Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What is going on with the eggs, man?
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Yeah, prices are going up. December was the highest price on record. There's like, it's, it's getting crazy. We're getting really real with you here. We're struggling with this from a business perspective. We have a business both as a farm and as a meat market, and we sell eggs, we produce eggs on the farm, and we sell eggs. So from a business perspective, what should we be doing?
[00:00:34] Speaker A: We've been watching this crisis going on here in the United States for the last couple of months, and we realized something the other day.
We don't really know why food prices are the way that they are, and most consumers don't. And so we decided, let's look into it.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So we'll look into both what's going on with egg prices and how is a commodity like eggs actually priced.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Duster Mud podcast. I'm Shelly.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I'm rich.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Hey. Here on the Duster Mud podcast, we like to talk about food freedom and farming. And today I think we're going to cover a little bit of all three. Again, we're going to talk about egg production.
So the farming aspect of it, food, what it's costing us as consumers, and does that affect our freedom to be able to even get the food that we want and how we should be going about that? So welcome to the podcast. Let's dive into. Hey, what is going on with the eggs, man?
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah, prices are going up. December was the highest price on record. There's like, it's, it's getting crazy. We just saw, I think it was Waffle House breakfast chain that is adding a 50 cent per egg fee to all of their egg orders.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Wow. So I guess you can still go get some cheap pancakes or a cheap waffle, but if you want eggs, which are the thing in the store that's good for you, you're going to have to pay a little extra.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Wow. Well, at Air to Ground Meats, we have a small amount of eggs that we sell from our farm and we, we don't have. We don't sell many. We have. What do we sell? Probably five dozen, like a day. We're. We're small. Less right now.
We did get some more chickens. We have more pullets on the way that will be laying here, especially when spring hits. Because with the store, we knew we needed to up our egg production, so we did.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So, like, what's going on? Why are the egg prices doing what they're doing?
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Like the.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Biggest factor is hpai high Path. Avian influenza. The bird flu.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yep. And when the, in the big large hen houses, when they have a flock or one bird in the flock test positive for the virus. Is it a virus? Yeah, it's a virus. When they test positive for that, they're going to call. The USDA is going to come in and cull the entire flock.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: And nights thousands of birds.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: I used to work waste treatment and we were looking at putting in a waste treatment system at a large egg producer in South Florida. And that particular company had 1.2 million birds on site. They had 12 houses with a hundred thousand birds in each house.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Wow, that's a lot of birds.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: So whenever this happens and they have to call these hens, most of it's happening with the egg laying birds. When they have to call all of these hens, you don't have that egg production back for months.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the, one of the articles I was looking at today said that because there are so many birds being killed, the replacement birds, they're being like 18 months before they can get the.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Birds and then it's going to take them another six months before they're laying.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: An egg.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: That's right. Because like, you know, to buy 40 or 50 birds, hash race can handle that, but I need, I need to replace my 1.2 million birds. Hatcheries can't just do that next week. Right. Like they have to plan for that. So you're looking at, for these large flocks, a year to a year and a half before they can replace the flock and then another four to six months after that is when you start getting.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: I had a customer the other day ask me why isn't it, why don't we see it affecting chicken as much as the eggs? And I'm like, look, you can replace an industrial model chicken, Cornish cross, you can replace that in weeks.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: If they have to call those. If something happens in that market that you're talking six weeks and you've got chicken back up and going again. But when you're talking about something that takes six months before it's doing the thing that you're wanting it to do, then you're going to have some, some lag time.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: And a shortage.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: And you know, when your major producers are the ones that are hit, then, you know, and we've seen some, some stories about backyard flocks being affected as well. But a backyard flock will affect a family where the major producers. Now you're affecting millions of families.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Just Just due to sheer numbers.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
What are you. So we mentioned the bird flu causing it, the culling is causing it. And then was there other outside factors that are playing into these prices?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the price increases. You've also got a number of states, I believe eight or nine. I think California led the whole charge. But there's now a requirement for layers to be cage free.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Ah, right.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: So you, you know the, the facility that I am most familiar with, although it was, you know, a couple decades ago.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: But they had seven to eight birds per cage and the cages were just stacked on top of each other is how you got to that hundred thousand birds in one house.
So if you change that model to require a cage free model, just the sheer size of the facility is vastly increased.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Not just a little bit overall management, just the management is now I'm all four cage free. I want my chickens out running around for sure. I grow my own eggs because that's the way I want to. That's the eggs that I want to eat and the agriculture that we want to participate in. But whenever you're talking about growing food for millions of people, then it, and now you're forced into a cage free situation. It's it. The cost is going to go up.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Period. Just because, just management.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Maybe the cost should be higher. Oh, maybe.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Maybe the chickens shouldn't be raised in a situation like that. Right. Like I'm not passing a judgment on it. No, just saying it is a reason. Another reason. And these rules just recently kicked in. So you've got, you're already losing millions and millions of birds to the, you know, culling due to bird flu and you have a new requirement for cage free.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: With the rise in prices. The thing that it got us thinking about is what are our prices? How are prices set at the larger scale? What is the true cost of food? Like we have all of these questions kind of banging around in our heads as you know, one day, months ago, before all of this, I got a guy walking in from the farmer's market, a former farmer's market customer. You know, wow, you're getting that much for eggs? Well, yes, it's a store and their eggs and well, we were selling them for $2 a dozen. Okay, well these are different. We feed a different kind of feed and everything. So the price of eggs are really subjected. It's really judgy. You know, it seems that it's. There's this litmus on the, with eggs and what people really think about the cost of food.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: And I Think that eggs in particular really do vary based on where you are. We're in, we are in like smack dab in the middle of rural America, like, you know, in the, in the Ozarks here. And there are a lot of people that grow their own eggs and a lot of them get their pullets or chicks from neighbors that hatch them and they feed them chicken scraps. And so to them an egg should basically be close to free. And there are other people in large cities who have no idea that egg comes from a chicken. You know, like there's just, there's like this wide range of, of expectation as far as eggs go, I think. And I believe based on where you are, you would see different expectations for how much an egg should be costing. I think.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So whenever we're pricing our stuff, that's the biggest struggle. When, when you're dealing with food and when you're pricing your, your goods that you have, then we got to asking the question, well, we talked about beef last week and the price of beef and the futures and all of that. And I'm like, well, who decides the price of eggs on a national basis? I know what we can make up for our small little situation. But at the national level, who is deciding the actual price of eggs? And do consumers know that information?
I mean, I don't know. I don't know. And I'm kind of in the space and we don't really like, wait, well, who's setting those prices?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a, actually on eggs, a lot of factors in play. It does have to do with the cost and that drives things like if there are cage free mandates, the cost of producing that egg goes up.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: The, the culling of the flocks for the most part, if your flock wasn't culled, your costs haven't changed.
Right. So you didn't have an increase in cost.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: But yet eggs are, the price of eggs is still going up. Eggs are still more expensive and that's due to supply and demand.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: So in food, it, it seems or it to be true that there are multiple economic forces that happen. So you do have the supply and demand factor, but you do have cost of production factor. When the grains are up and when corn is up and when there's drought and things in your cost of production goes up, the cost of the egg is going to go up.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: And, or if, if that has stabilized but now you've got a different problem and that's a supply problem. So there are multiple forces happening on food production. It isn't like, well, let's discuss a few other goods that we kind of also compare and in our purchases outside of food and add that to the conversation.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: So we're, we're, we're getting really real with you here. We're struggling with this. From a business perspective. We have a business both as a farm and as a meat market and we sell eggs, we produce eggs on the farm and we sell eggs. So what? From a business perspective, what should we be doing?
And it's just an interesting conversation.
For one thing, we have people who come in to our store where we sell GMO free pasture based grass only small batch that we raised food and we not often, but also not uncommon hear comments like, well, I can buy that at Walmart for half that price or way less than what you're selling it for. And it is, it's just an interesting comparison that they're drawing because it's food, the expectation is that it's cheap and also that it's all the same. And so like I'm, for me, I wonder, I guess if customers walk into a Bentley dealership and say, well I can get that same car at the Hyundai dealership for way less than that.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: And right.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Like, I think the answer is no. I think if you walk into a Bentley dealership you're expecting a higher quality product and it probably cost more and there's like, there's more everything, right? Because it's a luxury item, hand sewn, right?
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Like leather seats.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: But like, but my eggs are hand fed and the feed is fermented and I drove to get their GMO free food and they're living on my land roaming around like, you know, like it is not the same as that company that I saw where chickens are piled on top of each other and eggs are rolling out of the cage every day.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: You know how many people, humans were even involved with that process? The entire thing, from start to finish, the entire thing.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: There were, I believe it was either seven or eight humans in that they were producing a million eggs a day.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Right?
That's gargantuan. With just a few people at touch points.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: It's just this, there's this thing that we're wrestling with and so cost inflation affects us just like it does everyone, especially with a small business, right? Like the cost of all, everything in.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: The whole Everga world has gone up. Right, right, right, right.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: And yet when we raised our prices from $5 a dozen for GMO free pasture based hand raised fed fermented food Hand washed.
I bought the carton, I bought the sticker that goes onto the carton. Like all of that. We went from $5 a dozen to $6 a dozen. We got a comment says, well, I bet your cost didn't go up.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Yeah, probably doesn't cost anything that more than it did two weeks ago. But. Okay.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: So.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: It makes us think, right.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Like what's the mentality behind that comment?
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a, there's an expectation obviously that food be priced based on cost alone.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: And so that's your bottom up model.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: That's the bottom up model. Right. But. But there's also supply and demand in the equation for costing an item for the price of that item.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So the supply of what we are producing in our local area is very low.
Sure.
The demand currently we can't. We sell out daily, every day.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: We do sell out daily, every day.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Whatever goes in, dozen eggs we take in is sold.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: So from a supply and demand perspective, we're charging way too little.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Yes. So when we were looking into it, we found where.
Who prices these things? Right.
Where is it set and where are I prices in relation to what the national price is? And we found a couple of references that are resources that could, can help us set our prices that we didn't know about literally until today.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah. One of them, I, I had never heard of, never even heard of the Earner Berry Egg Index.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: And it, it is a thing and it's sort of reports on what's going on with the egg market.
But it, a lot of people look to that Earner Berry Index to set.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Their prices and what that does and it shows you just like we talked about with the price of beef and everything and in the futures and whatnot. Like right now, as of today, we were looking at the graph and the nationwide price wholesale for a dozen eggs is $6.51 wholesale.
That's what they're having to buy and then maybe mark it up a little bit so that they can have a business or a lot of. Now a lot of retailers.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: It's another thing we learned. We learned you've heard of eggs being a loss leader and they get people in the door and like.
But that's actually happening right now. There are retailers that are selling eggs for less than what it costs them wholesale because it gets customers in the door and then they still buy all of the other things. So they're willing to take, so they're.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Taking a, so they're taking a significant loss on their eggs. But they're making it up on other products.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: And what that does is it really hides the cost of food, you know, to the consumer. To me as the mom or the grocery shopper. Well, eggs are 3.99. They're 3.99. No, actually the eggs were $6.51 wholesale.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: And they're taking a loss in order to get you in the door.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
So what does a small producer to do with that, you know? Yeah, Well, I mean, we just have to. The cost is the cost and the price is the price. And so setting our prices a little bit different mindset, you know, but we still have to battle the mindset of the consumer.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
If you look, let's take the price of gasoline. If you look at the price of gasoline, it fluctuates daily. Right. And it could be $2 a gallon or $4 or 5, 6, $7 a gallon. And we all just sort of deal with it. We complain or we rejoice, but I mean, there's nothing else that you can do about the price of gas. It, it goes up and down based on supply and demand. Right. Like the, the cost of producing that gallon of gasoline does not fluctuate that quickly on the, on the daily. Right. That is a supply and demand. OPEC is pumping oil. You know, the cost goes down.
The, the interesting thing is the large stores do that. Egg, Egg prices are changing.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: And that's, you know, people up, they come down, you know, and, and a lot of the fuss that you're seeing on right now over egg prices is prices are going up. Right.
And, and there's an expectation that those like us, the price would not go up.
So that I come back to that again, like on the, for the large, the grocery stores and, and the chains, the, the prices just do, they fluctuate all the time. You, you really never know what the price of eggs is going to be when you walk in the store. It's going to be whatever it is today.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: And yet the customer that you were talking about is talking about a price that they saw eight months ago at a farmer's market, and they're wondering why your price is different in an accusatory tone.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Right. Like not just why is it different, but you are now charging more. Why?
Well, so there's this weirdness. And the thing that I think that we're struggling with is do we, do we set our prices based on supply and demand? Do we follow the model that all of the other egg sellers are, are following?
Right. Because they're Buying eggs wholesale at a price that is the contract price from the big farms and all of these things. Right.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: But we're vertically integrated. We make the egg, we package the egg, we sell the egg.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Based on market value.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Is. It is market value. The value of an egg right now is $6.51. Or the dozen eggs, $6.51. From a nation nationwide perspective, wholesale, we're currently retailing hours for $6. This may change, but like we're currently retailing hours for $6.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: So as a business, we are losing money.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Potential.
Now, there's a lot of factors that roll into that. We're in a. I've already said we're in a very rural area. We're in a small town. Can the consumer base support that? Right. Like there's. Are you going to lose customers because they feel like you're price gouging? Like there's, there's a, there's a psychology to it as well. Well, yeah, you know, you're just following Walmart.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Sure. Well, if we followed Walmart, we'd follow them right out of business. So.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: But right now, like I, I haven't looked at Walmart, but right now it is very possible that our, our prices for a dozen eggs are less than Walmart.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: I know they're less for the equal quality.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: It is for equal quality.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: I'm talking about baseline. Yeah, we're probably not far off baseline.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Right. You're probably right. I have to look at those.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: So that like when, when we got into this, when we left the Department of Defense and left being a fighter pilot and a colonel and you know, all those things, all of these things and we're going to go farming. This was not ever in my mind.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: The. How do you, how do you set a price for a dozen eggs? And what is, you know, from a fall small farm perspective, where does supply and demand play?
[00:23:28] Speaker A: And you mentioned ethics a minute ago. Back to the mindset, though. And our mindset and dealing. We are consumers also on some level and dealing with the consumer mindset of the cheap eggs and food being cheap. Right. So you have the, the business owner mindset coupled with dealing with the mindset of food is expected in this country to be cheap and fast. And Big Ag and US Government subsidies have kind of created this monster almost of the consumer not really understanding the true cost of food because it is hidden in the subsidies through Big Ag. And we've come to expect something that I don't even think is real anymore. There is no such thing as Cheap food, actually, yeah, you.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: You mentioned ethics, and I think it is a. A false ethic.
This is. This to me, is false because there's an. An ethical expectation that food is cheap. And if food, if you're not presenting cheap food, then you are obviously unethical. And I think that that is. I think that's absolutely false.
I don't.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Is it fair what you're charging isn't fair there?
[00:24:58] Speaker B: What I'm charging.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: The mindset of that.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the other thing is when, when consumers come in and demand things like what you're charging isn't fair, they're demanding a change. And that. That consumer has no idea what my cost and overhead is.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Sure, right. No idea.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: You have no idea what's fair. To me as the producer, as the retailer. That statement is 100% false. And there's a false ethical thing. I think that, you know, you are being unethical because you're charging a high price. Maybe I'm trying to pay my bills by charging a high price.
Maybe I'm actually trying to cover my costs for producing a product that is more like a Bentley than a Hyundai.
Right. And there's this. To me, it's false ethics. It's like a.
And, and you, you mentioned the, the expectation that it's cheap, but that expectation that it's cheap leads to a false sense of ethics that if it's not cheap, somehow you're being unethical when maybe that's not it at all.
Maybe you're trying to pay your bills.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: And the person that's making that judgment has no clue what your bills are.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Hey, I'm all about finding a bargain fund wherever you can, you know, find the, Find the food you want, find the bargain you can. And, you know, I'm. I'm all about it. You know, stay within your budget.
But I don't go into. I don't go into a store, and especially not in Western countries, and you don't get to bargain. It is what it is.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: No, but now we've been to places throughout the world, and I learned this in Africa. In African markets, the cost of an item is a negotiation between you and the person selling that item. And potentially the two of you can come together in agreement on what that item is worth. And whatever you paid for it is what it is worth. And if you paid half what I paid, that doesn't mean that you got a good deal and I didn't. It meant that y'all came to an agreement on what it was worth. And that was a different agreement than, than I came to.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Right. And so there's a, there's a diff. The way we do things isn't necessarily the way that it. Right or wrong. And it's certainly not done this way throughout the entirety of the world.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: No, but it is.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: The expectation here is that when you walk into a store, the price is set and you pay that price. And you know, the, the struggle, I think is. And what is that price? How do you set it?
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: You know, as a small producer, are we bound to only set price by what our costs are or do we have the freedom to follow the supply and demand curve just like everyone else?
[00:28:08] Speaker A: It's a struggle.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: It's a struggle.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: It's a very messy, I don't know, messy feel and conversation about our. Are the farmers and the retailers gouging the consumer? It's if you don't have enough eggs for everybody to eat a dozen eggs a day, then you don't have enough eggs for everybody to eat a dozen eggs a day.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: You know, I mean, we don't have that right now.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: No, it's a struggle. It's very. And it's, it's an interesting, like as you start diving into exercise. An interesting exercise. And if you say, look, this is a business and we are going to make business decisions and there is no nice in business.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: The thing is though, for me, one decision, especially being the fields person, is it's food. And we want, we farm because we want us and others to have accessible, good food, have access to good food, and we want them to have it in. If I could, I would just give it away, you know, But I can't. We can't. No, not just us. No one can. And because there's so much cost to.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: It, sort of, with the exception of the United States government that does give away food. And then that leads to the expectation that food in general is cheap. Not just that it doesn't cost much, but it is just a cheap thing. It cheapens the entire concept of food because it is just given away.
So many children graduate from high school.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Having never paid for breakfast or lunch. Breakfast or lunch. Right.
[00:29:54] Speaker B: Which means that food is cheap, not that it doesn't cost much, it's just cheap. It's not worth much.
So there's this expectation. And then if you are bucking that expectation, then you are unethical, immoral because food is cheap.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: But that gets into an even messier subject and you get into the food as a right.
Cheap food is a Right. It's been a right my whole life because I have been able to have cheap food my whole life and it is, it. I am entitled to have that in my life. And so whenever the food becomes a mindset that the food is a right, then whenever the producer doesn't participate in that mindset, that's when it gets real messy.
Real, real, real messy.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Because we have, we have decided as a nation kind of without stating it, the food is a human right.
Without stating it through our financial actions, through the things like the farm bill, I believe it speaks volumes and says people are going to be taken care of.
Yeah, right.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: And I don't disagree with all of that. I'm. We're just pointing out the problems.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: We are one of only, I think, two countries in the entire world that does not have food as a basic human right in our constitution.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: If you have food as a basic human right, you're going to have to change your entire food production models.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: So, like, I'm not, I'm not saying we should, but like, it's not, it's not specified like the right to free speech or, you know, like, right and not a specified right in the constitution. But I believe that you are correct in saying that there is an expectation that it is a, a human right.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Right. And you know, it's a messy, messy, messy. Being that it is so messy. And there are no easy answers to really big problems like this.
What are some of the things that we can do? What are some things that you can do? And in, we can't fix the whole system, but man, we can make changes within ourselves, within our homes. We can make some changes and take some actions that would benefit not only us but the food production system. Right?
[00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. This, this is one. Like, I, I don't, I don't have an answer. I, the, you know, support your local farmer is typically our answer. I don't know that that's going to get you cheaper food, though. Like, if, if the, if a person's goal is I want to pay less for food, I'm not sure what the call to action there is.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Like, I don't find that.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: I think an overall mindset shift from food is cheap to food is the basis of human health.
And by cheap, again, I'm not talking about cost, I'm just talking about it's a throwaway, it's cheap.
If the mindset changed to food is the foundation, then I think the cost of food could vary based on the potential nutritional value, value of the food.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Real Food having real value. Right.
[00:34:00] Speaker B: And then someone could walk into the store and say, wow, you've got a pasture based grass only, whatever. I bet that your ground beef has a higher nutritional value than the cheaper ground beef down there. I understand why it costs more. I understand why you're charging more.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Right.
And the eggs too, you know.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Nice big orange oat yolks versus pale yellow. You can tell the nutrition level. I mean, you could just. It's fairly visible that the value is in the nutrition of the, of the item. Supporting regenerative farms like ours and those popping up around the nation, people getting back to growing food in a more sustainable way and getting away from the Big Ag model.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Is something that we can actually take action.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: And that helps swing the.
The whole mindset behind how food is grown and the value goes up again.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Because what we're doing through land matters.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Also.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Right. And we talked about that last week. That the hidden costs are places in like environmental impacts and such.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
And you know, at the end of the day, we vote with our dollar, with what happens in the food system. Where we put our money is what gets supported, gets produced.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: I mean, if you support, if you support small farm, small farm stays in business.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: You know, if you support Big Ag, Big ag's bolstered.
It's really simple. That's the way, that's the way economy works. You find that smaller farmer and support them and keep those dollars local.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: I love what Will Harris says about this from White Oak Pastures. He says it is not a regenerative model, which his is way bigger than ours. But that regenerative model is not scalable to feed the entire nation, but it is replicable. You can replicate it multiple times over and over and over again throughout all of the states and all of the areas in the states. And now you start feeding people. Right. It's not that. Well, I need this one farm to grow, to be Big Ag again. You know, I just, I need to be able to replicate this. And the way that it becomes replicable, like the way that that happens is by supporting that farm. Then somebody else says, wow, I could do that too. And they're actually being able to make it work.
So they now they do it.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Replicate. Which is what we're trying to do is just replicate that model somebody like.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Will has already done.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. We're not inventing anything. Just. Just coming alongside of warriors in this space that have taken on a formidable opponent like David versus Goliath.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: You know, in the in agriculture. You're.
And it's. It's. It is a David versus Goliath.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: It really, really huge.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
So I'm interested. Should we raise our egg prices?
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Should we?
We. We're. We're selling out, so that's a good thing, I guess.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: What are your thoughts? Not you. You.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Yeah, let us know. Let us know in the comments. What are the egg prices in your area and what are you seeing local farms doing in your area? Have they people like us? What are they. What do you. What are you guys out there seeing?
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is. Which is more important is business and succeeding as a business and making a profit as a business. Is that more important or is the ethics of.
Of food offerings the more important?
[00:38:20] Speaker A: That's good. That's really good. This was a heavy conversation.
Yeah.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: But we like heavy. And that's cool. And we know you guys do, too. We like to think about these things. And we are concerned about our food supply. We're concerned about your food supply, and we're all about getting all of us onto a system that is healthy and that is sustainable and. And we can all.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: That's the important part, though, is that it has to be sustainable. And if the. If you can't get a. A price for your product that allows you to sustain, then the model is not sustainable.
Right.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: So, like, there has to be a business aspect to this. Has to be.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: You're right.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: I just don't know how much.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: Right.
Well, thank you guys for hanging out with us again today. And until next time. Bye, y'all.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Bye, y'all.
