Future of Broiler Production?

[WA29]

Always has been of significant interest, but where do growers see the industry going? Do you see vegan movement effecting it in 10-15 years? Brexit? Synthetic meat? Have some costings of setting up a site back in the late end of the 90s and I wish we ventured into it back then, huge risk to set up a site now and have the worry of a heap of worthless infrastructure in 20yrs time if things change? Are margins as good now as they were 5-10 years ago, what's the longest contracts around to get some security around a new build site? Know a few in the job and still hear lots of good, but many keep there cards very close to their chest. TIA

 

[Fogg]

If I could go back to the 90s I'd be buying property, not broiler sheds. Still, whatever you'd invested in back then would have been long paid for and be sitting there with 20yrs or so of life left.

There is still a lot of increasingly dilapidated old estate out there. Posts and asbestos. Anyone building new is more of a threat to the people clinging on at the more obsolete end of the sector than to themeselves. If you've a modern site and you're within 30mins of a major processor you'll stay busy, I'd say. I don't have the appetite for it myself, but no one ever got rich with a cautious mindset like I've got.

I'm a bit out of the loop myself WRT margins, that's for someone else to answer, but I don't think they are what they were, and the incentives for ancillilaries like solar PV and biomass aren't outrageously generous either. The days the government would pay you £340 for burning £140 of wood pellet are long gone, sadly.

 

[mixedfarming686]

We ventured into the broiler industry in 2014 and then decided to expand the enterprise in 2018, we are around an hour from the processors main factory and about 2 hours from its smaller one, the processor we grow for and others around are usually looking for new growers every few years when they make the factory more efficient, the demand for poultry meat is still rising, but if at some point the this demand begins to fall i do hope that our sheds will lend themselves to other types of indoor farming, as they are clear span, climate controlled units.

 

[johnspeehs]

I think expansion has come to an end over here, think there are about 100 houses here sitting in planning with no prospect of getting past the environment agency, our emissions levels are through the roof here. Since they fecked up the RHI here its put the guys with new units under a lot of pressure paying houses and boilers but anyone established can still make a living and oddly enough we aren't coming under the same pressure from the save the planet mob as livestock farming. Its still by far the cheapest animal protein and the worlds population is growing so even allowing for vegans i cant see demand falling anytime soon.
I imagine stocking rates in houses will have to keep coming down that might make new houses less attractive looking but broilers might still be as good an investment as you could find in farming.
Just make sure if you do build keep the houses a wee bit higher, makes them more use for other things.

 

[Woolless]

I had cause to visit a poultry vet practice a few months ago. They spoke of an industry under a lot of pressure, working on very small margins. Their advice was forget poultry on a large scale.

 

[Regen Cornwall]

Chicken has relatively low green house gas emissions so long as they are out for as much as possible, therefore reducing energy use and given sustainable feed. You should be alright. It's competition with the mega farms that make things difficult. Go free range perhaps.