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Chicken wings and the Super Bowl go together like Abbot and Costello, socks and shoes, and w(h)ine and cheese (that last one is mostly for Packer fans – but I digress). The National Chicken Council says when Americans get together to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, February 7, a lot of us will chow down on chicken wings. The good news is there will be plenty of wings available for everyone.

Tom Super is the Senior Vice President of Communications for the NCC, a 16-year-veteran of the position. He says America’s obsession with chicken wings and the Super Bowl has grown a lot in recent years. They are projecting Americans will scarf down a record 1.42 billion chicken wings to celebrate this year’s Big Game.

“That’s up two percent from last year,” he says, “and that’s despite the complications brought on by COVID-19. When we put together our recent chicken wing report for the Super Bowl, I thought for sure we’d see a decline in the number of wings Americans will eat.

“COVID has been very hard on restaurants,” Super said. “When talking to folks in the industry, when looking at the demand numbers, and when looking at the price of wings and all the other factors involved in consumption, they’ve never been a hotter product.”

Chicken wings had an advantage over a lot of other foods served at your local restaurants. Super points out that restaurants like wing joints and pizza places were built around takeout and delivery. When indoor dining was limited or shut down, those places didn’t have to change their business model as much as other establishments. They kept right on going with carryout and delivery orders while other restaurants completely shut down.

“Wings travel well, and they hold up during delivery conditions,” he said. “They also align with consumer desires for comfort food during COVID-19.”

Chicken farmers did a great job maintaining their production through 2020, and Super says there wasn’t much of a production drop-off compared to the previous year. There should be an adequate supply level to accommodate Super Bowl fans across the country.

So, let’s put some perspective on how many chicken wings make up that estimated 1.42 billion wings that we’ll eat on Super Bowl Sunday. In simple terms, that’s a lot of chicken.

“If you were to line them up end-to-end, it would circle the entire circumference of the Earth three times,” Super says. “If you laid them end-to-end from Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City to Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, they’d stretch back-and-forth 19 times.

“Let’s look at it another way,” he added. “Let’s assume that Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid could eat three wings in a minute – and yes, the actual number is probably higher – but if he ate three every minute, it would take him more than 900 years to eat 1.42 billion chicken wings.”

Some Americans are bone-in chicken wing eaters, while others prefer the boneless wings. What type of wings do the majority of football fans prefer?

America’s favorite sauce for our wings might not be what you think it is.

“We should let people know that there will not be a shortage of wings this year,” Super said. “Restaurants, food service, and retailers started pulling wings out of cold storage as far back as November to prepare for the big day.”

If there is a rush on chicken wings in the days and hours before Super Bowl Sunday, Super has this bit of advice: “Don’t wait till the last second,” he says. “That’s my advice.”

Bison ranching. The first thing that may come to mind is hundreds of Bison thundering down the prairie a long time ago. Did you know we raise bison on farms across the country? In fact, the U.S. has bison production in every state in the union. While it’s been a growing industry for many years, the impact of COVID-19 on raising Bison has been anything but positive.

“We’re a small segment of agriculture,” says Dave Carter, the Executive Director of the National Bison Association. “However, we’ve been growing for the last 15 years and turning into a strong and steady business. Most producers have been pretty profitable over that stretch.”

Here’s an interesting conversation about raising bison in the United States. It’s from a YouTube channel called Off-Farm Income

Bison is marketed in two locations, similar to the other major protein segments in U.S. agriculture. Those markets include the restaurant/foodservice sector and the retail sector. Carter said because bison processors tend to be smaller than their counterparts that process beef and pork, they often specialize in one market or the other.

“When COVID-19 hit and restaurants shut down, those processors serving the foodservice customers really took a hit,” he said. “Some have had to lay off up to 60 percent of their employees almost overnight. Those folks who saw restaurants shut down were suddenly scrambling and trying to adapt as retail demand went up.

Bison ranching — Dave Carter is the Executive Director of the National Bison Association. (Photo from the Business Journals)

“Herein lies the problem,” Carter added. “Most of the higher-end cuts like steaks go into the restaurant and foodservice sector. On the retail side, customers are going into stores to buy ground bison. When the higher-end cuts like tenderloins at $24 a pound aren’t selling while people are buying ground bison at $9 a pound, it has a significant financial impact.”

The prices that processors have paid to ranchers over the past month have dropped around 40 cents a pound, a significant price cut for a large animal like bison. Prices have been around $3.70 a pound. He admits while other livestock sectors would love to see that price, it’s still a significant drop for bison producers in just one month’s time.

The ranchers in the finishing segment of the bison industry are the ones being hit hardest because they’ve got animals that are ready to go and are having to hold onto them longer. Processors aren’t working as quickly as they normally would due to layoffs and illness. Animals that stay longer on the farm tend to gain more weight than is optimum and it adds more expense to the bottom line.

One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is getting enough feed because of what’s going on in the ethanol industry. “Distiller’s grains have been a big part of our feeding formula in bison ranching,” Carter said. “Because of the crisis in the ethanol industry, the price of distiller’s grains is going up significantly and the availability is going down.

“That means we now have ranchers who will get less for their animals when they deliver them to their processor,” he added, “but their feed costs are going up at the same time.”

He is thankful that none of the bison processing plants in the country have had to shut down entirely because of the outbreak. Unfortunately, a high number of workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and that’s made other employees hesitant to come to work. But Carter says those bison processors are doing a “great job” of caring for their workers through social distancing, through testing, and by providing Personal Protective Equipment,

Livestock producers in the pork sector have had to make the horrible decision to euthanize some of their animals as they don’t have anywhere to send their hogs for processing. Carter says the bison industry isn’t at the point yet.

“We still have enough supply chain capacity that our ranchers haven’t had to make that decision,” he said. “One reason for that is, unlike our friends in the cattle industry, we don’t have fall calving. Most of our calves are born between April and June, which meant they were weaned and already sent to other ranchers for finishing between November and February of last year.

“That means producers were already done selling their previous calf crop before COVID-19 showed up,” Carter added. “A lot of the ranchers that are feeding bison will probably turn some of their animals back out to pasture and let them graze on grass, so they don’t have the extra feed expense. We can hold them longer than a lot of other livestock, so we aren’t in danger of having to euthanize them in the near future.”

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Chicken Wings and the Super Bowl – we love them both

Bison ranching industry struggling through COVID-19