Get Your Omelet On: Eggs Prices Are At A Decade Low

Image courtesy of Ben Schumin

They say you’ve gotta break a couple eggs to make an omelet, but with egg prices at the lowest they’ve been in about 10 years, you can probably afford it if a few extra end up on the floor.

According to Bloomberg, egg supplies have increased by leaps and bounds in recent months, which means prices are dropping — they should continue to, as it’ll take us some time to eat up that surplus inventory.

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Retailers were charging about $1.414 on average for a dozen eggs in May, which is the lowest prices since 2006, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That’s a 25% drop from the $2.966 average price per dozen in Sept. 2015, at the height of the avian flu crisis, when chicken farmers were forced to destroy millions of birds in order to prevent the disease from spreading.

In states that the outbreak didn’t reach, farmers ramped up their production to take advantage of the high prices and to Egg prices have fallen significantly as production is up to record highs. In March, hens laid 613 million eggs, but demand is still low.

Egg supplies are going to keep going up, the government predicts, while costs will likely drop more for eggs than any other food product. So keep on eating, folks.

“The market was temporarily starved for eggs, and now it’s drowning,” Tom Elam, president of Carmel, Indiana-based consulting firm FarmEcon LLC, told Bloomberg. “There’s just too many eggs out there.”

You may have already noticed that your eggs are cheaper, as grocers like Kroger have been slashing prices on staples like eggs and milk in an effort to compete in an increasingly crowded grocery store field.

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