Egg prices may not stabilize until late summer, USDA analysts warn

Egg prices have hit consumers hard in recent weeks, and those increases caught the attention of the White House and led to a billion-dollar plan from USDA.

While wholesale prices are down significantly in the last month, USDA analysts say the data is still playing catch up, and it could be some time before anyone feels relief.

“So we’re really incorporating that into the new forecast. It suggests egg production is tightening up by about 75 million dozen relative to where we were in February, so that’s tighter production really through the third quarter of this year, where after that we would expect it to rebound, assuming no new cases of HPAI,” said Mark Jekanowski.

Egg prices are off the highs we saw a couple of weeks ago, but Jekanowski says the market is still very volatile. USDA has wholesale prices this week for large white eggs at $4.15 per dozen.

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“It is very unclear of what President Trump is looking to do in the long-term here.”
“When we look at this kind of extreme weather and the way that things are moving, that injects a little more risk into our decision making.”