Chicken Wars
Oct 17th, 2008 | By karenpresents | Category: New Farmers, UncategorizedHow much chicken could a chicken shop sell if a chicken shop could sell chicken? Good questions if you could swallow it with out choking. The chicken industry is all choked up. Let me tell you about it. If you want to sell chicken in this town you either have to buy a farm in a different county. Or drive over a hundred miles to the Indiana border to process it at the only open to the public chicken processing plant. Those doing it are selling their chicken for 3 to 4 dollars a pound. And! There is a market. Now if you were amish then you and your neighbors would work together to do it. There are over 100 of these farms selling free range chicken in the state. Then there is OEFFA who represents 600 organically certified farms in Ohio. But only a few of these offer chicken and meat. Everyone else in the state buy their chicken from factory farms of hundreds of thousands of chickens in a big barn on a 5 or 10 acre field with a couple dozen employees. Then it is shipped to a processing plant where a hundred or so immigrant workers clean and package it.
There’s a lot wrong about this system. I wish I had the time to tell you about it. But you can guess the rest.
by Karen G.
The previous (and very different) version of this post is behind the cut.
The chicken wars are here as evidenced by the explosion of articles on the web and from papers around the country. Cleveland has just lowered its restrictions on having chickens in ones back yard from a 100 foot buffer zones to 10 foot buffer zones. The no rooster rule still applies. There is a new web site for the urban chicken and numerous blogs. And Cooperative Extension offices should endorse this and be able to reach out to more kids thru 4H. But where could this lead us? Would the Farm Bureau step up and consider supporting more small farms to sell to local franchises and other outlets.
I recently spoke to people at the Farmland Preservation conference about this? What would be a win-win situation for local farmers to sell to franchises locally? What would be an acceptable amount of chickens to have that would not overwhelm the neighbors because of the smell issues? Is there a market for the byproduct? One fellow thought this would be an interesting question to look into. When I inquired whether a referendum vote to require corporations to buy local a lively discussion ensued concerning quality standards and working with the already existing wholesalers. Many more question to answer on this topic. Are we content letting low paid immigrants do this work instead of teenage FHA boys and girls who are leaving and losing the family farm to developers. Are these the green jobs that could be brought back to Ohio? I hope so. I know what I’ve lost because I don’t know how to manage 5000 chickens like my grandmother did during the depression.
Are we ready to take a stand for the chicken?
by Karen G.
Currently if you can raise chickens in your backyard you are allowed to process it yourself for personal or family use. You are also allowed, according to Ohio law to process it on the farm (backyard) where it is raised and sell it from home.
However, if you intend to sell it somewhere else, such as at a farmer’s market, grocery or to a wholesaler, then you will need to have them processed at a state or federal inspected processor. Many grocers, wholesalers and now also many Farmer’s Markets require liability insurance for the producer. This is cost prohibitive if you only produce a small number of chickens per year.
A good solution to encourage home production of small scale poultry for commercial sale is to have a small local processor with state inspected status, where growers could take their 10 or 20 chickens and leave with packaged, weighed, labeled product. They can then sell this to grocers, wholesalers or direct to the public at Farmer’s markets. Currently there is only one small scale custom processor of this type in Ohio, located in western Ohio. More are needed to serve their local regions.
As far as not knowing how to manage 5000 chickens: start with 5 chickens, then expand to 50 and so on until you have reached the level of production you are comfortable with. There is no barrier to entry only a bit of space in the backyard for a homemade chicken coop.
“…if a chicken shop could sell chicken”
‘Chicken shops’ do sell chicken. I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here.
“If you want to sell chicken in this town you either have to buy a farm in a different county. Or drive over a hundred miles to the Indiana border to process it at the only open to the public chicken processing plant. “
That’s not entirely true. The processor by the Indiana border (King & Sons Poultry Service) is the only one of its kind in the state, so producers who don’t have their own facilities have to go there regardless of what county they’re in. This is only necessary for off-farm sales, however. If you raise under a certain number of birds every year–I think it’s 1000–you can process them yourself at home, even if you live in Franklin County.
Now if you were amish then you and your neighbors would work together to do it.
Even Amish folks have to follow this law. If you sell the birds off-farm, you have to use a state-inspected (or USDA inspected) processor.
“Cleveland has just lowered its restrictions…”
That’s great news!
“There is a new web site…”
Got a link? Or at least the name of it?
“Cooperative Extension offices should endorse this…”
Here’s a link to a page on OSU Extension’s website for people raising backyard chickens: http://ohioline.osu.edu/vme-fact/0011.html
In my experience, the extension service promotes a lot of really great ideas that run in direct violation of local ordinances: backyard chickens, composting, rain gardens using native plants (”noxious weeds” in the language of local officials). I once brought this up to an extension agent at a workshop on composting just after I’d been told by the county health department that compost provides a habitat for rats. I’d like to see them get on the same page.
“Would the Farm Bureau step up and consider supporting more small farms to sell to local franchises and other outlets.”
What’s the Farm Bureau got to do with whether small farms want to sell to local franchises, or whether the local franchises want to buy from small producers? What exactly could the Farm Bureau do to influence this? I’m not being facetious; I’m just really unfamiliar with the Farm Bureau, and the “About Us” page at their website doesn’t tell me much. I and all the other farmers I know do our marketing directly. I’ve never heard of the Farm Bureau twisting a buyer’s arm and making them buy from any particular farmers. Does this really happen?
“I recently spoke to people at the Farmland Preservation conference about this”
I’d be curious to hear how that came up. Farmland Preservation’s mission, as I understand it, is to protect rural farmland from urban sprawl. In other words, their job is to keep the city out of the farms. It seems odd that they’d be interested in hearing about how to move the farms into the cities. If enough people in town are raising poultry to put the rural poultry farmer out of business, it undermines the argument that developers shouldn’t build housing developments and strip malls on the site of the farm.
“What would be an acceptable amount of chickens to have that would not overwhelm the neighbors because of the smell issues?”
This depends on the size of the area they’re on; whether they’re on sand, clay, concrete, etc.; how often the ground gets to rest between flocks (if they’re pastured); and how often litter is changed. If you had an airtight building with filters on the air handlers, and the bedding was changed every day and trucked away out of the neighborhood, I’d imagine you could raise 100,000 and the neighbors would never smell it. Noise would be the bigger problem. There’s also groundwater contamination to think about, but if the neighbors are all using municipal water, they probably wouldn’t notice.
I’ve been raising about 100 a month on less than a quarter acre, rotating between two paddocks, giving each one about four weeks to rest before putting new birds on it. I put fresh sawdust inside their shelter about once a week (every five days or less during fly season), and compost the old litter as rapidly as possible. When I keep to this schedule, the only foul smell is from the neighbors’ dogs. I’ve no reason to believe that increasing production to 100 every two weeks (using an additional shelter with two additional paddocks) would be any worse.
“Is there a market for the byproduct?”
You mean the manure? Yes. I haven’t looked into this myself, as I consider the composted litter to be a valuable resource for my gardens, but I did have one customer at a farmers’ market this summer ask about buying chicken manure. OSU Extension has a page about land application of poultry litter (http://ohioline.osu.edu/anr-fact/0004.html), but I find it’s both more effective and more sanitary to compost the litter first.
“When I inquired whether a referendum vote to require corporations to buy local…”
What do you mean? Like if Perdue wants to sell chicken in Columbus, they have to buy it from farmers in or around Columbus? The problem with that (well, the first one that jumps out at me, anyway) is that they’d have to ship it to their processing plant out in Iowa or Maryland or wherever before sending it back to the city it came from. This would be a logistical nightmare, not to mention increasing the strain on energy supplies and our infrastructure. The only way it could happen is if the biggest retailers all refused to carry the product unless this was done, or if a law was passed by the federal government. I can’t see any reason either of these scenarios would come to pass.
“Are we content letting low paid immigrants do this work instead of teenage FHA boys and girls “
Future Homemakers of America? You’re saying we should relax the child labor laws to allow minors from Future Homemakers of America to work in meat packing plants, one of the most dangerous workplaces in existence? I’m sure you could get plenty of people to back you on the anti-immigrant angle, but I’m not so sure you’d find people eager to shove their Home Ec. students into slaughterhouses. I’m hoping by “FHA boys and girls” you don’t mean kids who are living in federally subsidized housing. I won’t even touch that one.
“I don’t know how to manage 5000 chickens “
I’d recommend Day Range Poultry: Every Chicken Owner’s Guide to Grazing Gardens and Improving Pastures by Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman. I’ve never raised 5000 birds at once, but I find that raising 100 isn’t much different than raising fewer than a dozen. I would imagine that if you broke that 5000 apart into a more manageable size–say, 10 flocks of 500 each–it would be a lot easier.
Woops! Got posted before I could polish it. Here’s more of my thoughts. Buying a farm so you can do on farm processing is beyond the possiblty of most new farmers because of property values in Franklin Co. So few new young people from non farm owning families could probably do it. The young heirs of already existing farms need more support and incentive to keep the family farm. FFA and FHA could pick up some of this slack with help from the state and the Farm Bureau. I have been disillusioned by the Farm Bureau because they have supported the mega farms and not me when I have tried to ask for guidance.. I don’t get anything from their web site, newsletter or the few meetings I have attended over the years. It’s been a don’t call me I’ll call you.. attitude. I’m still waiting for that call. They sell insurance and hybird corn programs. as far as I can tell. The Farmland Preservation group had lectures on how and what products to encourage in Ohio. I thought they left a lot off the list of possibilities. I would like to hear more about the lowly (heirloom) tomaato that Slivia Zimmerman of IFO brought up at that meeting. Making farms profitable is the key to preserving farms. The FP is fully concerned with this as an issue. As for chicken. Forget Perdue and Tyson. I think franchise owners should have the right to buy local if they want. This means more processing which the state could fund the creation of. Again I don’t mean to see teenagers forced to process chicken. They aren’t given enough credit for what they are capable of. Child labor laws need enforced and assesed so family members have chioce. I believe the people who do process chicken get their fair share of the profits and good working conditions. They could be recognized as professional farmers and included as members of the Farm Bureau or whatever farm organization who wishes to do outreach to all of its support staff. Probably enough for now. Luv Karen G
More Chicken s…… A megafarm for Union county is being protested by many in this state. Most notably Mercy for Animals. Their presentations can be very graphic and quite convincing for people to consider the Vegan diet. I applaud and support them in this. However. For many not yet giving up meat. Consider this. I believe that local farmers should be ecouraged and supported to sell chicken locally. I believe it is wrong that the Farm Bureau has not taken this up as a cause. I don’t believe that fast food corporations and suppliers should be allowed to set the standards and buying practices for everyone else. It is wrong to use underpaid employees and only provide longterm benefits and job security to a chosen few at the top. It is wrong for groceries to inject water into their product to sell it for more profit. I could go on. The govenor of Ohio is being addressed on these issues. You may add your comments to many others this week thru the various websites that different government agencies offer. Including his.