The Wall Street Journal published an article today on the emerging Chicken Housing Crisis. Yes, you heard me right: a chicken housing crisis.

Wall Street Journal:

"There's no way we'll make the chicken house payments," Mr. Dixon says from his farm abutting the Ozark Mountains.

A chicken housing crisis has cropped up in the U.S., and it's producing some of the same bleak results as the human one -- foreclosures, lawsuits and devastated homeowners.

In the wake of last year's bankruptcy filing by poultry giant Pilgrim's Pride Corp., hundreds of farmers suddenly find themselves unable to make mortgage payments on their pricey chicken coops.

To cut costs, Pilgrim's, the nation's second-largest chicken company, has terminated contracts with at least 300 farms in Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina.”


The Flathead Beacon and Brownfield Network both recently reported on an increase, due to the recession, in abandoned horses, particulary in Colorado, Nevada, and Montana. This is the way that we will see the fallout of the economy affect small farmers and the animals under their care. Yesterday, Franny blogged about the fact that the House version of the stimulus bill did not include funds for a Federal Farm Loans, which would help farmers in times of need. We have yet to hear whether or not funding was allocated for these loans. Did the language of the bill need to have a line item to additionally address a farm animal housing crisis? What about a bailout for my brethren? We are affected too.

The chicken housing crisis shows us how fragile a vertically integrated food system is in an economic downturn. The poultry industry is almost entirely vertically integrated, meaning that a few large companies control the distribution and production (whether through contracts or direct company ownership) of almost all of the poultry consumed in this country. When a big company like Pilgrim's Pride goes down, a lot of small producers are left without a system through which they can sell their products. The beef industry is also vertically integrated, with the exception of the small producers who find ways to sell their own products through cooperatives, at farmer’s markets, or over the internet. While most farmers take out large loans for equipment and initial operating costs, any fallout in the distribution system they depend on could induce financial ruin, leaving the farmer with large loans and no distribution system to grant an income for repayment.

Will the chicken housing crisis and the horse abandonment problem prove to be just the first ripple in a larger farm animal keeping crisis? Will this force us to find a way out of the vertically integrated food system, or will it result in even more monopolization and vertical integration?

Above photo by John Athernon