NEAFA continues it’s member highlight with Papillon Agricultural Company and its current president, David Briggs. Before serving as president, Briggs spent three years as the national sales manager. “Papillon was founded in 1983 by Tom Haschen,” said Briggs. “He’s well known throughout the northeastern feed circles. Our core business was bypass protein manufacturing. Haschen came from a poultry background, but soon the company decided to focus more on dairy, around 1986. Papillon was very happy working with feed manufactures, nutritionists and the dairy industry for 25 years. We decided to expand the geographic footprints as well as to grow and expand the product line in 2004. Now in 2022, we’re covering 80% of the dairy cows in the United States by manufacturing bypass proteins, nutritional additives that service nutritionists, feed manufacturers and distributers. We don’t currently sell directly to the dairy farm.
Before coming to Papillon, Briggs was no stranger to agriculture. “I grew up on an 80 cow dairy in Chautauqua County in New York,” said Briggs. “It was my grandparents dairy farm. My father was in the feed business for 35 years, so I grew up understanding feed mills and understanding the business. Eventually we moved off the farm, and I graduated high school in southern Delaware. I then went to Washington College and received a degree in business and economics. When I got out of school school and started to work for a financial firm, I came to the determination that I was a farm kid at heart. I found my way back to ag and the dairy industry. I had short stint at my wife’s business, and then I’ve been with Papillon ever since 2004.”
Papillon has been a long time member of NEAFA. “Thom always conveyed to me that NEAFA had the feed and grain producers best interest at heart from a lobbying and educational aspect,” said Briggs. “It’s an important membership for us, and an important organization to support. Our customers have also been involved, and we want to support them too.”
For Briggs, NEAFA’s Annual Meeting and Golf for Good Works Tournament are wonderful benefits to the NEAFA membership. “When I look at the Annual Meeting and the Golf for Good Works Tournament, I just see how important they are,” said Briggs. “Growing up as a northeastern dairy kid, I think the educational portion is always well put together and a boon for the industry. NEAFA has coherent planning that they use to put together a good lineup of speakers and good entertainment. It’s just a well done meeting and a good use of time. And sometimes that’s not always the case with meetings. With NEAFA however, it is something that is always well done. In this day and age with so many different commitments and opportunities, we have to say to ourselves is this time well spent, and I can say that meeting is.”
For Papillon, it was also an easy decision to become a Sustaining Sponsor of NEAFA. “When you look at the track record of what the organization has done for the industry, we look it as dollars well spent from a lobbying perspective,” said Briggs. “They are constantly putting the interests of agriculture and animal agriculture in front of legislators. The dollars are being put to use in the right place.”
For more on Papillon, visit: https://www.papillon-ag.com/