Mississippi poultry farmers who suffered losses when restaurants shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic will receive $23 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Mark Leggett, president of the Mississippi Poultry Association, said the federal aid is a first. Because most chicken farmers are contract growers for poultry processing plants, they’re not eligible for federal crop insurance and had not previously received any federal assistance during the pandemic despite suffering losses.
“Almost in one day it seemed, all the restaurants closed,” Leggett said. “That’s about half of the chicken sold. Of the chicken that’s not exported, about half goes to restaurants and the other half to groceries … It was a shock back in 2020, and some growers did really suffer.”
USDA announced that $270 million in pandemic aid would be given to poultry and livestock contract producers nationwide. A total of $22.7 million will be distributed to 557 Mississippi chicken growers and about $400,000 to state egg contract producers who suffered pandemic losses.
Leggett said there are about 1,600 poultry producers in Mississippi. Poultry (including eggs) has been the states largest agricultural crop for nearly three decades, with annual farm production of about $3 billion a year for the last decade.
Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Chris Coons of Delaware led a successful bipartisan effort urging USDA to set aside the assistance for chicken farmers in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.
“Chicken farmers are a vitally important part of Mississippi agriculture,” Wicker said in a statement. “I appreciate the USDA awarding these funds and working with farmers to ensure they have the resources needed following challenges associated with COVID-19.”
Leggett said the chicken market has rebounded from the early pandemic downturn.
“Demand is up,” Leggett said. “I know this is true at my house — as the price of beef goes up, people fall back to chicken. That has helped with demand.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY: How will Mississippi spend billions in federal pandemic stimulus dollars?
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.