Wholesale spot bulk leg quarters have come off a nominal all-time high of just over $0.60 a pound, reached at the beginning of summer on USDA data, to around $0.52 to $0.54 more recently. LEAP Market Analytics expects them to hold in the mid-to-upper $0.40s through fall and winter before recovering, and to turn in a similar performance next year to this one.
The demand picture behind that is less comfortable than it was. Strong protein demand carried several years of supply growth, and that balance has now shifted, with demand the side struggling to keep up. Dark meat has held up better than most of the complex: leg quarters sit on much firmer footing than in the mid-to-late 2010s or the early 2020s, though LEAP reads the recent cyclical upswing in leg quarter demand as losing steam and entering a plateau. Consumers are pulling back from high fuel prices following the US-Iran conflict, after already turning defensive on beef prices, so a flight to value should lend residual support to dark meat. The wider macroeconomic pressure still makes an overly bullish view hard to hold. Bone-in thighs are starting to look attractive on a relative basis.
The export program leans on four small buyers
Broiler exports reached 555 million pounds in July, ahead of expectations though still 0.4% below the same month last year, taking January to July shipments to 3.78 billion pounds, 0.5% up on the 2025 pace. The composition is the unusual part. Shipments to each of the top five destinations declined from last year, and the volume was made up by smaller and normally less consequential partners: Angola, Ghana, Vietnam and Haiti have each lifted purchases of US broiler meat by 30% or more this year.
Even with shipments ahead, exports are not keeping pace with production. They accounted for 12.8% of domestic ready-to-cook broiler production in the second quarter, the smallest export share in exactly 22 years, which makes the export program a net positive for domestic availability this year. Per capita availability is projected 2.0% higher than last year in the third quarter and 2.4% higher in the fourth, for an annual increase of 3.3% to 75.4 pounds on a boneless weight basis. LEAP expects that to flatten next year with an increase of up to 0.5%, as production growth moderates into 2027. The combined per capita supply of beef, pork, chicken and turkey is already record large and looks set to stay heavy through next year.
LEAP remains skeptical about the export program delivering a standout performance any time soon, but given the mostly positive trajectory of global chicken demand, the relative affordability of US product and a sluggish dollar, continued modest growth into next year looks reasonable.
