Can a single company reshape a landscape? That’s the question at play in Nebraska, where Costco, one of America’s most powerful companies, has the potential to impact residents, farmers, and the environment in complex and unprecedented ways.
At the center of the move is the company’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken. In 2014, Costco reported selling 78 million of these processed, four-pound birds a year. In order to guarantee a steady supply and maintain the price, Costco fixed its eye on Nebraska as the best place to start raising and processing its own supply of chickens, and “break free of the monopoly” held by companies such as Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride, much like it did for sausage and hotdogs with its Kirkland plant in Tracy, California.
In June, the company broke ground on a giant new poultry processing facility in Fremont, about an hour west of Omaha. The plant will process more than 2 million chickens a week, or more than 100 million birds a year, and provide as much as 43 percent of Costco’s rotisserie chickens, as well as around one third of the raw birds it sells.
The effort will also include a feed mill and over 500 giant barns in which to raise the broilers, the hens, and the pullets, or parents used to breed the broilers. Costco needs to recruit around 125 farmers to build and fund chicken barns within a 100-mile radius, and it’s contracting with Lincoln Premium Poultry (LPP), a “company created for Costco in collaboration with Costco” that sprang up in 2016 to take over the business of working with farmers and building the infrastructure.
As the biggest competitor with Whole Foods, selling $4 billion in organic foods, Costco has been wooing shoppers who care about the source of their food for years. (In fact, the company just announced that it would tighten its standards around antibiotic use in all the meat it supplies thanks in part to an ongoing effort by shareholder activists). So, to say there’s a lot at stake with this new venture is an understatement.
While there has been resistance to both the plant and the barns on a county level, Nebraska’s state government has been working with industry forces for several years to welcome just such a project to the state. The operation is being billed as one of the only ways for farmers in the area to hold on to their land for the next generation, but farmers’ advocates and other experts well-versed in the woes farmers face in the chicken industry say the reward may not be worth the price.
And, to a group of farmers, land owners, and activists who have been united by the effort to oppose the plant, and are now actively envisioning a regenerative alternative, one thing is clear: This a watershed moment for the state, and for the shifting relationship between retailers and the larger food chain.
“Here you have a retailer who will now—from cradle to grave—have complete control of the entire production system,” says John Hansen, farmer and president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “They’ll own the birds, they’ll control all of the particulars of the birds’ genetics, the production. They’ll own the feed mill and they’ll have control of the processing plant. If this model works, what will it mean for the rest of the poultry industry? Will other retailers, like Walmart, be close behind?”
At the center of the move is the company’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken. In 2014, Costco reported selling 78 million of these processed, four-pound birds a year. In order to guarantee a steady supply and maintain the price, Costco fixed its eye on Nebraska as the best place to start raising and processing its own supply of chickens, and “break free of the monopoly” held by companies such as Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride, much like it did for sausage and hotdogs with its Kirkland plant in Tracy, California.
In June, the company broke ground on a giant new poultry processing facility in Fremont, about an hour west of Omaha. The plant will process more than 2 million chickens a week, or more than 100 million birds a year, and provide as much as 43 percent of Costco’s rotisserie chickens, as well as around one third of the raw birds it sells.The effort will also include a feed mill and over 500 giant barns in which to raise the broilers, the hens, and the pullets, or parents used to breed the broilers. Costco needs to recruit around 125 farmers to build and fund chicken barns within a 100-mile radius, and it’s contracting with Lincoln Premium Poultry (LPP), a “company created for Costco in collaboration with Costco” that sprang up in 2016 to take over the business of working with farmers and building the infrastructure.
As the biggest competitor with Whole Foods, selling $4 billion in organic foods, Costco has been wooing shoppers who care about the source of their food for years. (In fact, the company just announced that it would tighten its standards around antibiotic use in all the meat it supplies thanks in part to an ongoing effort by shareholder activists). So, to say there’s a lot at stake with this new venture is an understatement.
While there has been resistance to both the plant and the barns on a county level, Nebraska’s state government has been working with industry forces for several years to welcome just such a project to the state. The operation is being billed as one of the only ways for farmers in the area to hold on to their land for the next generation, but farmers’ advocates and other experts well-versed in the woes farmers face in the chicken industry say the reward may not be worth the price.
And, to a group of farmers, land owners, and activists who have been united by the effort to oppose the plant, and are now actively envisioning a regenerative alternative, one thing is clear: This a watershed moment for the state, and for the shifting relationship between retailers and the larger food chain.
“Here you have a retailer who will now—from cradle to grave—have complete control of the entire production system,” says John Hansen, farmer and president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “They’ll own the birds, they’ll control all of the particulars of the birds’ genetics, the production. They’ll own the feed mill and they’ll have control of the processing plant. If this model works, what will it mean for the rest of the poultry industry? Will other retailers, like Walmart, be close behind?”
by Twilight Greenaway, Civil Eats | Read more:
Image: uncredited
