Consumers fight over high egg prices.
When it comes to egg prices, the yolk is with the American consumer.
Egg prices doubled to $4.25 a dozen in December 2022 compared to $1.72 for a dozen eggs at the end of 2020.
In a year-over-year comparison from January 2022 to January 2023, the states with the highest egg prices to date include Arizona (97% increase), Nevada (82% increase), and New Mexico (78% increase). increase), according to Datasembly Grocery Price Index. The states experiencing the lowest price increases are California (up 21%), Alaska (up 22%) and Washington (up 24%).
Economists point to multiple factors for soaring egg prices, with bird flu, stubbornly high inflation and the war in Ukraine topping the list.
That’s no joke to the average US adult, who eats 278 eggs a year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The good news? Egg lovers should see a discount in prices, experts soon said.
“Egg prices increased last year, rising a total of 49% according to the Consumer Price Index,” LLC Services CEO Dmytro Kondratiev said. “However, prices may have started to decline as the market adjusts to the bird flu outbreak, as the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) declined 0.1 percent. cent in December”.
Breaking down the factors driving high egg prices
While egg prices have been rising due to a number of factors, the 2015 bird flu outbreak and subsequent egg shortage is probably the main cause.
“There has been a combined effect of bird flu on egg prices, as the United States experienced consistent outbreaks of bird flu in 2022,” said Elice Max, coupon purchasing analyst at EMU.
As a result, grocery stores were unable to get eggs from US farms as production stopped.
“Consequently, retailers looked to alternative egg suppliers, which increased the demand for eggs from suppliers,” Max said. “As fundamental economic principles have shown, when the demand for an item exceeds the supply, prices rise.”
There are a myriad of additional issues driving up the price of eggs from the second half of 2022.
“Add in other factors like inflation, and there’s fuel, which is affecting our transportation,” said Jada Thompson, poultry economist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. “In addition, there is a shortage of drivers and that increases the cost of production and of getting the eggs to market.”
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also contributed to rising egg costs, even thousands of miles away in the US “Add the war in Ukraine to the mix,” Thompson noted. “You don’t normally think of directly affecting eggs, but that affects the global food supply and trade around the world.”
In addition, corn and soybeans play important roles in feeding chickens, Thompson said.
“Growing those crops has become more expensive thanks to the prices of fertilizers and diesel that have risen due to the conflict in Ukraine,” he added. “The cost of egg feed is up 29.5 percent, and that’s a substantial part of the cost it takes to produce an egg.”
A recovery will take time
With unmet demand building and a shortage of poultry, egg prices are not likely to decline substantially any time soon.
“We don’t have a million birds out there,” Thompson said. “It’s six months before we have a bird ready to lay an egg. It takes 21 days for an egg to hatch and five months or 20 weeks for the chick to mature.”
While some key trends, such as the decline in bird flu and improving supply chains, are reducing egg supplies and prices, “egg prices will not decline to 2021 levels,” Thompson added.
