New commercial egg laying hatchlings start producing at around 16 weeks
Eggs US – Price – Chart
361–370 of 810 posts
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#362Yes, bird flu is bad. OTOH, the US egg industry has a history of price-fixing, and other dirty tricks. For instance: https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsu...
Farm owners are not our friends. Example #1000000
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#363So: "black-out factory farm eggs doubled in price". Sounds like a good opportunity to finally ban black-out factory farming?
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile in Ireland, I can get a tray of 30 free range for 8 eur at a vending machine on the dog walk. Or 15 for 4.50. Lidl is maybe marginally cheaper, prices there have gone up maybe 20% in a year.
free range isnt the same as pasture raised.
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Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is not scalable for the entire big city. My parents are organic market gardeners, and there is simply no way that model could scale up enough to feed that many people cheaply. Food budgets would have to go back to the 1940's or earlier - where they were a significant fraction of take home pay. Now they are almost a rounding error comparatively. I don't necessarily think that would be a bad thing. A lot of the a…
You put your finger on what I think is the real issue: whether or not access to cheap food is a net benefit or not. I also won't claim to have the perfect answer but do feel we've gone at least a bit too far in one direction.
I think we've only "gone too far" in the sense that cheap food also means unhealthy food, generally.
Access to cheap food would be wonderful if it were healthy! Unfortunately the cheapest food is typically the worst food for your health.
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve always bought the most expensive pasture raised free range cage free eggs at Whole Foods. If I recall they used to be around $10 per dozen. Been a while. Anyone know Is this still the case?
Meanwhile in Ireland, I can get a tray of 30 free range for 8 eur at a vending machine on the dog walk. Or 15 for 4.50. Lidl is maybe marginally cheaper, prices there have gone up maybe 20% in a year.
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Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#367Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems interesting a bit but surely the economics are rather brutal? Even a traditional coop has an ROI of years and years and years.
It's a good question - From what we've seen most suburban people that raise chickens don't do it to lower costs of eggs - they do it to have better control over the quality of food they eat, to teach their kids that you take care of the chickens, they take care of us. To eliminate food waste (avg family throws out 200+ lbs a year of food that can go to chickens, and because funnily enough most backyard farmers treat…
From an absolute financial standpoint it might be hard to justify eggs from backyard chickens, though once you realize that they can eat something like 25% of their feed can be grass or clippings, and that some percentage can be redirected household waste (think: peels, food waste, etc) it becomes much more favorable.
As you mentioned, most treat them like pets which means they get to learn how long-lived chickens can be, and how egg production levels off in the later years.
But even then, if you're buying less than half the feed needed, you can probably break even for quite awhile (especially now).
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that free range law have recently gone into effect in CA. Were the organic eggs already free range? That would explain the price stability there and variation of the non organic.
AFAIK, free-range and cage free are not heavily regulated terms like organic, which is a registered and trademark enforced term. At best they just mean the hens have a bit more room to move around. Neither of them actually mean there is no cage. It's why we see "pasture raised" as the more premium marketing term. It still doesn't mean much without looking into the specific farm.
Real pasture raised eggs do taste better. I believe this is because the chicken get to eat bugs - store bought eggs that advertise "fed an all vegetarian diet" taste worse than regular store bought - though both are bad. (taste is of course subjective). Most store bought pasture raised eggs taste just like any other store bought egg - sure the chickens get to pasture but there are too many for them to get enough bugs in their diet.
Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.
Really raises the question - should vital infrastructure, like food production, be built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency? Have things swung too far in one direction?
A surprisingly large amount of the United States' crop yield comes from rain falling on non-irrigated fields (85%). Our biggest crop is corn, and corn is very water-sensitive at specific points in its growth.
There is no infrastructure to protect there – only infrastructure to build (irrigation), for better resiliency.