War In Europe’s Breadbasket Reverberates In An Unlikely Place

The war in Ukraine and its horrific violence will have ripple effects that reach the unlikeliest places.

The besieged country, known as the breadbasket of Europe for its fertile soil and bountiful harvests, is one of the world’s leaders in the production of organic oilseed and grain – the kind eaten by American chickens. 

Most of Ukraine’s agricultural products are exported to African and other European countries, and certainly any shortages would be felt more deeply there than in the U.S., where 6 percent of chicken meat is organic — a small but growing chunk of the market. Companies like Salisbury, Maryland-based Perdue Farms, with $8 billion in annual sales, buy a portion of Ukraine’s organic oilseed and grain to feed livestock that fetches a premium price in supermarkets. U.S. organic oilseed imports from Ukraine reached 1.85 billion pounds last year, according to organic and non-GMO commodities data service Mercaris. 

Already, just over a week since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine, executives for Perdue, the fourth-biggest U.S. poultry producer and one of the world’s leading sellers of organic meat, were keeping a wary eye on the battlefield to see whether they could continue sourcing organic feed ingredients from Ukraine and how it might affect pricing.