The Hidden Costs of Cheap Chicken: Who Pays for Low Prices?

A man came by the farm recently and mentioned that he could get chicken much cheaper at Sam’s Club. I did not argue with him. He is right. The price per pound on industrial chicken is lower than ours, and in many cases, dramatically so.

But the question I think about, and the question I wish we could talk about more openly, is why that price is so low in the first place, and who is covering the rest of the cost. Because no matter what it looks like at the checkout line, food always has a cost. The only difference is whether the cost is visible or hidden.

Here is a simple example of what I mean.

The meatpacking and poultry processing industry employs more than half a million people in this country. According to national labor and food policy research, about 18 percent of these workers rely on SNAP benefits to feed their own families. That is almost one in five. Meatpacking workers are roughly twice as likely to need SNAP assistance as the average American worker. Nearly half of frontline workers live in low-income households, and a meaningful percentage live below the poverty line itself.

So the people who process the cheap chicken at Sam’s Club often cannot afford the chicken they are packaging.

This is not about blaming workers. These jobs are difficult, physical, and dangerous. They are essential to the food system. The issue is that the cost of keeping store prices low is being shifted onto these workers in the form of low wages, and then shifted again onto the public through SNAP benefits, healthcare programs, and other forms of assistance.

In other words, the chicken is not actually cheap. The cost is simply spread out and hidden.

Customers pay part of it.
Workers pay part of it.
Taxpayers pay part of it.
Communities pay part of it.
The environment pays part of it.

The store price does not reflect these costs. It reflects what the market can get away with charging while keeping production large and fast. We have normalized the idea that it is acceptable for essential food workers to depend on public assistance to feed their children. We have built a system where a family can be involved in the production of food every day and still not have guaranteed access to it.

This is one reason I struggle with the narrative that cheap food is simply a matter of efficiency. It is efficiency by extracting value from people who cannot afford to lose it.

Meanwhile, here on Wormuth Farm, the economics look very different.

Yanni and I do not take salaries from the farm. Not in eight years of farming. Every dollar that comes in goes back into the land, the animals, the barns, the fencing, the freezers, and the feed. We are building equity in the farm, not taking income from it. That is not something we say to gain sympathy. It is simply the math of raising animals outdoors, in real pastures, with time, care, and respect.

It takes land and water and grass and good feed from a local mill. It takes fencing, repairs, fuel, shelter, and health management. It takes waking up early, checking animals before work, checking them again during the day, and again before bed. It takes patience and planning and weather and mud. It takes accepting that farming works on time scales that do not match quarterly profits.

We could cut corners. We could raise animals indoors. We could grow faster and cheaper. We could externalize costs the way industrial systems do. But then it would not be pasture-raised food anymore. It would simply be another form of commodity meat. And that is not why we farm.

Not everyone can afford pasture-raised meat. I understand that. The price difference is real. And it is true that many families are struggling, especially as food assistance programs tighten and food prices rise. Hunger is not an individual failing. It is not something to be embarrassed about. It is a structural outcome of how we have chosen to design our food system.

This article is not about telling anyone what they should buy. It is about making the hidden visible.

Cheap meat depends on:

• Wages low enough that workers qualify for SNAP

• Grain and feed systems subsidized by taxpayers

• Environmental cleanup paid for by the public

• Animals raised in confinement systems to reduce labor costs

Pasture-raised meat depends on:

• Paying the real cost of caring for animals and land

• Returning money into rural communities

• Keeping wages and production honest, not hidden

• Building something that can last

When we talk about food affordability, we should talk about all of this. When we talk about hunger, we should talk about the conditions that create it. When we talk about price, we should talk about cost.

There are no villains in this story. The person buying the cheapest chicken they can find is doing the best they can in a system that leaves many people stretched. The worker in the processing plant is trying to earn a living. The farmer in the pasture is trying to build something enduring.

If we want a food system that nourishes everyone, we need to be honest about how the current one works.

That is where the conversation starts.