Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

farmer

Perdue Is Putting Birds Out to Pasture With Solar-Powered Mobile Chicken Coops

With more than $7 billion in annual sales, it would be easy for Salisbury, MD-based Perdue Farms, a top 10 domestic poultry producer, to focus on business as usual. Instead, the company looks to the future and understands its vision must go beyond simply putting broilers, wings, and chicken breasts in supermarkets and then on consumers’ dinner plates.

In launching its expanded pasture-raised program, Perdue is putting into play a clever piece of technology that benefits consumers, the environment, and, of course, its birds. At its 6th Annual Perdue Farms Animal Care Summit, the company unveiled its solar-powered mobile chicken coops, which it believes will play a key role in its future.

Ryan Perdue, VP, and GM of Perdue’s pasture business explained how the solar-powered mobile chicken coops operate and how they will lead to more sustainable farmland and a healthier product for consumers. Perdue’s commitment to the pasture-raised part of the business was further fueled by its December 2019 purchase of California-based Pasturebird, a firm whose mobile chicken coop took the pasture-raised process to a new level. The acquisition made Perdue the largest producer of pasture-raised chickens in the United States.

While a seemingly subtle distinction, the change in location yields significant benefits. As Perdue explained in an interview with The Spoon in advance of the announcement, a mobile, solar-powered chicken coop houses 6,000 birds which is 75% less than a typical bird house. It is a floorless building, 150 feet by 50 feet in size, and via a solar-powered engine, it moves 50 feet per day.

Perdue says the chickens are offered a new, fresh bounty of grass, insects, flowers, and grains at each new pasture location. While the chickens are not labeled organic, there is a significant increase in the organic matter they eat when presented in a new feeding area each day.

Perdue says that rotating the pasture areas creates a “virtuous cycle” where there is less erosion from rain, and by having the land rest, grass and flowers grow back even more bountiful than before.

While much of the process is automated, farmers will be hands-on overseeing the movement of the mobile coops.

“There are major benefits to the consumer,” Perdue adds. “A pasture-raised bird has less saturated fat, is more nutrient-dense, and higher in Omega-3.”

Perdue Farms is not disclosing how many solar-powered mobile coops it currently deploys or a schedule as to when its poultry-raised product will be widely available on supermarket shelves. Because it is a premium product, pasture-raised chicken commands a higher price; however, Perdue reports, “as the company finalizes price points, Perdue will not sell its pasture-raised chicken at a profit.”

At the time of Perdue’s purchase of Pasturebird, several smaller producers of pasture-raised poultry, primarily sold at farmers’ markets and specialty grocery stores, feared that the deal would put pasture-raised poultry out of the hands of independent farms. Based on Perdue’s acquisition of Coleman Natural Meats in 2011 and Niman Ranch in 2015, the company has grown more than in revenue and product lines.

In an interview with The Counter.org, Lauri Torgerson-White, senior animal welfare specialist with Mercy for Animals, suggests Perdue has learned a lot from companies like Niman Ranch, a pioneer in progressive farming. “Most companies, like Tyson, blow us off. We’ve done multiple investigations of their farms, and they refuse to talk to us,” she says. “But when Perdue learned what was going on, they reached out to talk to us, and since then, we’ve had a really positive relationship with them. Every year they’re doing more to improve the welfare standards on their farms. It’s been a very, very good, cooperative, productive relationship.

cow eating hay beside a farmer

Hybrid Farmers: Could Livestock Producers Expand Cultured Meat?

Cultured meat and alternative protein are out to disrupt the meat industry. But Future Meat‘s Chief Science Officer Yaakov Nahmias says the quickest way to achieve that goal is through the infrastructure that’s already in place, including farmers. Nahmias sees poultry, pork and beef producers as a critical partnership for cultured meat start-ups and the meat industry’s transition.

During an interview two weeks ago, Nahmias said he envisions a role for what he calls hybrid farmers: Traditional livestock producers who invest in a bioreactor, a large steel vat that maintains the environment need for cells to grow and divide, allowing them to culture meat. Farmers could continue to raise livestock and simultaneously take advantage of the efficiency and safety advantages of cultured meat, Nahmias told me in an interview. 

It takes between six weeks and six months for a chicken to reach market weight. Cattle require 14 to 22 months. But if a farmer were to invest in cultured meat, they could also produce a new crop of cultured meat every couple of weeks. Nahmias estimates that a bioreactor the size of a standard refrigerator could generate the mass of 100 chickens every two weeks. And farmers could easily vary the type of meat they’re growing from batch to batch based on demand. “You have the ability to do chicken today, pork for Christmas, and turkey for Thanksgiving and beef for Memorial Day,” he said. 

There will always be a market for traditional agriculture, but this is a way for farmers to diversify, Nahmias told me. On top of faster production and the ability to grow a variety of meats, cultured meat also has a shorter supply chain because there’s no slaughter step. Farmers could sell directly to processors and packers. And maybe most importantly, hybrid farmers would have access to a new customer base–those buyers looking for animal-free protein.

There’s also a safety and efficiency advantage to cultured meat. Viruses can do serious damage to a flock or herd before they’ve even been detected, costing producers months of work and investment. But bioreactors– at least the ones manufactured by Future Meat– will offer real-time detection. A contamination would cost a farmer a couple weeks instead of months or whole animals, Nahmias said. 

Culturing meat does have its limitations, like the fact that it’s not yet possible to produce high value cuts of meat like steaks, chicken breasts and pork chops in a bioreactor.  Future Meat grows muscle and fat cells in separate bioreactors and then combines them using extrusion technology to give the desired texture.  Other start-ups grow the fat and muscle cells concomitantly, but the outcome is the same: a ground product. There are companies developing ways to culture whole muscles, but that technology is a decade away from commercial application. 

Nahmias acknowledges that right now farmers feel threatened by the alternative protein industry and cultured meat. “But they are threatened the same way horse cart drivers were threatened by the car,” he said. The car was a major investment, but in the long term it offered greater financial stability. In other words, the mode of production might be changing, but there’s still room for farmers to be involved.