Nationwide, egg shortages are causing empty supermarket shelves and busting consumers' breakfast budgets. As fears regarding food insecurity rise, local farmers and urban farming advocacy groups are seeing an uptick in interest for at-home chicken farming.
“We're hearing a lot of inquiries on the Facebook page, you know, people inquiring about whether or not they should get chickens because of the egg prices,” said Judy Choder, an urban poultry-keeper who keeps 15 chickens herself.
Choder helps run the organization Pittsburgh Pro-Poultry People, a group of urban poultry-keepers who work to inform, educate, and advocate for urban livestock. They also worked to help expand the City of Pittsburgh’s zoning requirements surrounding agriculture in 2010.
Today, residents of Pittsburgh must attain a few things before they begin keeping their own chickens. First, they must have a minimum lot size of 2,000 square feet, then apply for an occupancy permit, and finally, be able to afford the upfront costs like housing and chicken feed.
Even with these requirements, local farmer Jake Kristophel of Fallen Aspen Farm in Lawrence County says, chicken-keeping is still attainable.
“I think it's the easiest animal to take care of on the farm,” he said “And now that Pittsburgh is legally allowed to have chickens in your backyard, I don't see why everybody's keeping two or three chickens per household… I think that it's a really good thing, and it helps the food supply and everybody just be a little bit more self-sustainable.”
For residents unable to meet the requirements to keep chickens, or simply aren’t interested, Kristophel recommends looking locally to solve food shortages.
“It's better to be talking to your local farmer as opposed to depending so much on your grocery store and so much on these massive corporations and everything being shipped across the country.”
