2021 Professional Pastured Poultry Conference

The 2021 conference will be hosted online on January 18-19, 2021 with a in-depth training courses delivered the week leading up to the conference. 

Program details are coming soon. 

One of the hardest parts of 2020 has been planning the January 2021 conference. Several of the stalwart winter conferences have long ago decided to go virtual—PASA, Acres, and MOSES. Using MOSES as a benchmark, the conference scene has been upended through the end of February 2021. And if we take a peak into the commercial poultry scene, IPPE in Atlanta has gone virtual. 

The APPPA conference committee has wrestled with this planning. We’ve struggled with the choices as we’ve evaluated the political, health, and economic factors that might affect a January conference in Florida. The original approach has been to push decisions as far down the road as possible. That’s a great theoretical approach, but it makes it extremely difficult to plan. We've reached that point.  

For January 2021, the typical Sunday pre-conference courses will move to a virtual learning environment, and we’re planning to have each of these courses delivered over the course of a few days. Our current foundation courses are an introduction to pastured poultry and a heritage poultry breeders course. A third course is yet to be determined. 

The main conference is a harder decision point because of it’s conversation-centered format. Making that part of the conference virtual is a second choice, and we’ve dragged our feet on making the choice.

Then we ran our budget numbers for the hotel based on what we expect the attendance to be. The reality became clear. Our Jacksonville location is cost prohibitive. We know that many members have already sworn off travel for January. Some would travel but not to Florida (that’s part of the political considerations). Some people won’t travel due to the extra hassles. 

For these reasons, the committee felt strongly that if we had an in-person event, we’d also need to bolt on a virtual option. The cost and effort to run a hybrid meeting escalated the price and made the planning more complex.

Those are the details that have pushed our Professional Pastured Poultry Conference to a virtual venue for 2021.

January 18-19, 2021 will be our version of a virtual conference with our preconference “Sunday” courses happening prior to the 18th.

Here’s the hope. The decision to move the conference virtual does not preclude an in-person gathering, either regionally or a couple months later. I still believe that the winter outlook will be clear by December, meaning we’ll know if people are ready to travel and gather. I know people say they’re ready now, but the reality is much more nuanced than the oft-uttered wishes to return to normal.  The problem is that we can’t wait until December to make decisions about January’s conference. However, we can plan something similar to our first conference on short notice, which was more like a one-room schoolhouse approach.

There will be no shortage of news and needs to address as this year ends and the next begins. The charge I lay out before you is to find the opportunity amid the disappointment and challenges. That’s been 2020’s theme.

 --Mike Badger

Sponsors

APPPA will provide a range of sponsor and underwriting opportunities to ensure your business receives the maximum exposure to a group of highly engaged participants. New in 2020, we'll expand our chance to exhibit across all levels. 

Media Inquiries

American Pastured Poultry Producers Association draws farmers and related suppliers from all over the United States and beyond.

Contact Mike Badger to obtain a press pass and additional information about the Professional Pastured Poultry Conference.