CEO IOWA EGG COUNCIL | CEO NORTH CENTRAL POULTRY ASSOCIATION
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Mindy Larsen’s life slowly changed from beef and pigs to eggs and poultry. “I’m learning about eggs and poultry myself because our family farm did not have poultry or eggs, but it included certified Angus beef,” Larsen told American Farmer Owner from her office in Urbandale, Iowa.
Her family’s farm is in Marne, a southwest Iowa town with a few more than 100 residents. Her new job (jobs, actually) makes her focus on hundreds of millions of people.
Since July, Marne has served as the CEO of the Iowa Egg Council and the North Central Poultry Association. Their purposes are different: The Iowa Egg Council provides research and promotion for the egg industry. The North Central Poultry Association (which represents Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri) can advocate through lobbying.
RELATED: The Des Moines Business Record profiled Mindy Larsen in December, where she explained that work ethic wasn’t the only important trait that she learned on the family farm. Read that story here.
Education, advocacy, and lobbying are huge for Larsen these days. Consumers are angry about the price of eggs. Businesses that depend on eggs are, too.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reported that a dozen Grade A large eggs averaged $2.11 a decade ago. The most recent report showed that the price had nearly doubled to $4.15.
But a closer look at the numbers shows that there were several different trends within the decade.
Egg prices fell to $1.20 in June 2019. Months later, COVID hit. Inflation took hold. And highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) then brought the most serious pain to prices.
In June 2019, months before we were inundated with the weight of COVID 19’s crush on our lives, eggs sold for $1.20. They peaked at $4.83 in January 2023.
HPAI has caused the destruction of tens of millions of birds over the past few years. It adds up quickly. One example: when last May the virus struck a poultry operation in Sioux Couty, Iowa, it forced producers to cull 4.2 million birds.
Iowa is the nation’s top egg producing state.
Just this week, agriculture officials in Indiana announced that a confirmed HPAI case in Seymour will result in the depopulation of 2.8 million chickens.
The Daily Journal in Franklin, Indiana, has details about what the workers at the egg operation noticed that resulted in the positive tests for HPAI. Read that here.
If HPAI has resulted in depopulation of 75 million egg layers since 2022, and a bird lays 300 eggs per year, that potentially reduces egg production by 2.25 billion annually. That is a rough calculation, but it underscores the immense challenges for the industry and for consumers.
It is a significant strain on the marketplace. “When you're unfortunately having to destroy birds, that's just destroying your supply,” Larsen said. “And it destroys it immediately. There are not those hens to be laying the eggs. But then there's a waiting period and a cleaning period and biosecurity.”
Replenishing the birds takes time, extending the suffering. But new cases of HPAI keep coming, which adds yet another hurdle.
Larsen – remember, one of her roles as a CEO tasks her with marketing the value of eggs – points out that eggs’ nutritional benefits keep demand high as Americans look for protein sources.
“If you think about it, eggs,” Larsen said, “…compared to other types of proteins, are still a good value product. And so, their demand just continues to get stronger and stronger, which is a positive thing in general. But when you have this huge reduction in the supply and then a continued ramp up in demand, it has just caused an excess on prices.”
And like nearly every other industry, egg production has also carried the burden of inflation. “Labor costs, transportation costs, packaging costs…the marketing costs…every single thing that Americans are concerned about is increasing. That's also a portion of the price of eggs that's increasing.”
LEARN MORE: Mindy Larsen originally envisioned a legal career, likely as an agricultural lawyer. Find out how her background on the farm shaped her visions for the future in this article from the Atlantic News Telegraph in Atlantic, Iowa.
Add it up and this agricultural leader in her first year in the new roles has a lot to unscramble. “It’s a big problem right now, and our egg producers are not pleased with it. They're having a very stressful time about it and trying to produce this product. And it's also been stressful for the consumer that's had to pay more.”
The USDA expects egg prices to rise another 20% this year, largely because of HPAI reducing supply.
