Turkey sales down but holding: Will curbed Christmas gatherings hurt industry?

DUNNVILLE — When it comes to turkey, most picture the bird taking pride of place at Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas.

But Ontario’s turkey farmers actually make most of their bread supplying the deli counters and school lunches of the province. Director of Turkey Farmers of Ontario Brian Ricker said that two-thirds of turkey sales in Ontario are for processing, not whole-bird sales.

That said, COVID-19 definitely hit the turkey industry provincially and nationally, Ricker said. Closed deli counters and Subway restaurants in the early days of the pandemic really hurt, as demand for heavy bird processing dropped 17 per cent in May alone and the whole-bird market dropped 13 per cent, he said. Processors took the biggest hit early on, so the marketing board cut the minimum price for turkey to share the pain.

COVID-19 didn’t find turkey producers in a position of strength either. Sales have been trending down the last few years, with millennials largely uninterested in a holiday bird and older folks switching to smaller ones.

But while the holiday celebrations were more or less shut down this year, sales surprisingly have held. Easter saw stronger turkey sales than producers expected, and sales were about the same as last year for Thanksgiving. Christmas is the big question mark for whole bird sales, Ricker said: Will consumers buy another turkey for Christmas? Were sales up at Thanksgiving because consumers bought two and are saving one for Christmas?

On the processing side, so long as deli counters and schools stay open, producers should be okay and start to recover, he said. Many turkey farms have off-farm income which should help bolster them. But Ricker also knows of at least one farmer who just opened his doors in March. Assuming all goes well, it’ll likely be over a year before price and demand are back to pre-COVID levels. Ricker himself raises 50,000 turkeys a year, an average size for Ontario’s 165 turkey farmers. There are 550 turkey farmers in Canada. This year he’s down to 42,000. “And I’ll do it at a lower price.”