Egg prices are at their highest in almost 50 years

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Whether you’ve seen the videos online, or just gone shopping lately, you know everyone is talking about the soaring egg prices.

We visited a local farm to find out how the rising cost of chicken feed is trickling all the way down to shoppers in the supermarket. It’s not Easter but consumers are scrambling for a different kind of egg hunt, a hunt for the best price.

Kenny Bottoms, the owner of Pigfeather Farms, says, “We are at a higher price point. and even though it’s justified and you need to it there’s resistance to have to up your prices.”

Egg prices are at their highest in almost 50 years and up 60 percent from a year ago.

Here locally, eggs are jumping to more than four dollars at Kroger and creeping up to six dollars at Publix.

Bottoms states, “Now it’s even at a point where you can you can buy your eggs cheaper from a farmer that’s making a sustainable profit, a livable profit and be cheaper than the grocery store.”

While the avian flu outbreak has hit parts of the U.S. hard, local farmers are stressing over a different kind of problem, ‘it just, it’s just snowballing.’

“Fuel hurts us, you know, feed it matters, you know, it’s, you know, when you go to paying $20 for a bag of feed to $28 a bag of feed. Fertilizer prices have doubled,” Bottom says.

And making the choice is not as easy as it sounds.

“You can buy eggs from us at $6 instead of $8. But it’s still not necessarily overall good for us because of our all of our prices or expenses are increasing,” Bottoms says.

While the future of egg prices remains uncertain, there could be relief coming in other forms of poultry at the annual Georgia dairy conference in Savannah. Consultants say those record-high milk prices over the last year are expected to go down in 2023.

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