Fresh Take: What War Means For American Chicken, What To Ask About Precision Fermentation, And Is This The End Of Grocery Cashiers?

Fresh Take: What War Means For American Chicken, What To Ask About Precision Fermentation, And Is This The End Of Grocery Cashiers?

Share to Linkedin Why hello! Chloe here coming to your inbox with a special report on the food ramifications of the invasion of Ukraine. The country is Europe's breadbasket and a major exporter of crops—particularly organic ones, and particularly ones eaten by organic American chickens, as I report in my story out today. For instance, the fourth-largest U. S. chicken producer, Perdue Farms, confirmed to me that it imports some oilseeds and grains from Ukraine to feed its birds. With problems such as drought and port delays, commodity prices were already rising before the war. Since Russia invaded, they've soared. Some experts fear that without the right feed ingredients from Ukraine, organic chickens, which are more costly to produce than other chickens, could become too expensive to raise in the U. S. Chicken is typically cheaper than beef or pork, which means that consumers, who already labor under the highest inflation in 40 years, may not be willing to pay the high prices that producers need to turn a profit. The implication is that the economics could get out of whack, and that poultry growers could decide that organic is just not worth the cost. Instead, farmers seriously concerned about