![]() ![]() The price drop is in part because the early days of the pandemic curbed demand for eggs and egg products from restaurants and fast food companies and food service operations, even while people were buying eggs at the store. The CPI for eggs jumped by 15 percent in April 2020 and then fell in May, June, July, and August. Looking at the Consumer Price Index month to month, you can see how egg prices have bounced around during the Covid-19 outbreak. The US has recently seen a lot of winter storms, so consumers have been egg-buying. This year, it has picked up again, which he said probably also contributes to higher prices. “There was a period of time … where everybody was stress baking, and you’ve got to have eggs to bake.”ĭemand for eggs was quite strong throughout 2020 and started to drop in 2021, Krouse said. “Eggs were up there with toilet paper, which was a little baffling to me, because they’re a perishable item,” Dresner said. People were cooking more at home, and eggs are often an item people buy when they’re preparing to bunker down for a while. When the pandemic hit, there was a big spike in demand for eggs. Like it has all industries, the pandemic has shaped the story of the egg market over the past two years, and that story hasn’t been a linear one. It didn’t really help, because prices were up among a bunch of items, not just a few - which is also the scenario we find ourselves in now. “Everybody’s raising their prices on everything, from cartons to corrugated boxes to the plastic wrap that goes around the eggs.”Ī fun fact: In the ‘60s, amid concerns about inflation and rising prices, President Lyndon Johnson asked the US surgeon general to put out an alert about cholesterol in eggs, apparently trying to curb demand. “We hear from people that the carton companies are struggling to make deliveries,” Rispoli said. Everything is getting more expensive because everything else is, including when it comes to eggs. In a nutshell (or, for our purposes, an eggshell), it’s a cycle. “Everybody’s raising their prices on everything, from cartons to corrugated boxes to the plastic wrap that goes around the eggs” Moscogiuri estimates that freight up 30 to 40 percent can translate into an extra 10 cents a dozen. Trucks to get the eggs from point A to point B are more expensive, as is fuel (likely becoming even more so now, thanks to the Russian invasion in Ukraine and subsequent sanctions). Increased freight costs are contributing to higher prices as well. “It’s been transitioned toward robotics, and a lot of the time, an egg makes its way into a carton without being touched by a human,” he said. Most egg farms are vertically integrated, explained Brian Moscogiuri, a global trade strategist at Eggs Unlimited, and the production process is pretty seamless. Increased labor costs are also a factor, though less so for eggs than, say, for beef or chicken, because of automation. “A lot of that is corn and soybean meal, which has been going up pretty dramatically, but we also use a lot of different amino acids and vitamins.” “The cost of an egg is about 60 to 70 percent feed, and the cost of our feed has gone up 30 to 50 percent, depending on the mix, since the end of 2020,” he said. Sam Krouse, vice president of business development at MPS Egg Farms, which is headquartered in Indiana, told me that input and production prices for his operation are up “pretty dramatically” at the moment. Egg prices depend in part on the chickens that lay the eggs - and currently, they’re more expensive to feed. The cause of the egg price increases we’re experiencing now is more of a production issue than a demand one, though both are in the mix. “You don’t think about how pervasive it is.” It’s expensive to feed chickens “Eggs are also an ingredient,” said Karyn Rispoli, who covers the egg market for Urner Barry. Because eggs are in so many food items, you can see how all of this could push prices up on other things, too. Sign up here.Īs Marc Dresner, director of integrated communications at the American Egg Board, put it, “It’s not like we have eggs sitting in tankers off the coast of Los Angeles.” But still, the egg industry, like every industry, is facing higher prices and challenges that are leading to costlier eggs for consumers overall.Īccording to USDA data provided by Urner Barry, which follows the food commodity market, the average year-to-date price on Grade A large eggs was $1.46 a dozen, which is up from $1.01 a dozen in 2021 and $1.00 a dozen in 2020. Twice a month, Emily Stewart’s column exposes the ways we’re all being squeezed under capitalism. ![]()
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