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Labor shortages contributing to tight chicken wing supplies

Labor shortages continue to pressure several segments of the ag industry and an ag economist says the chicken sector has been no exception.

University of Missouri ag economist Scott Brown says the supply of chicken wings is tightening. “Labor is an issue to process those chickens,” he says.  “It makes it harder to get more wings into the marketplace.  It’s hard to process more chickens and we’re not growing a lot in terms of chicken production so far this year.  So all those things on the supply side matter as well in terms of where we’re at.”

And, he tells Brownfield prices have been steadily rising over the past year.  “Look at the post-worst-of COVID-19 back in 2020, we were talking about chicken wings that were $1.80 a pound, we’re not sitting with chicken wings at nearly $3 a pound.”

The latest Cold Storage report showed chicken wing inventories are down 30 percent year-over-year.