Metro Atlanta consumers and others around the country may pay less for chicken in the coming months now that Russia has banned imports of the fowl and other U.S. agricultural products in what has become a trade war with the U.S. and its allies.
Tom Hensley, president of Baldwin-based Fieldale Farms in northeast Georgia, said the thousands of metric tons of dark meat leg quarters that make up of the largest share of poultry exports to Russia will now have to be consumed in the U.S., and that will drive prices lower.
Producers, on the other hand, will feel the pinch.
“It’s going to have an impact on us of several hundred thousand dollars, and the industry [impact] will be in the millions of dollars. So it’s going to hurt, not doubt about it,” Hensley said.
Russia’s immediate, one-year ban follows U.S. trade sanctions related to the Ukraine conflict and the downing of a Malaysian airliner. The ban also covers pork, fish, dairy products, vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Poultry is Georgia’s largest agricultural export to Russia, and it’s the area that will be hit hardest by the sanctions.
Georgia poultry exports to Russia have declined over the years, which should soften any blow, according to state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black.
Today, only about 7 percent of Georgia poultry products are shipped to Russia, down from several times that amount two decades ago, a reduction also reflected in U.S. poultry exports to Russia.
Black said Georgia poultry producers, who sold about $55 million in poultry to Russia last year, have been finding other markets and are becoming less reliant on sales to the country.
“We are certainly disappointed anytime we lose a customer, even if it is temporarily,” Black said. Georgia’s total global exports hit $37.6 billion last year, up 4 percent, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Georgia led all other U.S. states in the export of meat and edible offal of poultry.
Black said the state’s poultry producers can adjust production to help offset the loss of business, but he added “it’s way too early to speculate about that,” the commissioner said.
Hensley said Russia is producing more of its chicken products and had been getting imports from European Union countries before they, too, were slapped with sanctions.
He said Fieldale Farms, about an hour northeast of Atlanta, no longer sells chicken to Russia. “We stopped several years ago.” But he is still affected by the country’s sanctions because of the impact of more chickens on the market in the U.S.
“It’s just supply and demand,” Hensley said. “It’s gonna hurt, but I support the sanctions the United States has put on Russia.”
