{"id":101919,"date":"2020-10-30T19:34:51","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T16:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/scaled-back-thanksgiving-plans-leave-turkey-farmers-in-limbo\/"},"modified":"2020-10-30T19:34:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T16:34:51","slug":"scaled-back-thanksgiving-plans-leave-turkey-farmers-in-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/scaled-back-thanksgiving-plans-leave-turkey-farmers-in-limbo\/","title":{"rendered":"#Scaled-back Thanksgiving plans leave turkey farmers in limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Scaled-back Thanksgiving plans leave turkey farmers in limbo<\/strong>”
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\n For the turkey industry, this Thanksgiving is a guessing game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Millions of Americans are expected to have scaled-down celebrations amid the pandemic, heeding official warnings against travel<\/a> and large indoor gatherings. That leaves anxious turkey farmers and grocers scrambling to predict what people will want on their holiday tables.<\/p>\n

Kroger \u2014 the nation\u2019s largest grocery chain \u2014 said its research shows 43 percent of shoppers plan to celebrate Thanksgiving only with those in their immedia<\/a>te household. It has purchased more turkeys than usual \u2014 in all sizes \u2014 but it\u2019s also predicting an increase in demand for alternatives, including ham, pork roast and seafood. Kroger also expects to see more demand for plant-based meats, like a vegan roast stuffed with mushrooms and squash.<\/p>\n

Walmart says it will still carry plenty of whole turkeys, but it will also have 30 percent more turkey breasts in its stores to accommodate shoppers who don\u2019t want to cook a whole bird.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not always easy to pivot. Angela Wilson, the owner of Avedano\u2019s Holly Park Market in San Francisco, ordered turkeys last year for this Thanksgiving. She can\u2019t cancel the order, so they\u2019re still coming in.<\/p>\n

But Wilson said this Thanksgiving might be busier than in the past, since customers who usually go out of town will be staying home. She\u2019s also stocking up on smaller birds like quail and game hen.<\/p>\n

Some farmers are making tweaks based on what they think customers will be looking for. Dede Boies raises heritage breed turkeys at Root Down Farm in Pescadero, California. The turkeys she sells for Thanksgiving were born in May, so she has spent months thinking about how the coronavirus might impact the holidays.<\/p>\n

Boies decided to harvest some turkeys early this year. It\u2019s a gamble, because the birds gain a lot of fat and flavor in their final few weeks, but she figures customers will want smaller birds. She\u2019s also offering more chickens and ducks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve invested so much time and energy and love into these birds, and the whole point is that they go and they are celebrated with people for these great meals. We\u2019re just really hoping that still happ<\/a>ens,\u201d Boies said.<\/p>\n

Butterball \u2014 which typically sells 30 percent of America\u2019s 40 million Thanksgiving turkeys \u2014 said it\u2019s expecting more gatherings, but it\u2019s not convinced people will want smaller turkeys. Its research shows that 75 percent of consumers plan to serve the same size turkey or a larger turkey than they did last year.<\/p>\n

Butterball says about half its turkeys will be in the 10-16 lb. range and half will be in the 16-24 lb. range, the same as usual. Anyone looking for a specific size should plan to shop early, said Rebecca Welch, senior brand manager for seasonal at Butterball.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to go big,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just as easy to cook a large turkey as it is a smaller one, and it means more leftovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nancy Johnson Horn of Queens, New York, usually shares a big turkey with her in-laws, her parents and her own family of five. But Horn, who writes The Mama Maven blog, said that gathering won\u2019t happen this year because her kids are attending school in-person and she is worried about spreading the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as it hurts me, I will have to cook myself this year,\u201d she said. She\u2019s not sure what will be on the menu. She\u2019s only cooked a whole turkey once in her life and she\u2019s never made mashed potatoes.<\/p>\n

This Thanksgiving comes at an already tenuous time for the $4.3 billion US turkey industry. Thanks to better technology<\/a> for carving breast meat, per capita consumption of turkey nearly doubled over the 1980s, peaking at 14.4 pounds per person in 1996, according to Mark Jordan, executive director of LEAP Market Analytics in Jonesboro, Arkansas.<\/p>\n

But interest in turkey has been steadily falling, thanks in part to price increases five years ago when flocks were hit by bird flu. Annual consumption is now around 12 pounds, Jordan said.<\/p>\n

Turkey sales have even been falling at Thanksgiving as consumers explore alternatives, according to Nielsen data. Last November, Americans spent $643 million on turkey, down 3.5 percent from the previous year. They spent $1.9 billion on beef, which was up 4 percent. And they spent $12 million \u2014 or more than double the prior year \u2014 on alternatives like plant-based meat.<\/p>\n

Jordan thinks the uncertainty about Thanksgiving demand will hurt groceries hardest. If they discount turkeys, they can sell them but it will hurt profits. If they keep prices high and consumers pass, they\u2019ll be stuck with a lot of turkeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see many ways that they win this holiday season,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n

The uncertainty may well see a repeat at Christmas \u2014 both in the US and beyond.<\/p>\n

Christmas turkeys are a staple in Britain, where turkey farmers are also bracing for slimmed-down festivities after the government told people not to meet in groups of more than six.<\/p>\n

Richard Calcott raises 2,000 Christmas turkeys each year at Calcott Turkeys in Tamworth, England. He bought his turkey chicks \u2014 known as poults \u2014 in February and March, and it was too late to switch to a smaller breed when pandemic restrictions took hold.<\/p>\n

He has tweaked their diets to reduce the weight of each turkey by around 2.2 pounds by the time they\u2019re ready for market. Still, Calcott said he continues to get some orders for larger birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a very difficult year for a lot of people this year,\u201d he said. \u201cChristmas will be a good time to get families back together.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Scaled-back Thanksgiving plans leave turkey farmers in limbo” For the turkey industry, this Thanksgiving is a guessing game. Millions of Americans are expected to have scaled-down celebrations amid the pandemic, heeding official warnings against travel and large indoor gatherings. That leaves anxious turkey farmers and grocers scrambling to predict what people will want on their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/pandemic-thwarts-turkey-famers-e1604075551846.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[77729,1545,68,71389,77894,77895,75393],"class_list":["post-101919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-10-30-20","tag-coronavirus","tag-holidays","tag-supermarkets","tag-thanksgiving","tag-travel-restrictions","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}