First of all I think this article was put together quite well, it was succinct had a great flow and was very easy to follow. The data was laid out to support the case; overall it was great to read.<p>Understanding a problem requires a holistic view of the larger system. An egg producer may say prices are higher Because supply is lower due to culling. Part of that statement is true. The author then zooms out to better understand the larger system.<p>The truth of a matter deviates significantly from one party’s assertions.<p>it’s scary to me that people lack the skills, the desire or incentives to understand and objectively seek understanding of what’s happening around us especially in highly charged US political landscape. This isn’t like pure scientific pursuit of knowledge but a more practical day to day ability to question, understand and gather new information with the purpose of developing an objective understanding of the world.
Generally correlates with my own view on the subject. After reading two USDA reports on the subject "Chickens and Eggs" [1] and "Egg Markets Overview" [2] it seemed like the markets are not responding to actual supply / demand issues. The losses, while large "sounding" (30 million), are not really that enormous in the context of 369 million egg laying flock, down 2% from the previous year. And most of the losses were heavily constrained to the Ohio (44%) / Illinois (22%) area.<p>[1] <a href="https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/fb494842n/q524mj24t/z316rx705/ckeg0125.pdf#:~:text=All%20layers%20in%20the%20United%20States%20on,3.91%20million%20layers%20producing%20egg%2Dtype%20hatching%20eggs." rel="nofollow">https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_3725.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_3725.pdf</a>
It's like with anything else. You can SAY monopolies are illegal, but if you allow them to exist, then owning and controlling the market is, legal.<p>Any small competition that eventually gets large enough will just be bought out by the next one up in the food chain (literally).
I have 20 hens and 2 roosters (living in a country village where neighbours like the authentic rural vibes) I buy 50kg of feed every 6 weeks for (equivalent)$23. Outside of winter we average 7-12 eggs a day and in winter about 2-4 a day. What we sell covers the cost of feed (except for winter)The birds free range all day and have large compost heaps and worm farms to gorge themselves on. Before moving to the country we had 4 hens in a city garden which worked out to a greater cost per egg due to the lesser free-ranging opportunities but still cheaper than a caged egg from a supermarket. Once you have your own hens you'll never go back to factory eggs!
This is kind of an odd article in that it pulls NASS stats for egg-laying pullets to make a case for steady egg production, but NASS publishes a monthly breakdown of raw (dozen) egg production, and if you graph that, you see we've been cruising along at the lowest production rates we've had in over 10 years, despite tens of millions in added population.
The article had me at "European Chicken Monopoly In Control of US Egg Market." The rest is interesting, but fairly predictable in outcome. Normally competition will drive prices down when margins are good. In this case, the monopoly breaks that cycle and is like ... "Mmm, I like these margins, thanks."
I went to the trouble of finding monthly egg production totals for the US based on "NASS quick stats."<p><a href="https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-8F1C-EC9E572FE8B5" rel="nofollow">https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/results/80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-...</a><p>Hopefully yall can make heads or tails of the data.<p>The querying tool is also linked at
<a href="https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/#80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-8F1C-EC9E572FE8B5" rel="nofollow">https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/#80AF9DAE-99AE-31D0-8F1C-EC...</a>
It sounds like it may be the result of standard corporate business practices. Lower prices, take on debt if necessary, until smaller players cannot compete, buy them all up for cheap, then once most of the smaller competitors are out of business (bought out or bankrupt), start pumping up the prices again and use the proceeds to pay off debts. Insiders can dump stocks based on record profit valuations.
> fake “animal welfare” program designed to reduce overall flock numbers rather than improve hen’s lives.<p>I love examples like this showing how this moral cultural movements are often just propaganda for nefarious purposes. People talk about recycling being pushed by the plastics industry but I’m sure there are more in the environmental side of things.
Egg prices are high compared to what they used to cost but still under $1.00 for a two-egg meal. There's not a protein source that's much cheaper, I think the egg producers are exploiting a certain inelasticity of demand. People don't like the price increases but eggs are still very cheap food.
We see this all the time. There is some shock or reduction to supply and the price goes up but it always goes up way more than the supply change would necessarily warrant. Then it takes forever to return to normal (if it ever does).<p>Interestingly, in the early weeks of the Kamala Harris campaign last year, she actually advocated to fighting or stopping "price gouging", something that was wildly popular: 66% of respondents on a Harris Poll approved [1]. After bringing on her brother-in-law and the former Biden campaign staff however, she never mentioned it again because Wall Street didn't like it.<p>Now you will find all sorts of articles online from serious outlets about how price gouging won't work and they'll simply put a bullhorn in front of economists who say that but there is precedent, namely when Nixon put in a freeze on prices and wages [2].<p>Now one can agree or disagree with such a policy, whether it's a long term fix or not and so on but we can still say the following:<p>1. There is absolutely opportunistic price gouging going on, way more than the avian flu would otherwise warrant. This is true for so many things beyond eggs; and<p>2. Life is becoming unaffordable, especially with housing and food. Ordinary people feel this. Politicians who address those issues will resonate with voters; and<p>3. Gutting the executive branch, which is currently going on, will only make this worse as there will be even less enforcement of price-fixing than there currently is.<p>[1]: <a href="https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/america-this-week-wave-240/" rel="nofollow">https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/america-this-week-wave-240/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/22/nixons-famous-price-freeze-did-stop-inflation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/22/nixons-famous-price-...</a>
Interestingly, the investigation appears to have begun right after egg prices started to drop:<p><a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us" rel="nofollow">https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us</a><p>No one appears to be reporting the drop yet, which is fair since it is not clear the trend will continue as fundamentals have not changed beyond possible imports from Turkey.
Alas! I thoroughly enjoyed Kevin Hassett's Face the Nation comedy skit "Perimeter of Dead Chickens".<p>I guess I should have known that it was a misdirect...<p><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-hassett-face-the-nation-transcript-02-16-2025/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-hassett-face-the-nation-t...</a>
One solution would be for customers to boycott the big egg producers and refuse to buy their eggs even when they do flood the market with cheaper ones when they aim to put small producers out of business. However, that does require egg consumers to stick to their guns and only buy from the independants.
Anyone frequenting more than one grocery store can quickly see its not a supply and demand issue setting prices. A few grocery stores never budged setting prices and charged the same and then the frantic news cycle caused people to buy 4x the amount of eggs they need, causing inventory shortages.<p>And then there are other stores that saw this as an opportunity to raise egg prices to like $13 a dozen. Those eggs basically go unsold.<p>I think at this point the biggest factor in the egg supply crunch is that its so publicized and making people act poorly. As a result we see the effective number of available eggs crash as some of these are marked up and go unsold and some linger in someones fridge for a month before consumption. If everyone just bought their usual load of eggs maybe there wouldn’t even be a supply issue.
> In other words, the current egg crisis is what the Sovietization of American business looks like.<p>On the contrary - there's nothing more American than corporations abusing their oligopoly status for financial gain.
Monopolies, oligopolies and cartels. These are the end-game of any capitalist system where the overriding priority is profit. I am not even going to morally fault any of the individual decisions-makers here. They are playing the game within the system that exists, not as one would like it to be. Step zero in changing this situation is helping people understand that capitalism is designed to maximize profits, not cost or supply. That this happens at all is a temporary side-effect of competition, which itself is an inefficiency when optimizing for profits. Proponents of capitalism will focus on competition as if it were some kind of natural condition that keeps everyone honest. Instead, competition leads to collusion, consolidation, and regulation (regulatory capture) to create as high a barrier as possible to enter the market.
A local discount grocery chain near me hasn't had shortages nor have they inflated prices. Store brand eggs are $6 for 18. This is in an area where groceries are normally quite expensive.<p>Naturally they could have it be a loss leader, but then I would expect them to be curtailing quantities. The shelves are fully stocked every time I'm there.<p>The other chains, all more expensive, have half or third stocked shelves and a dozen eggs is $7-8 and up.<p>The egg "shortage" is manufactured bullshit. There's only a handful of major egg producers and they're clearly in collusion.<p>Just like the shortages that supposedly lasted a while during the pandemic; CEOs were bragging on earnings that they had raised prices more than their costs went up, and they kept them high after costs dropped - they decided to keep them high because people would pay that.<p>Apparently they don't care that a lot of things folks in poverty / low income buy...aren't discretionary spending.
Harris and Walz campaigned specifically on addressing the issues raised by this article. People didn't care if they even understood. We have someone that's implementing a kleptocracy instead.<p>This is not getting solved for at least a decade, probably 50+ years before another regime change occurs.