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The egg farms | What you need to know

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Mr. Big Food and I once– 2012– presented a paper at a small conference. We have recently revised that paper for a nonacademic audience. It’s supposed to come out later this year in a volume titled, Dissenting Philosophers. It’s a fun essay. I’ll let you know when it’s published.

I am not kidding that the non-philosophical issue we use as our example in the paper is chicken farms, more precisely, the farms that are home to chicken egg laying hens, or “layers”.

I have no idea what the copyright status is for things that are under contract but not yet in print so I’m just going to share the numbers with you. They should scare the living bejesus out of you.

(2012 = year I first did the research; 2018 = most recent year for which data were available)

Number of “farms” (actually mega-corporations) with greater than 5 million layers: 2012 = 16; 2018 = 19. Eight of those 19 companies have more than 10 million layers.

Those eight companies produce about 43% of the eggs sold in the US.

Number of companies with between 1M and 5M layers: 2012 = 61; 2018 =40

Percentage of eggs produced (of total US egg production) by companies with > 1M layers: 2012= 87% (76 companies); 2018 = 85% (59 companies)

Number of companies with between 75,000 and 1M layers (“medium sized farms”: 2012 = 179; 2018 = 3

That is not a typo.

Please keep in mind that all of these companies are highly vertically integrated. And most aren’t even stand-alone companies.

And as we say, “To add insult to injury, most of these companies describe themselves as ‘family farms.'”

7 Responses

  1. Those are some stunning numbers. Particularly the “medium sized farms” number. Have you any idea whether those farms got sucked up by the big farms, went out of business, or joined with others of the same size to create a big farm?
    You know…when you get to a certain age, if you’ve created a thriving business, you have to decide whether to sell or pass it on to your kids – that is, if your kids are of a mind to continue the family business. Which maybe they are and maybe they’ve moved on to a different lifestyle. So…what happened to all those medium sized farms?
    And if you check into the San Antonio CL, you’ll find _many_ laying hens for sale, and many chicken houses. The hens are reasonably priced…the chicken houses…not so much!! Fancy though!
    My neighbors have a chicken house/pen. I’ll bet they paid 2K to have it built. Worthwhile??? I don’t know – but they’ve had it in use for about 3 years now, and seem to take good and regular care of the hens – about 5 or 6, I think. Still…you can buy a lot of eggs for that price! without the expense and hassle of daily care. Chicken feed ain’t cheap! We don’t have any – I’d have to keep them confined – we have coyotes and hawks to deal with. If you have space – I think some of your photos indicate that you have a few that wander about – it makes sense. Locking them into a 5 x 8 foot enclosure…not so much. Plus you have to clean out chicken poop. So…you shovel in the feed and shovel out the poop!

    1. All of the small and medium sized farms are eventually bought by larger concerns. It’s Industry Consolidation, or if you prefer, driving small farmers out of business. A lot seems to be of the never let a crisis go to waste. Periodic screwups (egg recalls, etc.) lead to lawsuits that cannot be won and then BIG EGG swoops in. Of course it’s more complicated– add in state regulations, etc.

      It is most definitely not that the real family farm cannot pass along or sell the farm to another small farmer. For over 30 years there’s been an aggressive attack aimed at driving them out of business.

  2. That’s some scary data! Reinforces the fact we made a smart decision in getting our own layers. They won’t be totally free range hens (which would be dead hens around here), but they’ll have grass, bugs and sunshine. Unless it’s raining.

    1. We do not have hens and we should. With travel and coyotes it just never seemed the right time. Maybe we should rethink.

      Congrats on a good decision!

  3. With all that pasture or even your yard …have you ever seen a chicken tractor??

  4. “They won’t be totally free range hens (which would be dead hens around here), but they’ll have grass, bugs and sunshine. Unless it’s raining.”

    JoBeth, how do you manage this?

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