COVID-19 disrupted the industry from the beginning and it has still not fully recovered, he outlined in an interview with Robert Williams of the Waterloo Region Record.
When the pandemic first hit Ontario, turkey sales from deli departments instantly dried up. Then at Thanksgiving family dinners were for fewer people and demand shifted to smaller-size birds.
“The pandemic really just threw a monkey wrench into our food service and it flip-flopped our whole market,” Ricker said.
“For the last 30 years we’ve been transitioning people from eating whole birds to eating turkey parts.
“But when the pandemic hit and people started eating at home, they wanted whole birds again,” he said.
Farmers and processors met to ponder the situation in November, 2020, and decided to scale back production.
“It’s really a guessing game and it’s looking like we should have probably guessed a little bit higher for this control period, but COVID has just been very unpredictable,” he said.
He expects the industry leaders, when they meet to consider storage stocks in January, will decide to resume higher production volumes.
Those decisions are made at the national level by Turkey Farmers of Canada, then Ontario is allocated its share, which is about 40 per cent.
