Egg production peaked in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. Production declined slightly from 112 billion to 110 billion in 2024. So that equates to a percentage decline of 1.8%
According to US Census Bureau projections during that same period the US population increase by an estimated 2.4%.
The number of egg layers (hens) in the US remained largely stable over this period. 2022 was the only year that there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of egg layers and it relatively modest. Egg layer capacity declined from 382 million at year end 2021 to 375 by the end of 2022. That's a decrease of 2%.
Cal-Maine Foods, a NASDAQ listed food products company, is the USA's largest producer of hard shelled eggs. They own Eggland's Best. For the past 3 years they have been on an acquisition spree gobbling up several smaller egg producers such as Fassio Egg Farms and ISE America. Cal-Maine's annual egg layer counts have remained steady since 2022 hovering right around 44 million.
Cal-Maine's stock price (CALM), an ironic ticker considering the constant turmoil in the industry, was stuck in a consolidation channel for several years between late 2015 and mid 2021. The stock went nowhere. Prior to that the stock went on quite a run during the Obama years finally creating during the HPAI viral outbreak of 2014-2015. The stock price doubled during that outbreak and then went sideways until 2021.
Thanks to Bidenflation and a fortuitous bird flue outbreak in 2022 the stock zoomed from $36 in 2021 to $116 by December of 2024, a near tripling. Biden was great for the egg industry just like another Democrat, Obama, was a decade earlier.
Since Trump's inauguration CALM has fallen off the cliff with the stock down 20% since late January.
As detailed by a research paper from economists that was published by the Federal Reserve 2 years ago approximately half of the rise in goods prices in 2021-2022 could be explained by corporate margin expansion. In other words, corporations took advantage of consumers' tolerance for higher prices by paddng their profit margins. They were able to do this because wayward and unwise government spending, stimulus checks and overgenerous extended unemployment benefits, made consumers less sensitive to pirce increases. The government's money printing induced inflation provided a convenient subterfuge to mask corporate "greedflation".
In the case of Cal-Maine the company's profit margin averaged 6% from the end of 2009 until mid 2014. During the HPAI outbreak the profit margin shot up to a peak of 18.05% by the end of 2015. It then fell to negative 5.41% in late summer 2017 and averaged about 1% until taking off once again in 2022. Cal-Maine's profit margin peaked in early 2023 at 24.85% and at the end of 2024 it remained slightly above 20%.
So to close, there is no egg shortage. The rise in prices is due to a combination of Bidenflation (deficit spending) and corporate greed (margin expansion). Immigration is probably a factor but is partially offset by the mRNA vaccine mass die off. The bird flu fearmongering is an exploitable smokescreen that the egg industry hides behind to push through margin boosting price increases.
Due to political considerations and realities the egg industry will not find the Trump administration to be helpful alley. The benefit-cost ratio does not favor a scenario whereby Trump truns a blind eye to the politically damaging actions of this rapacious industry. These margins will come crashing down, one way or another.
About 10 years ago, I could buy a carton of 30 eggs at Walmart for around $5-$6. Now, the price has skyrocketed to over $30. Retailers like Walmart are taking the hit and keeping the prices lower than others, as an 18-egg carton is priced at around $8.90, while the store across the street charges around $15 for the same. An investigation is underway into these companies, with suspicions that they are artificially inflating prices out of greed (obviously), and they claim there is a lack of any significant bird shortage to justify such high costs. This is outrageous and needs to be stopped.
Trump should have already tried to pass a bill that prevents greedy corporations from profiteering and exploiting inflation to line their pockets with predatory schemes. But, unfortunately, he hasn’t. So much for those promises of lowering prices "on day one!"
They do the same with other species. "Mad cow" and "swine flu", to cover the three main species farmed by humans.
It's always the same: use a ridiculous excuse to kill massive numbers of animals and make the prices of animal foods increase so that the health of the population decreases. Animal foods are the most nutritious and therefore the healthiest. People will have more nutritional deficiencies and therefore more disease. Then of course if the population gets sick they can blame it on some virus, either the same that they used as an excuse to kill the animals, to close the circle, or another of their choice to cause "pandemics" and restrictions of freedoms, such as "lockdowns".
It is not a common occurrence for us to be so completely deprived of foods in America that it leads to a massive increase in illness from the loss of availability of meats, etc. But I can foresee this occurring on a dramatic level one day in the near future, and we should probably be aware of that possibility.
Not deprived of foods, or "foods", maybe, but definitely of nutrients. The US population is very sick and this is also caused by more or less severe nutritional deficiencies, especially in terms of micro-nutrients. Obesity, for example, and some people would say "counterintuitively", is caused primarily by micro-nutrient deficiencies that make people constantly hungry, but then they eat "empty" macro-nutrients and the hunger doesn't go away.
You don't see Holodomor-like scenes in the US, sure, with skin and bones living corpses, but it is definitely a malnourished population at a more subtle level. All the so-called "West", to be clear, but I think the US takes the cake (pun intended?) in terms of being unhealthy.
It's a deep topic, I'm only scratching the surface here.
These price hikes for animal foods will push people towards a more plant-based diet, which is less nutritious and will therefore make them more unhealthy.
Yes, America is undeniably unhealthy. Despite having countless food choices, I rarely see truly healthy people when I'm out. Obesity is the norm. I pay close attention to people and their habits—I often stand in stores observing what shoppers put in their carts and then looking at their overall health. More often than not, their diet consists of the worst foods available, and their physical condition reflects it.
Most people were never taught that food, while enjoyable, is primarily meant to nourish and sustain the body. But how does one achieve that? The body’s cells require a precise balance of vitamins and minerals in the right combinations and amounts. When those needs aren’t met, the body experiences gradual long-term cellular stress. To make matters worse, many processed foods are nutritionally dead, having no value whatsoever, except to cause disease.
Excellent article. Perhaps this is why Gates was so invested in the fake meat industry. First, letting the USDA pave the way to scarcity. It is an insane USDA policy that uses an easily manipulated test(aka fraudulent), swipes the beak of a couple chickens and then produces a (false) positive whether or not the chicken even shows signs of being sick and based upon this, declares the entire healthy flock must be destroyed. The farmer should demand first, proof of the existence of the alleged bird flu before he destroys his stock. They can't. As for raw milk, they are already saying bird flu has now crossed over to cows and warns the public not to drink raw milk. Again, using a non-existent virus to close a market that threatens the conventional corporate food industry.
Egg production peaked in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. Production declined slightly from 112 billion to 110 billion in 2024. So that equates to a percentage decline of 1.8%
According to US Census Bureau projections during that same period the US population increase by an estimated 2.4%.
The number of egg layers (hens) in the US remained largely stable over this period. 2022 was the only year that there was a statistically significant decrease in the number of egg layers and it relatively modest. Egg layer capacity declined from 382 million at year end 2021 to 375 by the end of 2022. That's a decrease of 2%.
Cal-Maine Foods, a NASDAQ listed food products company, is the USA's largest producer of hard shelled eggs. They own Eggland's Best. For the past 3 years they have been on an acquisition spree gobbling up several smaller egg producers such as Fassio Egg Farms and ISE America. Cal-Maine's annual egg layer counts have remained steady since 2022 hovering right around 44 million.
Cal-Maine's stock price (CALM), an ironic ticker considering the constant turmoil in the industry, was stuck in a consolidation channel for several years between late 2015 and mid 2021. The stock went nowhere. Prior to that the stock went on quite a run during the Obama years finally creating during the HPAI viral outbreak of 2014-2015. The stock price doubled during that outbreak and then went sideways until 2021.
Thanks to Bidenflation and a fortuitous bird flue outbreak in 2022 the stock zoomed from $36 in 2021 to $116 by December of 2024, a near tripling. Biden was great for the egg industry just like another Democrat, Obama, was a decade earlier.
Since Trump's inauguration CALM has fallen off the cliff with the stock down 20% since late January.
As detailed by a research paper from economists that was published by the Federal Reserve 2 years ago approximately half of the rise in goods prices in 2021-2022 could be explained by corporate margin expansion. In other words, corporations took advantage of consumers' tolerance for higher prices by paddng their profit margins. They were able to do this because wayward and unwise government spending, stimulus checks and overgenerous extended unemployment benefits, made consumers less sensitive to pirce increases. The government's money printing induced inflation provided a convenient subterfuge to mask corporate "greedflation".
In the case of Cal-Maine the company's profit margin averaged 6% from the end of 2009 until mid 2014. During the HPAI outbreak the profit margin shot up to a peak of 18.05% by the end of 2015. It then fell to negative 5.41% in late summer 2017 and averaged about 1% until taking off once again in 2022. Cal-Maine's profit margin peaked in early 2023 at 24.85% and at the end of 2024 it remained slightly above 20%.
So to close, there is no egg shortage. The rise in prices is due to a combination of Bidenflation (deficit spending) and corporate greed (margin expansion). Immigration is probably a factor but is partially offset by the mRNA vaccine mass die off. The bird flu fearmongering is an exploitable smokescreen that the egg industry hides behind to push through margin boosting price increases.
Due to political considerations and realities the egg industry will not find the Trump administration to be helpful alley. The benefit-cost ratio does not favor a scenario whereby Trump truns a blind eye to the politically damaging actions of this rapacious industry. These margins will come crashing down, one way or another.
About 10 years ago, I could buy a carton of 30 eggs at Walmart for around $5-$6. Now, the price has skyrocketed to over $30. Retailers like Walmart are taking the hit and keeping the prices lower than others, as an 18-egg carton is priced at around $8.90, while the store across the street charges around $15 for the same. An investigation is underway into these companies, with suspicions that they are artificially inflating prices out of greed (obviously), and they claim there is a lack of any significant bird shortage to justify such high costs. This is outrageous and needs to be stopped.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/business/us-egg-prices-investigation.html
Trump should have already tried to pass a bill that prevents greedy corporations from profiteering and exploiting inflation to line their pockets with predatory schemes. But, unfortunately, he hasn’t. So much for those promises of lowering prices "on day one!"
Great article. There would be a lot to comment.
They do the same with other species. "Mad cow" and "swine flu", to cover the three main species farmed by humans.
It's always the same: use a ridiculous excuse to kill massive numbers of animals and make the prices of animal foods increase so that the health of the population decreases. Animal foods are the most nutritious and therefore the healthiest. People will have more nutritional deficiencies and therefore more disease. Then of course if the population gets sick they can blame it on some virus, either the same that they used as an excuse to kill the animals, to close the circle, or another of their choice to cause "pandemics" and restrictions of freedoms, such as "lockdowns".
It is not a common occurrence for us to be so completely deprived of foods in America that it leads to a massive increase in illness from the loss of availability of meats, etc. But I can foresee this occurring on a dramatic level one day in the near future, and we should probably be aware of that possibility.
Not deprived of foods, or "foods", maybe, but definitely of nutrients. The US population is very sick and this is also caused by more or less severe nutritional deficiencies, especially in terms of micro-nutrients. Obesity, for example, and some people would say "counterintuitively", is caused primarily by micro-nutrient deficiencies that make people constantly hungry, but then they eat "empty" macro-nutrients and the hunger doesn't go away.
You don't see Holodomor-like scenes in the US, sure, with skin and bones living corpses, but it is definitely a malnourished population at a more subtle level. All the so-called "West", to be clear, but I think the US takes the cake (pun intended?) in terms of being unhealthy.
It's a deep topic, I'm only scratching the surface here.
These price hikes for animal foods will push people towards a more plant-based diet, which is less nutritious and will therefore make them more unhealthy.
Yes, America is undeniably unhealthy. Despite having countless food choices, I rarely see truly healthy people when I'm out. Obesity is the norm. I pay close attention to people and their habits—I often stand in stores observing what shoppers put in their carts and then looking at their overall health. More often than not, their diet consists of the worst foods available, and their physical condition reflects it.
Most people were never taught that food, while enjoyable, is primarily meant to nourish and sustain the body. But how does one achieve that? The body’s cells require a precise balance of vitamins and minerals in the right combinations and amounts. When those needs aren’t met, the body experiences gradual long-term cellular stress. To make matters worse, many processed foods are nutritionally dead, having no value whatsoever, except to cause disease.
Excellent article. Perhaps this is why Gates was so invested in the fake meat industry. First, letting the USDA pave the way to scarcity. It is an insane USDA policy that uses an easily manipulated test(aka fraudulent), swipes the beak of a couple chickens and then produces a (false) positive whether or not the chicken even shows signs of being sick and based upon this, declares the entire healthy flock must be destroyed. The farmer should demand first, proof of the existence of the alleged bird flu before he destroys his stock. They can't. As for raw milk, they are already saying bird flu has now crossed over to cows and warns the public not to drink raw milk. Again, using a non-existent virus to close a market that threatens the conventional corporate food industry.