Poultry: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Chicken is the cheapest and fastest growing meat. Prices depend on feed costs, bird flu outbreaks and trade bans, and demand from households and restaurants. Birds grow in weeks, so supply adjusts quickly.
Market price World Bank Pink Sheet: Chicken $/kg · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026What its price moves with
Selected linkPoultry and Maize
Monthly changes 0.24 weak correlation 12-month changes 0.28 weak correlation Last 5 years 0.32 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Poultry ≈ 1.29 × (Maize)0.07 R² 0.02 On this fit, a 10% higher maize price goes with a 0.7% higher poultry price over the long run. Units: $/kg and $/mt. The fit is loose, so treat the function as a rough guide.Chart: Poultry and Maize prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Poultry price against Maize price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Maize is the main energy source in chicken feed, and feed is the largest cost of raising birds. Monthly moves correlate at 0.24, and at 0.32 in the last five years, when feed prices swung widely.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsSoybean meal is the main protein in poultry diets, so its price feeds into the cost of every bird. Monthly moves correlate at 0.18 and yearly moves at 0.26, a modest pass-through of feed costs.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsChicken and pork compete on price for the same shoppers, and both rely on the same feed grains. Monthly moves correlate at 0.27 and yearly moves at 0.44, the strongest link for chicken here.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsEgg and meat birds are separate flocks, but both suffer from bird flu. Culls send egg prices up sharply, while chicken prices react less, so the link is negative: monthly moves correlate at minus 0.23.
weak co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsMethionine and lysine are added to poultry feed to raise growth and reduce soybean meal use. Their price follows feed demand, but amino acids have no public price series here.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Heating sheds, running feed mills and chilled transport use diesel and power. The diesel proxy correlates with chicken at 0.13 for monthly moves and 0.36 for yearly moves, a slow pass-through of costs.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHow to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.