In the week or so preceding this episode, Polyface announced it was slaughtering one of its sacred cows. They were going to ship product. Social media was a angry throng of pastured poultry injustice warriors. If you’re looking for commentary on Daniel and Joel’s decision, you’re in the wrong spot. My commentary is for the people commenting, and I’ll place that commentary in the context of pastured poultry.

Episode 89 of the podcast featured Garoleen Wilson and Jhawk Farm in Kansas. That chat Garoleen brought into focus the context from which we should be evaluating whether or not shipping is a viable option for your farm. It won’t be for everybody, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for the community at-large.

A critical distinction, from my perch, is to ask yourself, what are the principles that can’t be compromised and what are the limiting beliefs (for you Ravenscraft listeners)? Shipping is a limiting belief, an obstacle that could prevent you from growth. It could keep you and the community from relevance. Or it could fizzle from the consumer demand.

I implore you to go beyond the copy cat-style of production. Don’t adopt another farms business vision, mission, and beliefs just because you idolize what they’re doing.  Learn your craft. Learn the principles to stand on and then innovate around those principles. In pasture-raised poultry, two principles to stand on are rotational grazing and seasonally appropriate outdoor production.

Should you ship pasture-raised poultry?

Not all of us live on the coast or have easy access to population centers that can sustain a direct-to-consumer model. Garoleen lives in a county that is 30 miles x 30 miles and has a population of 3,600 people. It’s over two hours to a town that’s big enough to support a Wal-Mart. She’s producing as many chickens as there are people in her county. And we know not everyone in the county is eating pastured poultry.

Garoleen has the foundation for her pastured poultry business – she can articulate a why, a how, and a what. To make it a business, she has to work through coops and distributors. The coop takes the chicken to the Denver and Golden, Colorado markets and stretches local to about 200 miles. She also works with Crowd Cow who consigns the chicken and then ships it through the mail to customers.

These two sales channels enable Jhawk Farm to grow a business that wouldn’t have been feasible 10 years ago. The coop would have been possible, but the expanded regional or national distribution would not. And it’s that additional option that builds scale within the community or at least provides potential.

The fight for relevance is real. Pastured poultry gets an upsized exposure due to social media and the ease of information delivery. But if we want to impact the health of the environment, the health of the chickens, the health of our rural economies, and the health of our eaters, we need to slaughter some sacred cows.

If shipping product bothers you, take a personal stand.  Don’t abstain just because you heard a presentation five, ten, or twenty years ago.

Resources

Doing the pasture-raised broiler side hustle in rural Kansas with Garoleen Wilson