The memes making the rounds on the price of eggs has me laughing it up. Probably my favorite is this one:

It’s funny because it’s embarrassingly true. Just ask my sister or myself about the one time a friend’s dad caught us in the act and came running out of his house with nunchucks as we scurried away terrified! 🫣💀

But when I started thinking about this “crisis”at a deeper level, and level setting it to my reality here’s where I landed.

I will pay anywhere between $4-8 for a dozen cage free or pasture raised eggs (depending on where I’m picking them up and availability). I’m currently able to get two dozen for about $6 at Costco and that feels like a steal! Is there really a crisis, or has the bottom fallen out on an unstable model from big egg producers?

The once cheaper variety of eggs we are seeing depleted from grocery store shelves (and also currently price gouged) are grown in an unsustainable manner.

My county has a lot of large poultry operations, growing for Tyson, or…I’d like to list another but I think they’re a monopoly. Same goes for eggs. There may be tens of thousands of producers around the country but those farmers are growing their chickens and eggs to a standard that is not sustainable for the bird, the farmer, or the environment. All for a huge corporation that is demanding more and more for a lower bottom line. That way they can get a dozen eggs in the grocery store cooler for $1.88/dozen.

What happens when a chicken gets sick? Or how about a pandemic like avian flu moving through those enormous cramped coops that kill off the majority of the flock? That is what we are currently experiencing at the large scale level.

Your neighbor who raises their own chickens? Likely not affected, although egg production naturally decreases during winter months so the timing of all this makes a lot of sense. Support them if you are able to, but also look into organic or cage free or best of all pasture raised eggs. This level setting is happening everywhere in the food supply chain and I hope it’s opening more folks’s eyes to the problems that relying solely or heavily on centralized food systems creates. We were never intended to depend on ten or less huge corporations feeding an entire country. And look at what happens when we do, we are watching that system collapse.

Quick caveat: I’m writing from my personal perspective, which is a place of privilege that I can afford eggs at pretty much any price. If you rely on food stamps or affording eggs means sacrificing something else, please know I have absolutely been there. Where choices were not so abundant and we went without a lot of things due to their price. Eggs are a high-quality, low cost protein and there is a lot of food insecurity that touches people on the margins even more so when something like this happens. We are doing our best with broken systems all around us, no judgement or shade for how you go about putting food on the table for your family. This is a criticism of the industrial food system and not of people who need food subsidized.

On that long and rambling note, I’m opening a store!

I’ve been eluding to this basically since before we moved here, two weeks ago I filed the initial paperwork with the Secretary of State for my business name, and now things are starting to roll along.

Depending on how things go with funding and grants, I hope to open The Fayette Merc sometime in the spring.

Look, I can’t fix a broken system. None of us can do that individually but I can and do notice ways where I can make a positive shift in the direction that better serves my family and my community. If we all choose to notice and do things in our own small way, over time, these systems will rectify.

What I am writing is not new or revolutionary. It is doing my part in sharing the collective wisdom I’ve witnessed and experienced over the years from people doing good in this arena.

Now send me some good juju as I become a grant writer!