Ah, summertime! Lazy weekends, family picnics and chicken
sizzling on the grill.
“We see demand for chicken jump about 10 percent every summer,”
said Stan Savage,
a poultry specialist with the University of Georgia Extension
Service. “Fortunately, we
can plan for the increase.”
And in an ironic economic twist, rising demand for white meat,
especially the breast,
can actually push down the price of dark meat.
In the United States, shoppers prefer white meat. It’s
versatile, can be prepared very
quickly and is reasonably priced, Savage said.
But that leaves a lot of dark meat that’s not in demand. Today’s
broiler chickens are
about 60 percent white meat (breasts and wings) and 40 percent
dark (legs, thighs and
backs).
Savage said poultry follows the law of supply and demand almost
to the letter — “as
demand rises, prices quickly rise, too.” If Georgia poultry
companies couldn’t plan
ahead for summer demand increases and grow more chickens, prices
would nearly
double.
Companies prepare 10 to 12 weeks in advance for the summer
demand increase. They
keep more hens, which lay more eggs. Then they cut the time
between flocks in
farmers’ broiler houses statewide.
“By cutting the down time between flocks from 10 days to just a
week, we can supply
more birds,” he said. Georgia farmers produce 530 million pounds
of broilers every
month. In the summer, production rises to more than 584 million
pounds.
“The poultry companies have to sell dark meat for whatever they
can get for it,”
Savage said “and grocers sell it for 49 to 59 cents a pound.”
But processors’ loss on dark meat, he said, is offset by higher
prices for white meat.
Higher summer demand gently bumps up prices when the supply is
tight.
As farmers raise more chickens to meet the demand for white
meat, there is also more
dark meat to sell. That’s good news for leg-quarter lovers.
“You might see leg quarters on summer specials for as little as
29 or 39 cents a
pound,” he said. “All because U.S. consumers are willing to pay
a little more for the
white meat they prefer.”
