Shortly after issuing its strategic plan last year, in which it committed to goals around workforce, category growth and serving its members, the American Bakers Association (ABA) announced a restructuring to ensure the association was organizationally aligned with the plan. Explaining the changes, the ABA said it was intensifying its focus on government relations, particularly emphasizing nutrition and workforce issues. 

Josh Sosland, editor of Milling & Baking News.

Source: Sosland Publishing Co. 

The changes effected were evident at the ABA annual meeting held in late March in Orlando, Fla. While each of the plan’s strategic pillars received attention, advocacy held center stage.

In his opening remarkets, Eric Dell, president and chief executive officer of the ABA, laid out the group’s priorities for 2025, including an extension of tax relief first approved in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, ensuring that regulations’ economic impact on small businesses was understood and accounted for properly and working to ease the “unpredictability in the current climate” in Washington.

Evidence of a new approach at the ABA also may be seen in the recent creation of a Congressional Baking Caucus, which Dell referenced in his remarks. Bucking the trend of a political climate that has become more polarized, the ABA said the caucus will take a bipartisan approach to addressing issues of critical concern to bakers, including workforce development, regulatory reform, supply chain efficiency and sustainability.

The initiative may seem striking to longtime observers of the ABA. The caucus represents something of a break, certainly in tone, from the past. In the early 2000s, Paul Abenante, CEO of the ABA, said the group’s politics were deep-seated:

“This industry has a culture and a tradition about it and a political character that finds itself in the Republican party as a whole,” he said. “And I don’t think that will change … It’s very easy in the political environment to compromise in some way. Whether publicly or privately … I won’t subscribe to that kind of political double-dealing. We are who we are, and we stand up for what we’re all about and let the chips fall where they may.”

Reality always has been more nuanced than perhaps suggested in those comments. The ABA has always reached out to whichever party controls the White House to engage on matters of regulation and other policy. A smattering of Democrats appear each year on the list of candidates supported by the American Bakers PAC. Still, the creation of the caucus represents the practical recognition that commercial bakers operate plants in all 50 states, in localities politically red and blue, ranging from 132 in California and 87 in Texas to single plants in Alaska and Hawaii.

“With baking manufacturing facilities located in countless congressional districts across the country, our members are an important part of the national dialogue on a wide range of issues,” Dell said.

Priorities of the caucus align with issues long at the top of the ABA’s agenda, including advocating policies that support training and upskilling to bolster the industry’s workforce. Centrist allies ought to be able to find ways to address regulatory challenges and ensure the nutritional role played by baked foods are promoted, an issue of mounting concern.

Reacting to moves on the advocacy front and across the range of the ABA’s activities, bakers attending the annual meeting gave high marks to the group’s leadership, beginning with the focus Dell has shown toward executing the strategic plan. Credit also was directed to the ABA’s immediate past chair, Cordia Harrington, for “setting the bar high” in terms of the level of performance the association should be expected to reach. Appreciation has been shown for Bill Quigg, Harrington’s successor as chair, credited with maintaining her high standards while also demonstrating a measured response in the face of a turbulent environment in Washington, avoiding knee-jerk reactions to alarming pronouncements that have been prone to reversal in short order. In anything but calm times, the annual meeting showed the degree to which the baking industry is benefiting from focused, strong leadership.