Profitability, historically, has been a powerful incentive driving chicken production upward and onward. So, will the favorable financial situation experienced by the chicken industry in 2013 trigger in 2014 the typical production response and routine of a boom in production and bust in the bottom line?
Recent years’ experience may have been educational to the chicken industry in terms of learning to live with high and volatile feed costs, but recent years’ experiences have provided little guidance in terms of triangulating corn/soybean supplies/feed costs, domestic consumer/export demand, and the government mandate for renewable fuels. Although many agricultural analysts, especially at USDA, have penciled-in a bumper harvest for 2013 corn (if not soybeans too), those of us in the poultry business have learned not to actually count the chicks until they are truly hatched. It may well be into the new year before USDA accurately can or will provide a true best estimate for the 2013 crop harvests.