For only the fourth time in five decades, chicken production in 2012 will decline when compared with the previous year. Unfortunately for employees and contract family farmers who grow the chickens, the decrease will likely be of the magnitude experienced in 2009, when production dropped almost 4 percent.

Simple, basic economics offers a brief answer as to why the significant downward adjustment in output is happening. If enough companies lose enough money long enough, the collective industry has little option other than to try to match supply with a demand level that will return the situation to break-even or profitability. A large majority of chicken companies have sustained significant losses since late 2010. Whether these losses were financed by digging deeper into their own pockets and/or the pockets of the financial lending institutions, companies have gotten the message: “enough is enough, stop the bleeding.”