The Fabergé Eggs I understand; eight of them are missing and at $5-10 mil. per, it might actually be worth your time to take an interest in l'oeufs. I'm not sure what's up with the chicken egg stories though.
From Real Time Economics:
Some of our eggcentricities:Prices that U.S. companies pay for fresh eggs took flight last month, buoyed by an avian flu outbreak in Mexico.
The producer price index for fresh eggs soared almost 42%, the biggest gain on record, driving broader inflation for food products, the Labor Department said Friday.
A leading reason for the crack up: U.S. farmers are exporting more eggs to Mexico, eating into supplies for American consumers. The United States’ southern neighbor has been hit by avian influenza, forcing the slaughter of thousands of chickens.
Fresh egg exports to Mexico for the first four months of 2013 totaled 12.9 million dozen, up sharply from 478,539 dozen for the same period in 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported earlier this month....MORE
Feb. 2012
Five Year Returns: Barley Beats Gold
Over the past 5+ years only one of the Agri-Commodities we follow failed to do better than the S&P 500. That one was eggs. However, to give eggs their due, they serve many useful purposes. Breakfast being one that comes immediately to mind. On the other hand, paper equities apparently provide little of value....MOREApril 2011
"Chart of the Day: Real Egg Prices, 1890-2011"
March 2013The cost of wholesale eggs today (adjusted for inflation) is about 50% lower than during the 1970s, about 75% lower than during the 1940s and 1950s.
What came first Egg or Chicken? Solution Through Granger Causality
April 2009
Mix Butter, Onions, Cheese and Eggs. Add Electricity...
For some reason, this post from Freakonomics got me thinking about the Chicago Butter and Egg board, the Butter, Cheese, and Egg Exchange of New York and Title 7, Ch. 1, § 13–1 U.S. Code*:And a half-dozen others.
Lightbulb Moment in Food History
Last week’s post talked about early-20th-century “egg gamblers” who bought eggs cheap in spring in order to sell dear in winter. Their kind of speculation proved not just controversial but also pretty risky, and ultimately doomed. Why?Egg gamblers won only if they sold off their cold-storage stocks before fresh ones arrived in spring. They faced two major unknowns: housewives who sometimes protested egg “hoarding” with organized boycotts, and hens who might start laying earlier than expected. Because hens are acutely sensitive to shifts in daylight and temperature, all it took was a February thaw to set them off, sending egg prices plummeting.Poultry farmers, meanwhile, just wanted to know how to get their own flocks to lay more eggs when fresh ones were scarcest and priciest. They knew that some chicken breeds laid a few more winter eggs than others, and that warm housing and a rich diet generally helped. But the most dramatic results came with the flick of a switch — literally.*Violations, prohibition against dealings in onion futures; punishment.
Although few farmers in 1910 to 1920 had electricity, those who did discovered that hens couldn’t tell the difference between the sun and a light bulb....MORE
As with all things financial the scandals came first, the regulation followed, often to no good purpose.
I'll come back to butter and cheese next month. Here's a 1956 Time Magazine story "Odorous Onions" on the volatility of that market.
In the meantime here's a 1927 recording of "Big Butter and Egg Man..." by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, featuring Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong...
