We announced in a newsletter last week that we have started taking orders for pastured chicken by subscription for 2012. If you are like me, it may be difficult to estimate ahead of time how much chicken to buy for a whole year. I went searching around the web for consumption statistics, and I found this interesting graph:
Holy hockey stick, Batman! Look at that chicken trend! If you extrapolate from this picture, we’ll all be eating 500 pounds of chicken per year in no time!
So what is the answer for how many chickens the average family buys today? It’s complicated. Of the 60 pounds of chicken meat (not counting bones) consumed per person, 48% is sold through restaurants. So on average, we eat 35 pounds boneless or about 12 chickens per person at home.
My family of four bought 40 chickens last summer (2 subscriptons). It is February, and they are all gone. It looks like we are ahead of the curve.
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