Dairy farmers are dumping milk due to an oversupply in the market, despite seeing signs up at grocery stores limiting sales. Another ag product has been limited at grocery stores- eggs.
Marc Dresner, director of communications for the American Egg Board, says egg farmers are trying to catch up with demand. The data shows an incredible uptick.
“As of the week of March 21, the sheer volume of sales, so the quantity of the shell eggs sold at retail, was up 75 percent over the previous year.”
Dresner says it’s going to take some time for egg farmers to adjust to the new retail demand.
“All of our farms are in top working order right now and they’re working very hard with retailers to replenish those shelves. It takes a little while to catch up. We do expect demand to stay higher than normal for as long as consumers are at home.”
So, business must be good for all egg farmers, right? Not necessarily. Dresner says there is a good percentage of egg farmers who distribute only to the food service industry which is currently facing many problems due to stay at home orders. Those farmers are currently working to redirect their eggs to retail.
“It takes a little bit of time and there are issues involved with that depending on the nature of their specific production and who their end user is, but they’re working on redirecting those eggs.”
Michigan ranks sixth nationally in egg production.
