By getting the birds off of their waste today and then on to fresh green grass the next day. And so they're always moving and that, gets him away from, you know, a lot of the pathogens and stuff. So it's health of the bird, health of the pasture, you know, the models you often see with with the stationary houses is birds go outside and they continuously graze an area of the pasture over time, relatively short amount of time, doesn't look like pasture anymore. It looks like dirt, or it's really heavily impacted, especially around the barn and that's not good for the soil. And then consequently, it's not going to be good for the birds that are grazing on there. And then you have the health of the community just that, those economic, personal relationships that you establish, farmer to consumer. Keeping money within your community, those kinds of things. And so it's a holistic view of what pasture-raised is, and it's more than just turning birds out on to the outside and into green grass. And if you don't quite have that full picture, when you start pastured poultry, you tend to want to shortcut the, details and you, because you don't understand how the details really do matter in this production.
Rory: 7:25
So I know something that's also is very valuable about APPPA is the community that you guys are able to provide for pasture poultry farmers. How do you guys go about fostering that community and helping farmers kind of collaborate together to be successful?
Mike Badger: 7:37
One of the very powerful and underrated parts of our membership until you get there until you see it. We host a private discussion group. So when you become a member, you have access to some of the stalwarts in the community and that's just a treasure trove of really great information. And that's one of the ways. And the events that we do take that to the next step. You know, we've been running a national conference now for, this will be our sixth year coming up. But the events, the way we structured them is we, try to put them so that they're member first and by that, I mean that we show up to one of our conferences. It's a good chance that half of the agenda will be blank. Because that other half of the agenda will be determined by whoever shows up. We might have 25 people in a room or 80 people in a room around a specific topic, like value added processing or value added products. And have a one or two moderators just trying to lead that discussion. And what happens is somebody asks the questions. I want to know about making a chicken sausage. Does anybody have any ideas or any, anything to watch out for? And then a couple other people can jump up and say, we do this and it works like this, or, and provide that back and forth real time scratching the itch of what people have at that time. And then we've started more recently just running some monthly live webinars.
Rory: 8:49
A while back, the market as a whole, started to catch onto a lot of the inhumane and the unethical practices used in the poultry industry as a whole, but it almost kind of led to this massive use of all these different terms and misleading messaging in poultry. And so how does APPPA help their poultry farmers be educated and market their products to help consumers see the value in pasture poultry and understand what that is, but also to kind of see past that other misleading messaging that is so common in the poultry industry.
Mike Badger: 9:18
Yeah. Usually I think what you're talking about there is label claims. You see all these different label claims of this and that antibiotic free and free range and pasture access and on and on it goes. Part of me is amazed that, you know, after all these years, we still need to have education for consumers specifically. You still have to have articles that describe the differences between free range and what that really means in the US, we have to explain it to them because there's more and more people who just are bombarded by these messages and free range just for the sake of clarity, just means that the birds have access to the outdoors, right? So all the, you know, most of the organic chicken you buy at whole foods, for example, it doesn't mean it's ever saw a blade of grass in its life. Its first sunshine it ever saw was probably when he got caught and put in a chicken truck hauled to a processor. And so how do we deal with that? We try to do everything we can in our conversations, in our articles, and just lay out the issues. I'm a firm believer that our, members need to keep tabs on what the industry is doing, what issues there are, so that they can go into their markets, into their customers and be a knowledgeable, accurate, truthful resource for them and be able to articulate the differences and the challenges. One of the ways that we've helped with that is we've launched an initiative called, Get Real Chicken. Get Real Chicken is basically a consumer directory site where our members can opt into have a listing. And so when you become a member, you'll get some emails. We have five videos that kind of walk through some of these issues from a broad perspective and give some information about these issues. One of them being pasture raised, you know, versus free ranging like eggs, for example. Just showing the difference of what pasture raised means as a big theme for all of those videos. And, it's a daunting challenge because when anybody especially a commodity industry, realizes they can get a few more dollars in a niche market. Their goal doesn't become, how can I replicate that production model and get the value their thinking becomes, how can I change just enough that it really minimizes the impact on me while still getting a premium for my product. It's almost the same product as I had before, but I'm going to market it like it's something different. I'm going to get a premium. But the challenge with that is it's usually dishonest and their premium undercuts them the existing niche market in price. And so that's where all this confusion comes in. It's a challenging one. It's going to get worse before it gets better. I think. And we started by giving our members and really anybody who wants to use them some pasture poultry branding video that they can use and share and use that as a base to talk to their customers and say, look, this is what we do. This is, you know, you want to know what we do. Look at these videos from APPPA.
Rory: 11:53
Yeah And those videos really well done. They're available on APPPA's website. If you visit APPPA.org I would encourage you to, because they are great, they're super educational. And in one of those videos they talk to farmers from across the country, raising pastured poultry but one of the farmers points out the best way, or maybe the only way to know how your food is raised and what goes into your food is to know your farmer personally. And so, what kind of strategies does APPPA share with farmers to help them grow their audience and build those relationships so that, customers can know their farmer and know exactly how their products are being raised?
Mike Badger: 12:25
This is really about relationships and how do you form them? Some people get that. Some people don't, and the truth of it. I've been trying to kind of help folks see when I talk with them, that relationships, that's what the whole world turns on. Like APPPA turns on relationships, your marketing efforts turn on relationships, your employees you manage turn on relationships and it seems like we always need more. There's always more need for marketing. And so processing is a big bottleneck, marketing is also in my opinion, just as an important and formidable bottleneck as processing. I think marketing's easier to solve when you get over the initial fear of it. And we do devote a lot of resources to that, whether it's, like I said, in print articles, interviews with other people and just, you know, spending a lot of time throughout the conference, talking about this
Rory: 13:10
That's great to hear that you guys are able to offer those resources and kind of help people learn how to establish that relationship. Because I think like you were talking about with all these different labels in the poultry industry. I think consumers can sometimes just not know what to do, you know, and they don't know where to go. And so certainly knowing their farmers the best way to kind of jump over that hurdle and get straight to the source. Another kind of big challenge facing the poultry industry is it's that very difficult to make a living wage, and the profit margins are very small on a lot of those products. How can poultry farmers, you know, implement changes and, and kind of overcome the problem and grow a scalable business model?
Mike Badger: 13:46
Yeah. So there's a couple things wrapped up into that question. I think one of the first things, people need to figure out is, what do I want my pastured poultry business to be? You know, do I want pastured poultry to support an income for me full time and then pay for everything that I need to live? Does it have to support my life? And if that's your answer, you need to be looking at a certain level, you need to be thinking in terms of growing to that point. You don't get there with a hundred chickens, but if you just want pasture poultry to provide something meaningful, you know, maybe it's an added enterprise to your farm already. Maybe it's just something you do in your homestead to earn some extra money then that can look different and the size of it doesn't really matter. Like you should have a profit, no matter what your size is. I mean, if I raised a hundred chickens, I should be able to do that with a margin on top of all my expenses. How big can profit on a hundred birds really be? And that's sometimes the part that get small. When you talk to people, it's like, well, I only have this, but, but they've only raised a few birds relatively speaking. And so the first thing you have to be able to do is determine where it is you want to be with your business. And once you do that, then you can be comfortable where are you fall. Because if I only want to raise a thousand meat birds per year, for example, there are other, they want to raise 50 hens for eggs. You know, the success of that enterprise looks a lot different than it does if you're trying to raise as a primary enterprise that supports the whole farm and your whole life. And so there's this whole line of thinking is this cost accounting thinking that you have to include all of these indirect costs into your price and you know, you're going to pay for all your electricity, all your mortgage, everything it's all going to come down into, uh, some percentage of your per pound costs or your per dozen costs. And what you end up with is a dozen of eggs. It has to retail for $10, or you end up with a a chicken that has to retail for like 8 99 a pound. And those usually don't work in the market. One of the cool things last and last year's virtual conference, we brought in Dave Pratt from ranching for profits to lead a workshop, he'll be back in 2022 for a whole day, but he really talked about this idea of it was simple. It was a simple approach. It was what does it take to make a chicken, what does it take to make a dozen eggs? What are all those, those costs, whether it's you know, feed the chick itself, the bedding, the, the tangible things that you put into it, and then what's your margin on. So you add a margin and that's your gross margin, and that has to pay everything else, including your labor and things like that. And then I'm really glossing over this. I don't want to make it sound like I'm giving advice here that I'm not quite capable of giving because it wasn't my presentation. But it's an enthusiastic and I was riveted by Dave's presentation and that he just simplified all those, all the years of pricing conversations that you have. And it's just like, what does it take to make it add a margin? Now you have a margin and you have a certain dollar amount that you need to cover each month to live and cover all your costs and have a profit. And as you scale, eventually, you're going to hit that point where now you're profitable, but it is this, that idea is really get a hold of your costs is the first part of that, get a hold of what you want to do. And once you have those two pieces, I think there's other things come in line and finding out where the, what works for your context is important too.
Rory: 16:47
What would be your advice or kind of insight to them on maybe some steps to.
Mike Badger: 16:50
There's there's steps to the full-time or profitability?
Rory: 16:53
And growing a long-term scalable business.
Mike Badger: 16:55
In pastured poultry, you've, you're going to need to know several things that to get to that point, you're going to have to know how to raise the chicken, market the chickens, and then run your business and figure out the processing along the way. And that's a lot of hats for one person to wear. So typically you're going to need more support whether that's family or employees you're going to need to find all those skillsets to help you grow. And I think you know, again, it's, if that's where you want to go and that's part of the planning process. If that's the model you want to go to then you can really plan to get there in a deliberate way, rather than backing into pastured poultry, which is how most people get their right. They, they raised 50 birds for their family. Like this is pretty cool. I think I could sell a couple of these. And then the next year they're raising like 400 and they're selling them and they don't really quite have any idea of the business implications of what they're doing. It usually starts because they don't have a clear path of where they're going and once you have that clear path then you start plugging it in with people who are smarter than you, who've been there, done it who can give you honest advice along the way.
Rory: 17:54
Definitely I have the plan in place for the long-term growth is definitely a very key aspect to that. We've touched on the APA conference a lot throughout this conversation, but the conference is set for January 16th through the 18th, and it's going to be held in Jacksonville. Could you maybe tell us a little bit more about what pastured poultry farmers could expect from that conference?
Mike Badger: 18:13
We're actually working through some of the final details, but here's what I can tell you. We're going to go bigger than what we've done in previous years. Hopefully everybody can get there. The main conference is in-person, in Jacksonville. It's three days. Our first day will be workshop based. That's where we'll have Dave Pratt from ranching for profit come in. Lead a full day workshop on basically money and people he'll split his time between those two things. Monday and Tuesday will come along and we have some other marketing topics specifically. We, I think we have a StoryBrand topic lined up. These are kind of tentative. I'll throw them out there, but everything is somewhat subject to change at this point. Well I'll give you what, I'm 99% sure of. And we have some other business topics and then the rest of it will just. You know, breakout sessions around those topics. And then around the issues that our members bring to us, we want to utilize them to get the experience that they need is kind of how we approach our conference. And then backing up into December. We'll host two virtual pre-conference conference events. December 4th will be our introductory workshops to pasture poultry. That'd be a full day and then December 11th we'll do a heritage breeder summit, again, a full day kind of event just to get access to more people build off the success we had at our virtual event last year and then a lead into our in-person stuff in Jacksonville.
Rory: 19:24
That's great. That's really awesome to hear and very unique concept kind of to APPPA is that having such a almost reactive conference to the needs of what your farmers are facing this year or that season or whatever it may be. So that's a really great resource. Where could people find more information?
Mike Badger: 19:40
Information will be at APPPA.org find the conference. It's usually slash conference and you'll be able to get details as they emerge there.
Rory: 19:48
That's certainly great to hear, and I'm excited to see the work you guys continue to do and also the results of your conference coming up in the next year. Well, I want to extend my thanks to Mike and all the farmers at American Pasture Poultry Producers Association. At Barn2Door, we're delighted to serve farmers in all 50 states, including Pasture Poultry Farmers across the country. For more information on the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association, visit APPPA.org. To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm. Go to Barn2Door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next.