Beef prices are currently low because they have to slaughter them now because they don’t have enough money to feed them from a story I heard on NPR. Prices will go up again in the not too distant future when that opportunity cost is realized if what I heard is true.
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eggs, from what I know from local egg farmers (large quantity big farms) they haven’t had to cull. feed and drugs and such went up in price for them, and the grocery chains have not raised what they pay for eggs to the farmer.
they raised the price to the consumer without paying a bit more for eggs to the producers. this is bad, a lot of them are not buying in replacement hens for their flocks because of it.
I buy from both backyard friend’s hens (2-4 bucks a dozen, including duck eggs) and was given a few dozen here and there from my friend who has a commercial chicken/egg farm in mass production. he said he’d rather give away a bunch than get paid “an insult from Kroger”. he also sells to Costco and said they did slightly raise the price they’ll pay to farmers.
basically avian flu is real and happening but it hasn’t had as much impact as inflation on farm supplies and no resulting payment increase to the farmers from the big grocery chains. that’s what’s reducing production the most
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That is sad to hear… It sounds like egg producers should band together to leverage a fair price… I know there are state minimum prices for milk in Pennsylvania. I bet a similar situation could exist for egg farmers.
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it ought to!
havent seen bone in pork chops .99 a lb. in probably 5 yrs. its $2,49 a lb and 4 months ago had gone up to $3.79. the cheapest eggs here are mediums at $5.79 a doz. we just brought our large farm raised eggs to $6. feed has gone from $14.99 per 50lb. to $21.99 in 3 yrs. and thats the cheap dumor feed at TSC. purinas $23. i have had people balk when we brought our prices to $4 try to buy from us lately. i politely tell them that i only sell to my regulars. they usually hang up on me or say that my eggs are too expensive anyway. lol. oh well. raise your own damned eggs if you dont like the costs. most are too lazy or they think they are above doing something like that .dont like the food cost, vote for someone else or accept what it is…
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ive done that with 10 other local small egg producers in the last 3 years. we all raise/lower our prices at the same time so no one can play the price game by going to the one with the cheapest. we set our prices by the feed price and the cheapest doz. eggs sold at the 2 local shop n’ saves in the valley. this way no one can complain as these are mostly free range hens or hens contained. given extra supplements like sprouted grains/ fermented feed/ meat and veggie scraps and such like my girls. i joke to people that my chics have a more well rounded diet than i do.
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My chic’s get better fed and treated than I do. Life’s a bitch then ya die 
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It makes sense. But it is worrisome. If this is the case, we will have beef shortage, or higher beef price sometime down the road
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One thing’s for sure, dried beans are a nutritious option during times of shortages.
And so many varieties…you’ll not get easily bored eating dried beans.
I’m planning to have some later today…plus some
pot herbs from the orchard and roadside, cress, 7-tops, dandelions, etc.
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I’m having lentils today for lunch. Cheap, tasty, and nutritious.
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We have lentils 3-4 times a week. They are our favorite legume. No gas and you can also sprout them and eat them that way.
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Dahl has become a favorite for us.
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I didn’t know you can sprout them. I usually make lentil soup with ham, but this dish is pretty tasty.
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Some things keep going up…like sliced bread for instance. But, eggs are back to ‘near normal’.
Russia/Ukraine thing means more and more people can’t earn enough to buy necessities in
poor countries…and squeeze budgets even in America.
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yep. commercial egg prices are back to normal. why then is the feed not done the same. was $14.99 a 50lb bag 3 years ago. still $20 a bag now. why is that and how can these commercial guys sell at so low prices unless the grain dealers are selling to them at post covid prices but still sticking it to the back yard producers. i smell a political rat at work! this is across several stores and brands too.
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We saw prices drop some and now are beginning to rise again rapidly. Hope everyone is doing well. My part of Kansas has been ravaged by drought but i have an excess of everything. Diseases , insects , weather etc. Hit hard this year but i was blessed to cone through it all very well off. Vegetables, fruit, fish etc. All did well this year.
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We did our part this year, we canned about 90 quarts and 65 pints of corn, green beans, tomatoes, and salsa. Probably won’t be growing as much next year.
The only fruit we got this year is blackberries, all our tree fruit was stolen by either birds or tree rats…
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I’ll have tomatoes, goji berries and carrots and okra until freezes come.
And lots of young apples that surely set a fruit or three soon.
Letting white oaks and persimmons alone as they’ve taken some of my formerly cleared land.
And honeyberries, and other berries can and do produce in partial shade.
So, yeah, there are no pain-free options to get price rises under control…unless spending comes to a halt, pricing is going to keep shooting up.
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I finally got a large dozen of eggs for 92c. I think prices are coming down.
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I don’t know that you’d be able to grow them in your zone, but any good Hispanic grocer or even places like Walmart have started caring them, but I’d highly recommend jicama. Like sunchoke, it’s a sweet-tasting but very low carb crunchy root vegetable, but it’s much bigger, very easy to prepare, and tastes like mild apples and green beans. Retains its crisp crunch when cooked too, so it’s great in stir-fries. The big difference is, the sweet-tasting complex carbs in jicama are not as hard on the gut as the ones in sunchoke, so it shouldn’t give you any digestive issues.
I believe most of it is grown in the Krasnodar region, not Crimea itself (most of Crimea is quite dry, probably too dry for tea). The name of the cultivar itself is a pretty good hint, Sochi, the city, is in southern Krasnodar.
I wouldn’t expect it to be explicit or anything nefarious. I don’t know grain prices off the top of my head but I don’t think we’re currently that far away from pre-war prices or even pre-COVID prices, and since the main thing that drove up egg prices was the bird flu killing off a sizeable chunk of the US flock, there just wasn’t enough supply, regardless of grain prices. Now that the big egg producers have had time to get their flocks replaced, they’re back to close to the previous price–though what the supermarket wants to sell those eggs at is another matter (I’ve noticed that store brand white eggs have gone back down to close to the old prices, but the fancy eggs have not). For backyarders, however, unless you’re buying grains directly from a farmer, which you probably aren’t since laying mash has lots of other stuff in it and would be a pain to mix yourself, you’re paying retail store prices, which depend far more on rents (way up), labor costs (way up), and the like.
It’s certainly been interesting seeing what kind of price elasticity and stickiness there is in the market. We had a pretty across the board 33% jump in food prices, with a lot of stuff spiking higher than that before coming down–but of the things that did spike, not all of them came back down much. Of the ones that didn’t, some look like structural market changes (certainly the case for meat–we have had several big packers close down some of their plants, there just isn’t the capacity we had before, constricting supply and driving up prices) and some look like more of a demand inelasticity (free range eggs with innocuous logos and weird health claims on the cartons have barely come down in price, which suggests that the people buying those eggs aren’t willing to punish retailers for inflating the prices by buying cheaper alternatives). But perhaps the most eye-opening thing of it all was how the egg supply really got down to the wire around the holidays when everyone and their mother was out buying eggs for home cooked meals. Which ought to make you wonder, if the seasonal spike in egg demand from home cooked meals wiped the market, how come the drop in the demand in eggs from the people who make non-home cooked food (processed food) didn’t free up enough eg supply to balance things out? Sure, part of the reason is that the packaging and distribution channels are different, so eggs for food factories can’t simply be sent to grocery stores instead–but that’s a weak explanation, since the seasonal demand wasn’t any higher than previous years, so there’s surely plenty of packaging and distribution capacity, just not enough eggs. But then, if we leave off the packaging and distribution argument, the only thing that remains is this: the seasonal drop in demand for processed food does not significantly increase the egg supply, ergo, processed food just don’t got many real eggs in it.
Which is true, and kinda sad. Processed food, even enriched baked goods that really ought to have eggs in them, just don’t–they use cheap vegetable-derived emulsifiers instead of the much more expensive but rich animal product (same story with margarine vs fat, modified food starch and hydrolyzed vegetable protein vs roasted bones and pan drippings, and, if the food factory scientists can pull it off, even with meat in the near future). Sounds like one more reason to grow, or at least make, your own food. 
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