Americans Are Devouring Organic Chickens as Sales Rise

  • Sales of organic broilers jumped 78% last year, USDA reports
  • Organic market grows to $7.6 billion, with acreage on the rise

Chickens at a certified organic family run farm, in Sheffield, Illinois, U.S.

Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Americans have a seemingly insatiable hunger for organic chickens. That’s helping to drive growth in the booming specialty industry for farm products.

U.S. producers sold $750 million of organic chickens last year, surging 78 percent from 2015, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That makes chicken meat the third-largest agricultural commodity, trailing milk at $1.4 billion and eggs at $816 million.