As we prepare to sit down to a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, let’s consider where those birds come from and where they’re going.
Virginia raises 7.1% of all U.S. turkeys, or 15.5 million turkeys a year, according to a new study by Trace One using U.S. Department of Agriculture data. That’s 429 million pounds of turkey produced at an average weight of 27.7 pounds per turkey, with a value of $403.5 million annually. Virginia is the sixth largest producer of turkeys in the nation, the November study found.
Also, turkeys bred for food are larger than they were decades ago, and fewer turkeys are raised now; in 1996, U.S. farmers raised 303 million birds, and in 2023, 218 million turkeys were raised nationwide. But turkeys now average 32 pounds per bird, nearly double the average of 18 pounds in the 1960s. That’s due to different nutrition and breeding practices, Trace One researchers say.
Although turkeys are a significant part of Virginia’s poultry industry, the biggest seller is broiler chickens. Farmers in the commonwealth produced 284.5 million broiler chickens in 2021, according to the Virginia Poultry Federation. Total poultry and egg sales in 2021 produced a direct economic impact of $5.8 billion in Virginia.
More than 85% of U.S. turkey production takes place in 13 states, and North Carolina is the nation’s top producer, accounting for 15.3% of turkeys by weight. North Carolina’s birds are very large on average, at 36.9 pounds per turkey.
Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation, notes that the average weight per bird can be affected by “heavy toms” — male turkeys that can weigh in at 45 pounds or more. “You never get a heavy tom on your Thanksgiving table,” he said, noting that such large birds are used instead for cold cuts. “The traditional Thanksgiving bird that you’re going to have is smaller.”
In 2023, India and the United States came to an agreement to reduce India’s tariffs on U.S. turkey products, allowing Virginia’s poultry producers to export turkey to India more affordably. On Nov. 12, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a member of the Senate India Caucus, announced the first shipment of Virginia turkey to India via the Port of Virginia, whole birds raised by the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative, the Hinton-based organization of nearly 200 farmers in the Shenandoah Valley. The co-op processes about 7.5 million turkeys a year and offers organic and antibiotic-free products. VPGC produced an organic turkey breast product specifically for the Indian market, according to the co-op.
“This shipment is a tremendous opportunity for Virginia’s poultry producers and a huge step forward for U.S.-India trade,” Warner said in a statement. “As co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, I look forward to the ongoing cooperation between our two nations and to seeing a wealth of new opportunities open up for Virginia’s poultry producers.”
Tariffs are, of course, in the news again as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to impose 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada on “day one” after his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration as well as an additional 10% tariff on China. However, Trump has not mentioned increasing tariffs on India since his re-election, and he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have close ties.
Although Virginia ships turkey and other poultry products all over the world, including Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada and Mexico, entering the Indian market is “a big deal,” Bauhan said. “The turkey industry is a significant part of Virginia agriculture, directly employing about 4,000 people.”
Bauhan declined to speculate on the impact of new U.S. tariffs on Virginia’s poultry industry or the tightening of immigration regulations (including the likelihood of some immigrants being deported under the Trump administration), but he noted that Virginia’s poultry industry employs “a diversity of workers,” including many immigrants.
“We were one of the early industries to adopt E-Verify,” the federal platform that determines whether a person is able to be legally employed in the United States, Bauhan said. “We’ll continue to do that. Our economy needs immigrants, but we need to have reforms and pass federal legislation that will secure the borders and allow for legal immigration. The system has not been overhauled and addressed in many decades.”
The U.S. Department of Labor is investigating allegations of child labor violations at the Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms poultry plants in Accomack County, after The New York Times recounted the story of a 14-year-old Guatemalan boy who was gravely injured while cleaning a Perdue slaughterhouse.
Marcos Cux, whose arm was permanently crippled in a February 2022 conveyor belt incident at an Accomack plant, worked for a contractor hired by Perdue that employed migrant children as young as 13 to clean “blood, grease and feathers from industrial machines,” often using acid and pressure hoses, according to the newspaper’s report. It appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to hold companies liable for child labor violations by a subcontractor. Two cleaning contractors also are under investigation, according to the Times.
After the story was published Sept. 22, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division opened inquiries into Tyson and Perdue, a DOL spokesperson confirmed: “No additional details can be provided as the investigations are ongoing.”
The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry said it is unable to discuss ongoing child labor investigations, but added the department “is concerned about the safety of all workers, including youth workers, throughout the commonwealth and [is]troubled by the alleged behavior.”
Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation, a nonprofit trade association representing the industry, says that the state’s poultry plants in the Eastern Shore and the Shenandoah Valley are “early adopters” of the federal E-Verify system, which allows employers to confirm their employees’ eligibility to work in the United States.
The Times story, however, reports that underage workers often use faked documents to appear older. That’s “a challenge,” Bauhan says, and the poultry industry “is not immune from the possibility of someone using false documentation to try and get through. We as an industry do not condone false eligibility.”
Further, Bauhan says that “it’s incumbent upon the federal government” to address problems with the U.S. immigration system, particularly when children come to the country unaccompanied by parents and are under pressure to send money home.
Perdue issued a statement, saying that it was conducting a “third-party audit of child labor prevention and protection procedures, including a compliance audit of contractors and identity fraud review,” and would cooperate fully with the government. A Tyson spokesperson said in October the company had no comment.
Prompted by shifts in consumer buying trends, Shenandoah Valley farmers are investing heavily in automated systems and cutting-edge growing processes to position themselves for the long haul in an industry that’s changing rapidly.
Once dubbed the “breadbasket of the South” because of its bountiful wheat crops, Virginia’s northwestern region has remained an agricultural powerhouse. But what that looks like, in real terms, is far different today than in years past, and is certain to evolve even more in the years ahead.
“Agriculture is one of those businesses that’s about to undergo a huge transformation,” says Matthew Ryan, the Harvard-educated CEO of Soli Organic, a Harrisonburg-based indoor vertical farming company. “We’re very much a part of the new way of doing things.”
Grocery shoppers are increasingly seeking more organic and fresh options. And going forward, producers will need a more educated workforce to manage sophisticated systems to produce and deliver those goods, Ryan says. “This is not just putting a hoe in the ground anymore.”
Across the country, large-scale farming has become highly automated. Advances in machinery and technology are allowing farmers to spend less on human labor and generate their products more efficiently. The upfront cost is often steep but deemed necessary to keep pace with consumer expectations. This shift is evident throughout the rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley.
Soli Organic, formerly Shenandoah Growers Inc., uses indoor, soil-based farming techniques — with carefully controlled temperature and lighting — to produce organic herbs and greens for sale in more than 20,000 grocery stores across the nation.
In addition to its headquarters in Harrisonburg, Soli Organic has indoor farming operations in Culpeper. Together, the Virginia sites produce 75% of the potted herbs distributed by the companies, Ryan says, and Soli Organic holds a 50% market share in potted herbs nationally.
While Soli Organic has been actively expanding its national footprint with the help of $125 million in venture funding it secured last fall, the Shenandoah Valley is “very much a part of our past, present and future,” Ryan says. “We are in the logistics business. …Virginia has a great location near population centers on the Eastern Seaboard, and you can reach the Midwest from here, too.”
The region’s longstanding infrastructure supporting agricultural production is also a plus. “It works as an ecosystem, and that’s to our advantage,” Ryan says.
New models
Growers such as Soli Organic aren’t the only ones employing new systems to be competitive. Poultry and dairy farmers, also mainstays in the Shenandoah Valley, are doing the same.
When people ask how many entrepreneurs are in the region, Jay Langston, executive director of the Shenandoah Valley Partnership, tells them, “We have 400-plus, and they’re called farmers.”
Langston applauds the advances made in the valley’s farming industry and credits the agricultural infrastructure with attracting other food and beverage operations, such as Hershey and Molson Coors, to take advantage of regional distribution systems already in place.
The valley is home to four of the state’s five largest agriculture-producing counties. Rockingham, Augusta, Page and Shenandoah counties are the leaders of the region’s agricultural base, producing more than $1.3 billion annually in commodities sold, according to the 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census. In Rockingham alone, more than 13,000 jobs are related to agriculture.
“It’s very easily still the largest of our sectors,” Langston says. While manufacturing employs more people, many of those operations are linked to agriculture as well.
The agricultural base, with its storage and distribution options, laid the groundwork for the valley’s later development, he says. “We are trying to put a little more focus on the agricultural sector and all of these underlying, supporting sectors,” Langston adds. “I think we have taken it for granted to some extent.”
One of the biggest challenges for area farms is finding workers, he says. Family members often pick up where previous generations left off, but adding employees outside of the family can be difficult, Langston says. In many cases, farmers are forming partnerships with each other and finding ways to work smarter with their existing resources.
For instance, Harrisonburg-based Farmer Focus, formerly Shenandoah Valley Organic, emerged from its founder’s nagging worries over the future of his family poultry farm. Corwin Heatwole, a sixth-generation farmer, says he and his family were like many others in the business. “Our farm was our favorite place to be,” he says, but he was constantly mulling over an exit plan because the business wasn’t looking like a viable way to support future generations.
“That’s what inspired Farmer Focus,” which employs a partnership model that allows organic poultry farmers to own their own chickens, Heatwole says, with Farmer Focus handling processing, packaging and sales. Nearly 100 regional farmers partner with Farmer Focus, and more than 130 are on the waiting list. Farmer Focus products are sold in more than 3,100 stores along the East Coast and in the Midwest, including Publix, Kroger, Harris Teeter and Whole Foods.
The company this year embarked on a $17.8 million expansion of its Harrisonburg processing plant, aided by a $3.6 million United States Department of Agriculture grant. With the implementation of a new breast deboning process rolling out this fall, the company expects to add more partner farms and increase processing from about 400,000 chickens a week to 650,000, Heatwole says. Farmer Focus has grown to more than 700 employees since it was founded in 2014.
Sixth-generation Harrisonburg farmer Corwin Heatwole and his family run Farmer Focus, a poultry business that partners with nearly 100 regional farms to supply products to more than 3,100 grocery stores along the East Coast and in the Midwest. (Pictured L to R: Heatwole and daughter Aleah; wife, Amy; daughter Sierra; and son, Colton.) Photo courtesy Farmer Focus
The company’s partner farms, all of which must be certified organic, non-GMO and humane, are seeing higher profits, he says. “Everyone wins because there’s a higher quality product as a result.”
It was the right time for a new poultry farming model, Heatwole says. “We see this next generation … that is more open to these practices than maybe their parents or grandparents were.”
It makes sense that farmers in the Shenandoah Valley, with their breadth of experience, are leading the way with new entrepreneurial approaches to agriculture, he says. “I couldn’t think of a better location … to build this out.”
Ripple effects
In addition to its strong farming presence, the Shenandoah Valley is also home to a multitude of offshoot businesses that handle agricultural processing, packaging and distribution. This agribusiness sector also is expanding.
Warehouse and logistics company InterChange Group, for instance, is building out a cold storage facility in phases that could be as big as 600,000 square feet upon completion. With its initial phases opened in 2019, the Mount Crawford facility, just south of Harrisonburg off Interstate 81, is designed to serve the area’s growing food and beverage industries. InterChange also built a $40 million frozen fruit and vegetable processing and distribution facility in Front Royal in a partnership with Canadian supplier Nature’s Touch Frozen Foods.
InterChange President Devon Anders expects this type of project to continue in the region due to its growing agricultural and food/beverage industries as well as the tightened restrictions around food safety.
“One of the major reasons we got into cold storage was increasing food safety standards,” Anders says. “The conditions upon which you store and process food have tightened up a lot.” As a result, InterChange has invested in equipment to handle “blast freezing” and related services to meet these new demands.
Similar to InterChange’s foray into cold storage, Weyers Cave-based Houff Corp. has found ways to grow that don’t have much to do with the company’s start as a family farm that branched into selling liquid fertilizer to other area farms. Today, the company provides fertilizer, seed and other agricultural services, as well as industrial services such as shipping and logistics.
“Our business is diverse, and we do a lot of work for industrial clients,” says Neil Houff, president of Houff Corp. and a board memberof the Virginia Board of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
He describes the valley’s agricultural industry as “evolving” in response tochanges in consumer expectations and buying patterns. Some traditional, smaller mom-and-pop farms are disappearing while many large, commercial farms are expanding. For example, “There is a trend for those that remain [in dairy production] to get larger.”
But farms serving niche markets with products like high-end produce are also thriving, even if they’re on the smaller side, he says.
“It’s consumer-driven,” Houff says, adding that he’s also seeing “a continued slow shift from animal production to grain production.”
While the products and the players may continue to change, Houff believes the Shenandoah Valley will continue to grow in terms of food and beverage production. “The valley has always been very attractive to the food industry, and I think we remain very attractive,” he says.
Hershey Chocolate of Virginia, for instance, employs about 1,500 people at its Stuarts Draft plant. And Molson Coors Beverage runs its U.S. brewery in Elkton with 530 employees. Arizona-based dairy company Shamrock Farms opened a production facility in Verona in 2014 and a few years later invested more than $40 million to double the capacity at the plant, which sources milk from Virginia farmers. McKee Foods operates a bakery in Stuarts Draft, and international food company Cargill employs about 1,400 people in Rockingham County. The list goes on.
And in terms of farming, Houff is amazed at the industry’s modernization. He recently told his 96-year-old father the wheat production numbers of his nephew’s farm. “He just shook his head. … He couldn’t believe it. … There is a continued drive to perfection in the production of agriculture,” Houff says.
“I’ve been in this 37 years … and each generation takes it further.”
And between industry advancements and the proliferation of support services in the region, Houff and others expect that agriculture will continue to be a primary economic engine for the Shenandoah Valley for generations to come.
“I don’t see it changing,” Langston says.
Shenandoah Valley at a glance
Settled in the 1700s, the Shenandoah Valley lies between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, bisected by Interstate 81. The region includes Augusta, Bath, Highland, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, Page and Frederick counties, as well as the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton, Lexington, Waynesboro and Winchester. Agriculture remains a key industry for the region, once known as the breadbasket of the South. Home to the Port of Virginia’s Virginia Inland Port in Front Royal, the valley has numerous logistics and food and beverage industries. It’s also a hub for higher education, including James Madison University, Mary Baldwin University, Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University.
Population
373,472 (2021)
Top employers
James Madison University
Sentara Health
Augusta Health
Valley Health
Hershey Chocolate of Virginia
Cargill
Major attractions
The Shenandoah Valley is home to natural attractions such as Shenandoah National Park, the George Washington and Jefferson national forests, Natural Bridge and Luray Caverns. The region is also known for wineries and breweries, with the Shenandoah Beerwerks Trail and the Shenandoah Spirits Trail. Historical and cultural attractions include the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse.
Top convention hotels
The Omni Homestead Resort (Hot Springs) 483 rooms, 72,000 square feet
of event space
Hotel Madison (Harrisonburg)
230 rooms, 21,000 square feet
of event space
Hotel 24 South (Staunton) 124 rooms, 8,500 square feet
of event space
Best Western Plus Waynesboro Inn
& Suites Conference Center 75 rooms, 5,500 square feet
of event space
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Blackburn Inn and
Conference Center (Staunton)
49 rooms, 8,400 square feet
of event space
The Mimslyn Inn (Luray)
45 rooms, nearly 5,000 square feet
of event space
The Georges (Lexington)
33 guest rooms, 1,700 square feet
of event space
Notable restaurants
Local Chop & Grill House (Harrisonburg) American, localchops.com
The Shack (Staunton)
New American, theshackva.com
The Joshua Wilton House (Harrisonburg)
American, joshuawilton.com
The Red Hen (Lexington)
Farm to table, redhenlex.com
Harrisonburg-based Farmer Focus is undertaking a $17.8 million expansion to boost capacity at its 78,000-square foot processing facility on Acorn Drive.
The organic poultry producer, which marked its ninth anniversary in March, announced in February that it was the recipient of a $3.6 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP), which will go toward the cost of the expansion.
“We will start later this year,” says Farmer Focus “founding farmer” and CEO Corwin Heatwole. “Timing could fluctuate a little bit. … But we should have that up and running by early next year. And that’s when we would start staffing.”
Farmer Focus expects to hire about 300 people as part of the expansion, which will increase the size of its deboning department and provide more space for its wastewater pretreatment operation.
The plant currently processes about 335,000 chickens per week, and the expansion, which includes a full second shift of workers, will allow the company to increase output to approximately 630,000 chickens. But the increase in staff isn’t limited to the production aspects of the business.
“The creation of the new jobs will coincide with the completion of the expansion project and will be a mix of production, maintenance and supervisory roles,” according to a statement from Liz Fuchs, Farmer Focus’ chief people officer.
When U.S. Sen. Mark Warner toured the plant in April 2022, he applauded the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
And Heatwole says those efforts will continue with the expansion: “Our efforts around diversity and inclusion … have been ongoing. This expansion just allows us to impact those more.”
According to Fuchs, Farmer Focus’ workforce has about the same number of men and women, with 78% of those employees from various racial and ethnic minorities.
Brian Shull, Harrisonburg’s economic development director, watched Farmer Focus grow over nine years from an entrepreneur’s idea into a company that employs more than 800 people.
“They’re one of our top 10 employers in Harrisonburg,” Shull says. “It’s a very, very positive economic impact for us. It certainly strengthens our already strong food and beverage sector throughout the Shenandoah Valley. So, whenever we have continued expansion, that helps that cluster get even stronger.”
For almost a year, Virginia poultry farms managed to avoid the nation’s worst-ever avian flu outbreak, but in January, the virus struck a commercial turkey operation in Rockingham County, prompting the killings of 25,300 birds.
Five days later, 10,700 more turkeys were euthanized in Rockingham, and in February, 800 birds at an Alexandria live market were killed to stop the flu’s spread.
These numbers are small, considering that 58.6 million birds nationwide have died from the flu as of mid-March. But even a small outbreak is a big deal in Rockingham, where federal mandates required the 150 to 200 poultry facilities within 10 kilometers of the infected flock to quarantine and test their birds.
In 2021, Virginia poultry farmers produced 14.5 million turkeys. The state produced 284.5 million broiler chickens that year, too. So, avian flu “is definitely very significant to the business,” says Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesman Michael Wallace.
A 2002 flu bout led to the culling of more than 4.7 million birds in Virginia, costing the poultry industry $130 million. Egg and turkey prices have escalated in the past year, partly due to the flu.
The illness can be brought into poultry farms when wild birds like waterfowl or bald eagles mix with a domesticated flock, or by poultry workers stepping in wild bird droppings, Wallace notes.
Dr. Charles Broaddus, the state veterinarian, says the number of migratory birds flying through Virginia is causing the disease’s spread here — although the flu makes chickens and domestic turkeys visibly sick quickly, vultures and eagles can carry the virus with few, if any, symptoms. The good news is that migration is expected to taper off in mid-April, Broaddus says, and this avian flu strain hasn’t affected humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that as long as poultry or eggs are cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees, they’re safe to eat.
Once a farm has a confirmed infection, it can take several months to disinfect all areas so it’s safe to bring birds back, Broaddus notes, although the smaller live market in Alexandria was back in business in three days after cleaning and disinfecting.
“With biosecurity, there’s always room for improvement, and farmers are doing a good job at that,” he says, although with the virus thriving among wild birds, it is hard to combat.
Harrisonburg-based Farmer Focus is planning a $17.8 million expansion that will create 300 jobs and double its processing capacity, the organic poultry producer announced this week.
Part of that expansion will be paid for with a $3.6 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP). U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced the grant at a visit to Farmer Focus’ headquarters on Tuesday.
The expansion will “enable Farmer Focus to welcome more family farmers into its farming family” and create 300 jobs over the next two years, according to a news release. Farmer Focus plans to expand its organic chicken processing facility in Harrisonburg. Operating since 2014, the plant processes 335,000 chickens per week, but demand has grown and the expansion will allow the company to process 630,000 chickens per week.
The creation of the new jobs will coincide with the completion of the expansion project and will be a mix of production, maintenance and supervisory roles, according to Liz Fuchs, Farmer Focus’ chief people officer. A completion date for the expansion has not been set, and the expansion won’t physically change the size of the facility.
“The programs and money the Biden-Harris administration is committing can make a huge difference in providing opportunities to independent processors like Farmer Focus so we can build a more competitive meat industry and strong generational family farms while providing our consumers with the highest quality organic and humane certified chicken,” Farmer Focus Founding Farmer and CEO Corwin Heatwole said in a statement.
“Just a little over a year ago, I was invited to a White House Round Table where I had the unique opportunity to share my thoughts directly with President [Joe] Biden and Secretary Vilsack on ways to increase competition within the meat industry,” Heatwole added. “The MPPEP proves that our leaders in Washington are listening closely to the farming community, and are following through on their commitment to improve the lives and livelihood of America’s farmers and the resiliency of our food system.”
The program provides grants to help eligible processors expand their capacity, according to the USDA.
In a statement, Vilsack said, “The Biden-Harris Administration and USDA are taking action to advance a sustainable vision of agriculture that prioritizes the needs of our resilient producers and small businesses, strengthens our food supply chain and brings value back to rural people and places.”
With this second round of MPPEP grants, the USDA doled out $59 million to five U.S. companies, including Farmer Focus, the only Virginia-based grant recipient. Farmer Focus will make improvements to alleviate bottlenecks in processing and offset costs associated with equipment purchases, new conveyor lines, building and site modifications and a new wastewater treatment system, according to the USDA.
Founded in 2014 and formerly known as Shenandoah Valley Organic, Farmer Focus sells organic poultry raised as free-ranging on humane-certified farms. In February 2022, Farmer Focus opened a 78,000-square-foot packaging facility in Harrisonburg, increasing production capacity and expanding Farmer Focus’ workforce.
Farmer Focus’ products are now distributed in more than 4,000 stores, including the East Coast and the Midwest, in retail grocery chains such as Publix Super Markets Inc., Harris Teeter and Safeway Inc.
Harrisonburg-based organic poultry producer Farmer Focus announced leadership changes Tuesday, including tapping a new president and chief operating officer as well as a new chief commercial officer.
Stephen J. Shepard is the company’s new president and COO, a promotion from executive vice president of operations, a position he has held since April. In his new role, he will focus on increasing production capacity while reducing the company’s greenhouse gas footprint and championing environmental sustainability, according to a news release from Farmer Focus. He replaces Erik Vaughan, who had been president and COO since 2017.
Kathryn Tuttle Photo courtesy Farmer Focus
Kathryn Tuttle has been promoted from chief marketing officer, the position she’d held since 2020, to the newly created position of chief commercial officer. In her expanded role, she will oversee sales, marketing and new product innovation.
“The promotion of Stephen and Kathryn furthers our mission to promote and protect generational farming while prioritizing animal welfare and growing the organic category as a whole,” Farmer Focus Founding Farmer and CEO Corwin Heatwole said in a statement. “We are excited to continue developing our team, and leveraging their experience to grow our business and network of family farmers.”
Founded in 2014 and formerly known as Shenandoah Valley Organic, Farmer Focus sells organic poultry raised as free-ranging on humane-certified farms. It has partnered with 78 independent chicken farmers and has more than 130 on its waiting list. In February, Farmer Focus opened a 78,000-square-foot packaging facility in Harrisonburg, which increased production capacity and expanded Farmer Focus’ 700-person-plus workforce.
The organic chicken producer has expanded its product line into Publix Super Markets Inc. and now has a partnership with Safeway Inc. in the mid-Atlantic region, according to a news release. It added 750 retail locations in the fourth quarter of 2022, making its chicken available in more than 3,100 stores throughout the East Coast and Midwest.
In September 2021, Farmer Focus hired a new chief financial officer and a research and development head.
In August 2021, Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world’s largest food companies, announced it will invest $300 million to establish a 325,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Pittsylvania County, creating 376 full-time jobs.
Just two months later, Tyson broke ground on the project at Cane Creek Centre, an industrial park just outside Danville that’s jointly owned by the city and Pittsylvania.
“This project represents the largest investment made by a single manufacturer within our community in over 30 years,” says Corrie Bobe, Danville’s economic development director.
Construction crews began work on the plant in December 2021, with completion scheduled in early 2023.
“This project is exciting,” says Linda Green, executive director of the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance. “Tyson is a well-known name. It’s been in Virginia for decades.”
Tyson has had a footprint in Virginia for more than 50 years and employs more than 2,000 people across the state in its hatchery, grain and processing operations in Glen Allen and on the Eastern Shore.
The new facility will be one of the company’s “most automated facilities,” Green adds. “They have increased the use of robotics and automation because of our workforce.”
The process to bring Tyson in lasted up to nine months, which is not “very long in the economic development world,” says Matt Rowe, economic development director for Pittsylvania County. “We were competing against a pretty large geographic area.”
The key driver in Tyson’s decision to locate to Southern Virginia was the region’s investment in a robust workforce training program that includes training in skills such as mechatronics and robotics.
“In fact, the company adjusted its model for this facility, adding more robotics and automation, based on the technical skills developed within our training programs,” Bobe says.
The company also secured grants from the state, including $3 million from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund and $3 million more from the Virginia Investment Performance Grant for creating jobs. The state’s Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission also approved $1.5 million for the facility, plus other incentives from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program and the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit.
Danville Community College and Pittsylvania Career and Technology Center are partnering with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership’s Talent Accelerator Program to provide workforce training, a real plus for the region, Rowe adds.
“Tyson viewed us as a community, but one where they could put their dream plant with all the automation and new technology they wanted. We are training people in that so they could implement new technology,” he says.
The facility will be used primarily for the production of fully cooked Tyson-branded foods, including chicken nuggets and items from its Any’tizer Snacks line.
The company plans to buy 60 million pounds of Virginia-grown chicken during the next three years, and it will complement other companies in the rapidly growing food products sector in Danville and Pittsylvania.
The Tyson facility will be directly across from the Aerofarms indoor vertical grow facility, which will produce leafy greens, and slightly more than a mile from Litehouse Inc., producer of salad dressings, herbs and cheeses, and Buitoni Foods, a maker of refrigerated pasta and sauces.
“For me, Tyson’s commitment to the communities they are in is important. Because of the company’s commitment to its employees, it felt like it was a good fit for the kind of company you want to bring into the community,” Green says. “Because they use Virginia products in their own products, it will be a wonderful tie between agriculture and manufacturing.”
“We’ve had operations in Glen Allen and Temperanceville for decades and look forward to growing our relationships with our newest investment in the commonwealth of Virginia,” David Bray, Tyson’s group president of poultry, said in a statement.
“We are building this state-of-the-art facility to help us meet growing demand for our fully-cooked products from customers and consumers. We started as a small family business selling chicken, and today we work hard to give the community a great place to come to work and provide for their own families.”
Minnesota-based TFC Poultry LLC will invest $31.5 million to establish its second U.S. production facility in Winchester, a project expected to create 111 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday.
“Virginia’s strong agriculture sector continues to play a critical role in the success of our booming economy,” Northam said in a statement. “We are pleased the company has chosen to establish its first East Coast facility right here in Virginia, and we look forward to all of its success in the future.”
The company will move into the former Sunshine’s Pride Dairy Inc. facility, which closed in 2011, where TFC will specialize in deboning turkey thigh meat for sale to food manufacturers. The 100,000-square-foot plant is located at 801 N. Kent St.
Brothers Darrin and Trent Froemming founded TFC Poultry in 2008 after they bought and remodeled a shuttered poultry plant in Ashby, Minnesota. The company debones turkey thighs using proprietary technology and X-ray and metal detection. TFC Poultry has seen an increased demand for its products because of an increased domestic demand for dark meat, according to a news release.
“The company narrowed to this region due to the great access it offers to the I-81 corridor and to some of our key customers and suppliers,” TFC Poultry CEO Darrin Froemming said in a statement. “We specifically chose Winchester due to two primary factors: The first was the availability of all ranges of talent and that talent’s proximity to the new location, and the second reason was the embracing of progress the city demonstrated to the company throughout its due diligence stage. No other community held such an aggressive, yet genuinely welcoming reception.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the city of Winchester and the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to secure the project, for which Virginia competed with West Virginia. Northam approved a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund and a $400,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund for Winchester. TFC Poultry is eligible to receive state benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.
The Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a workforce initiative created by the VEDP and Virginia Community College System, will provide customizable recruitment and training services at no cost to the company.
To get a turkey on your Thanksgiving table this year, you may have to plan ahead. And even so, ham, pork tenderloin, chicken or even tofurkey might have to fill in as substitutes.
Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods, the Richmond-based prepared food business spun off from the former regional grocery store chain, informed its customers Tuesday that it won’t be able to fill pre-cooked turkey orders for Thanksgiving this year.
The company put in an order for 2,000 turkeys from Butterball and received a notice that the order was canceled due to an operations situation, Robert S. “Bobby” Ukrop, chairman and CEO of Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods LLC, told Virginia Business.
Supply chain issues that started during the COVID-19 pandemic have been exacerbated by several factors, including a national labor shortage and shipping slowdowns, and are likely to continue impacting businesses throughout the holidays, economists and logistics experts say. Last month, the Consumer Price Index rose 5.4 percent compared with September 2020, driven in part by shortages in consumer goods.
The supply chain issue spurred action from President Joe Biden, who announced Wednesday that the Port of Los Angeles would begin operating around the clock in an effort to address a backlog caused by a variety of factors, including trucking labor shortages. Biden also said that major shipping companies and retailers, including UPS, FedEx and Walmart, would be increasing work hours to address problems in ports, factories and shipping lanes that have helped produce shortages, long delivery times and rapid price increases for food, televisions, automobiles and much more, The New York Times reported.
Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods CEO Bobby Ukrop
In an Oct. 12 Facebook post and marketing email, Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods wrote that its supplier cited “the same concerns that just about everyone is experiencing: ingredient, packaging, transportation, and labor shortages.” Instead, the business is urging its customers to order hams and side dishes.
Ukrop says the company has ordered more ham this year: “The pandemic has caused us to expect the unexpected, and surprise is a part of the program.”
Ukrop’s started offering holiday dinner packages in the early 1990s, Ukrop said, and it built momentum.
Last year, the pandemic really shook things up, creating major demand for the pre-made Thanksgiving meals. Ukrop’s filled 2,400 meal order over four days.
“It was like a Chick-fil-A drive-thru on steroids,” Ukrop recalled.
Last year, with a full, expansive catering menu, customers ordered more than 10,000 items, Ukrop said, but this year, the company wanted to only put things on the menu that they were confident they could get.
Due to issues with sourcing ingredients and packaging, Ukrop’s made a decision to reduce its offerings this holiday season, scaling its usual holiday catering menu back to 34 items. For example, London broil, a dish usually offered through the company’s catering service, won’t be available this year. Chicken salad and tuna salad are likewise off the list. Customer favorites such as deviled eggs, ham biscuits and country ham cheese balls still remain, though.
“It’s very frustrating for us because we hate to disappoint people,” Ukrop said. “We place a very high value on not over-promising. We want to deliver on what we say. That’s the way we’ve always done business.”
Despite the supply chain difficulties Ukrop’s encountered, Hobey Bauhan, president of the Virginia Poultry Federation, says consumers shouldn’t panic about whether they’ll be able to get a turkey this year. “It’s not a widespread shortage,” Bauhan said Tuesday. “Supplies are tight, but if people plan ahead, they should be able to get the turkey products of their choice this Thanksgiving.”
Nevertheless, with supply chain problems looming, markets around the commonwealth are preparing for the possibility of shortages of holiday basics and are building up inventory in advance of Thanksgiving and Christmas. A smaller grocer and a butcher contacted for this story declined to comment on the record, worried they could spook customers from buying at their stores.
Ukrop said his company expects to sell more hams this year since it can’t offer pre-cooked turkeys. Last year, the company sold about 400 hams a la carte. Getting hams seems to be less of a challenge, he said, and the company’s pared-down catering menu still represents 80% of what people want on their tables this holiday season, Ukrop said.
Bauhan said that “[poultry] operations in Virginia that are supplying turkeys are cranking. They’re producing and distributing fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving. I’m not getting any indication from them that there is a significant shortage of turkeys.”
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues impacting the distribution of turkeys to stores, Bauhan said. “There’s upward pressure on a lot of inputs across our sector, from feed, which is 70% of the cost of producing poultry, [to] labor costs, transportation and packaging [costs].” Feed costs are going up, and just like many other industries, poultry plants also are experiencing staffing shortages.
Packaging is one of the issues Ukrop’s is encountering, too. A shortage of lids and eight-ounce containers has impacted the company’s menu.
Erika Marsillac, an associate professor of maritime and supply chain management at Old Dominion University, said several factors are impacting the food supply chain. “A retail order can be canceled because suppliers anticipate they will be unable to deliver the order at the right time or they find another customer that is willing to pay more,” Marsillac said. “Across all food supply chains, we are seeing food inflation and canceled shipments from supply chain disruptions.”
Balance of power
In the poultry industry, the “workforce was tight before the pandemic hit and now it’s pretty significant,” Bauhan said.
Virginia’s poultry industry is largely centered in the Shenandoah Valley, with other major operations in the Richmond region and on the Eastern Shore. All are facing labor challenges, but it’s hard to say what a normal year would look like, Bauhan said.
“Last year was unique,” Marsillac noted. “With many families socially distancing over 2020, smaller birds were preferred for holiday meals. Most retailers are now estimating that family holiday gatherings will be bigger this year, but those estimates may have arrived too late to change the decisions that were already happening in spring.”
When looking at commercial customers, smaller businesses such as Ukrop’s may lose out to larger ones, like the Walmarts of the world.
“In general, smaller supply chain partners have less ‘power’ or influence in the supply chain,” Marsillac said. “Assuming there are a limited number of turkeys available, suppliers may be forced to make a tradeoff decision to cancel some orders for smaller retail chains in order to be able to fulfill the orders for larger retail chains.”
Much planning is done well before Thanksgiving. One market said they place their order for the next year’s Thanksgiving a year out.
“The poultry industry has a significant lead time, forecasting in as early as late spring what size turkeys will be needed for the holidays,” Marsillac said. “The farmers need to make decisions about volume, sizing and breeding or acquiring the chicks. Once acquired or hatched, the turkeys take more than three months to grow to the right size for processing, and then you must add the supply chain time from processing to getting the turkeys to the grocery store shelves.”
Marsillac suggested that consumers seek locally-sourced options for turkeys and other holiday meats and plan ahead.
“Without trying to feed into any panic buying, I’d suggest consumers buy their preferred holiday protein when they see it available and store it until the holidays or speak with their local butcher or farmer now about the possibility of getting locally sourced holiday protein closer to then.”
Ukrop said companies all over the world are having to make hard decisions every day. And the situation is fluid.
“The various decisions that companies are making all over the world … everybody’s trying to do the right thing. There are just so many unanswered questions and so many decision points where things can get sideways in the supply chain, and I think everybody is trying hard, as best they can,” he said. “It’s just a crazy situation. …. The problem is, the rubber band gets stretched so thin, to an extreme, so the fact that our supply chain is probably very, very efficient in a normal situation, it can’t withstand all the disruptions that we have. It’s a good learning [experience], I guess, we have, for having a certain amount of safety stock and not having a system so tightly wound that when things go sideways, they really get messed up.”
Virginia Business Deputy Editor Kate Andrews and Assistant Editor Katherine Schulte contributed to this report.
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