Demise of the turkey industry
Nov 23, 2012
By Bruce Pokarney
For the McMinnville News-Register
While there are a few locally-grown birds sold to niche market consumers this year, most Oregonians will sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner featuring a turkey produced in California, Utah, or Minnesota.
“At one time, Oregon was a large producer of turkeys, probably producing up to 30 percent of the West Coast supply from the Willamette and Yamhill valleys,” says recently retired Oregon Department of Agriculture Assistant Director Dalton Hobbs. “Due to consolidation of the turkey processing industry and a few other factors that hit during the early 1990s, all that commercial production has gone away.”
In the mid-1980s, Oregon produced about 2.5 million turkeys and had a strong, viable industry. The state’s climate was amenable to turkey production and suited growers and the local processors. Turkeys were part of Oregon’s diverse agricultural product mix.
Now there are only a handful of small-scale producers who specialize in organic, pasture raised, or so-called “heritage” turkeys — birds produced through natural mating, not through artificial insemination as is the case with commercial turkeys.
Many factors led to the demise of Oregon’s turkey industry in the early 1990s.
That wasn’t much of a problem in the 1980s, when Oregon still produced several million turkeys a year.
That’s a far cry from the present day turkey production of Minnesota (47 million), North Carolina (30 million), Arkansas (28 million), and even California (15 million). Still, Oregon had enough critical mass to sustain the turkey industry and offer consumers an Oregon-grown product.
Then, a series of events badly affected the industry.
The Oregon Turkey Growers Association, a local cooperative with membership in the national marketing cooperative Norbest, went through several managers at a time when continuity might have helped, according to Jim Hermes, poultry specialist with Oregon State University Extension.
With several states producing turkeys under the Norbest label, Oregon growers had to settle for the national price on turkeys. Being far from feed sources, growers in other member states enjoyed a competitive price advantage.
About the same time, a batch of contaminated turkeys was shipped from Oregon to Utah — something that hit the news headlines at an inopportune time. For all intents and purposes, that was the final straw for Oregon’s turkey industry.
“The most visible problem was the recall of some 70,000 turkeys just prior to Thanksgiving 1991,” says Hermes. “The industry just couldn’t recoup from that event.”
Yamhill County, with about 85 percent of the state’s turkey production, shouldered the brunt of the loss. However, just as the entire state absorbed the loss of the turkey industry, Yamhill County was able to fill the vacuum through such successful commodities as nursery crops.
“Toward the end of the industry, there were about 25 turkey growers with 10 of them primarily responsible for most of the state’s production,” says Hermes. “Today, some of those same growers are producing fryer chickens inside the same facilities that were producing turkeys. Others have modified their buildings to store grass straw or some other commodities.”
Today’s consumers who prefer to buy a local product have the option of purchasing from small scale producers. These customers reserve a bird in the spring by pre-ordering even before the turkey is raised. By the time of holiday season, the turkey has been fully grown and slaughtered, and is ready for the dinner table.
The return of a large scale turkey industry in Oregon is unlikely, according to Hermes.
“There have been some inquiries into having breeder flocks of turkeys in the state to produce hatching eggs,” he says. “Normally when that occurs, there might be a few producers who may want to grow some commercial birds. However, Oregon’s primary problem is that there is no place to process the turkeys. We do not have a slaughter plant. The Oregon Turkey Growers processing plant in West Salem was sold and today is used for processing and freezing other food products.”
For Oregonians, there has been little impact from the loss of turkey production statewide. There is no shortage of turkeys available year ‘round, let alone during Thanksgiving and Christmas. With the rare exception of those who prefer a fresh vs. a frozen turkey, shoppers don’t seem to care if the bird comes from California or North Carolina. Even when Oregon produced turkeys, most headed out-of-state anyway.
While Oregon never likes to see the loss of an industry, the demise of the state’s turkey production can serve as a valuable lesson.
“With this inexorable trend towards consolidation in agriculture, our growers need to understand that the ways of the past may not be the ways of the future,” says ODA’s Hobbs. “We need to be nimble, creative, and proactive in our production strategies and offering a product that fills a need.”
Oregon’s agricultural industry is more dynamic than most states. New commodities may crop up while older, smaller ones decline or even disappear. The state is strong enough to absorb the addition and subtraction.
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