Poultry problems

WILLARDS, Md. - Dennis Bradford walks by a rundown, gutted chicken house on his way to his afternoon rounds at newer buildings. Chunks of the roof are caved in; most of the windows were blown away during Hurricane Isabel. The structure contrasts sharply with the larger steel buildings that house 100,000 chickens — and Mr. Bradford’s career.

“The rest of the houses are in good shape, but that one is really unsalvageable,” Mr. Bradford says, pointing at the columns in the middle of the old house that made chicken deliveries difficult when it was in use.

The building, later burnt down by the local fire department as a precaution, symbolizes a movement that is sweeping across chicken farms in the Delmarva Peninsula, the region between the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Chicken growers in Willards and in the rest of the region have given up traditional farming practices and replaced them with more tech-savvy procedures to stay viable in an industry that is constantly changing and consolidating.

Delmarva’s poultry industry, which accounts for 8 percent of total U.S. poultry production, has thrived since its inception in 1923 as the brainchild of a Delaware homemaker. The demise of the industry is predicted with increasing regularity, however.

Local officials say the chicken business is still a vital segment of the regional economy — some 15,000 chicken farmers and processing workers in Maryland produced 293 million broilers in 2002, providing $440 million to farmers, or 35 percent of the state’s total agriculture income.

But now more than ever, chicken growers are under attack.

While Maryland grapples to control a mild avian-flu outbreak — which prompted Russia to cut off poultry imports from the state — chicken growers and processors say Maryland no longer can count on the industry unless some dramatic changes are made.

Land is being taken over by retirees moving near the Atlantic Ocean beaches. Farmers now must submit complex, costly environmental plans to the state. The area has the highest production costs in the nation, and there are few state programs to entice younger folks into the business. And more companies are relocating to the South to cut costs.

State and local governments are trying to help by preserving farmland and easing burdensome regulations.

Some entrepreneurs are creating niche operations. And there is no indication from poultry companies in Maryland that they will close or move out.

But as the U.S. poultry landscape undergoes change, so does the landscape of Delmarva’s chicken industry.

Industry in transition

When Delmarva’s broiler-chicken industry arose in the 1920s from the region’s commercial egg industry, most chicken houses were shacks with only small windows to ventilate the powerful smell of dust, manure and ammonia.

Growers sold their flocks of chickens to nearby slaughterhouses that sent the birds to processing plants. But that practice changed by the late 1950s as operations merged and expanded into large companies working on contract systems with growers.

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