Egg Prices Will Come Down - But Not A Lot

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Egg prices won’t stay high forever, but with no clear end in sight for the current round of highly pathogenic avian flu, prices won’t descend to bargain basement levels, said Jada Thompson, a poultry economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. In 2022, average U.S. retail prices for eggs rose from just under $2 per dozen to more than $4 a dozen. That compares with 2021, in which egg prices in January were below $1.50. The average retail price rose lazily through the year, but never reached $2 a dozen. “Highly pathogenic avian flu, or HPAI, has devastated the poultry industry in the U.S.,” Thompson said. “We are about 5 to 6 percent down in our layer flock, leading us to be down in our egg supply 5-6 percent year over year.” However, HPAI is just one of the factors driving up the price of eggs since last fall. “Add other factors like inflation, and there’s fuel, which is impacting our transportation. Plus, you have driver shortages and that increases the cost of production and getting eggs to the market. You have things like high demand in November and December — everybody wants those deviled eggs,” she said. “Then you add the war in Ukraine, which you don’t think about affecting eggs directly, but that affects global feed supply and trade around the world.” Com and soybeans play a big role in chicken feed, she said. Raising those crops has become more expensive thanks to fertilizer and diesel prices pushed higher by the Ukraine conflict. “The cost of feed for eggs has gone up something like 29.5 percent,” she said. “That’s a substantial portion of the cost that goes into producing an egg.” Outlook Consumer price index, or “CPI, numbers are coming out and we are seeing some reduction in inflation, so that’s the easing of food prices in general,” Thompson said. “We’re seeing some of ...