Barn door shutting on area egg ranch while another opens

-January 19,2023-

Another ‘mom and pop’ egg ranch will close their barn doors in the Valley. Even with eggs in short supply nationwide and prices climbing to new heights, it has not been enough to keep a 100-year-old egg farm from going out of business.
John Lewis Jr., president of Farmer John Egg Farm in Bakersfield, confirmed that the family operation will close its doors by the end of the month. The move comes as commercial poultry farms across the country have been pummeled by avian influenza, which has led to bird losses topping 57 million and shoppers facing sticker shock on eggs.
But Lewis said the family isn’t calling it quits because of impacts from avian influenza. He said they’re pulling out because they can’t afford the cost of going cage-free, now required by state law. Retrofitting the farm, he said, would cost $4 million to $5 million, and “we didn’t have the money.”
At 75, Lewis has been in the egg business for 50 years and would “still rather be a farmer…rather be out there in the chicken coop.” The farm once maintained 300,000 egg layers but stopped production last year when Proposition 12, the cage-free mandate, went into effect. Its facilities have since sat idle as the farm changed its business from producing eggs to strictly selling eggs from other farms.
As Mr Lewis advised, to stay in the egg business in California you need to be well capitalized and size matters.
Just in the past few weeks a new big egg co-op was launched called ProEgg. The new egg farmer cooperative in the western United States intends to bring sustainability and supply chain stability to its customers through its eight independent shell egg production members. ProEgg, a farmer cooperative formed under the Capper-Volstead Act, will serve 13 states, and is committed to providing retail and foodservice shell egg customers with collaborative solutions that will help stabilize the shell egg supply in this period of high egg demand.
The eight companies that are members of the cooperative are recognized leaders in egg production. They include Cal-Maine Foods, Inc.; Central Valley Eggs, LLC; Colorado Egg, LLC; Hickman’s Egg Ranch, Inc.; Oakdell Egg Farms, Inc.; Opal Foods LLC; Ritewood, Inc.; and Willamette Egg Farms, LLC. Central Valley Eggs is in Kern County.
Ric Herrera, ProEgg’s CEO, will be overseeing sales and customer relations for the farmers. He anticipates that, by reducing supply shortages, consumers will also see a price reduction.
“I see this model being key to the sustainability of egg producers in this country,” he says. “There are a lot of smaller producers that don’t have the scale of operations to cope with a hit to their production, and a lot of them are facing a decision to leave the industry. It’s a scary, scary thought.”
One new member says his motivation for joining the co-op is that he’s particularly worried about future bird flu outbreaks.
Since the outbreak was detected in February 2022, it’s been deemed the deadliest year for outbreaks in U.S. history. More than 57 million birds in hundreds of commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by it—according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture data. The depopulations at commercial facilities have decreased the domestic egg supply by about 7.5 percent on average each month since the outbreak began.
Ag Alert contributed to this story

NOAA says we are transitioning to El Nino conditions

Californians might swear El Nino is already here after 9 atmospheric river storms swept into the state over the past few weeks. Indeed the sudden switch to extreme and stormy wetness appeared to have surprised forecasters who had been predicting another dry winter. But now NOAA has suggested warming eastern Pacific waters over the next few months means we are moving from La Nina to El Ninio conditions as the year goes on. The pattern could change next fall, not to a strong El Nino but a modest (0.5) level.