The Price of Eggs Here and There

Posted by on December 27, 2024 No comments

[pho­to — 4H Ontario]

I worked on a cou­ple of chick­en farms when I was a teenag­er, so I’ve always kept an eye on the busi­ness. Egg prices have gone up some­what in Cana­da, but not even close to the price ris­es in the U.S. over the same peri­od. They are 16.5% high­er now than they were one year ago — and there is no short­age of them. Canada’s eggs are most­ly pro­duced by fam­i­ly oper­a­tions, while the U.S. is dom­i­nat­ed by large cor­po­ra­tions. The aver­age egg farm in Cana­da has about 25,000 lay­ing hens, while the aver­age “farm” in the U.S. has about two mil­lion. In Cana­da, avian flu has affect­ed %6 of pro­duc­tion, which is less than half of the dis­ease rate in the U.S., most­ly because of the absence of giant cor­po­rate fac­to­ry “farms.” Amer­i­cans pay an arm and a leg for an egg. Cal-Maine Foods is the largest pro­duc­er and dis­trib­u­tor of shell eggs in the U.S., with a total flock of about 42 mil­lion lay­ers. It is trad­ed on the Nas­daq, and has seen its share price soar %45 over the past year. As a rule, things tend to cost more in Cana­da than in the U.S., because the coun­try is huge and thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed, with greater ship­ping dis­tances and high­er costs, so the fact that we aren’t suf­fer­ing short­ages or ridicu­lous price hikes looks to me to have a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion. I see it as a dif­fer­ence between unchecked cor­po­rate greed and inef­fi­cien­cy in the U.S, com­pared to a pro­duc­er-to-cus­tomer ori­ent­ed mar­ket here. The U.S. agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem now much more close­ly resem­bles the col­lec­tivist sys­tem of the old Sovi­et Union than it does any­thing like a “free mar­ket.’ The real eco­nom­ic sys­tem that dom­i­nates the U.S, is best described as “Cor­po­rate Com­mu­nism.” With Trump in the White House, you can expect it to go Full Stalin.

Image of the Month — DECEMBER 2024

Posted by on December 1, 2024 No comments

FILMS — NOVEMBER 2024

Posted by on November 30, 2024 No comments

(Waters 1994) Ser­i­al Mom
(Mack 1930) Night Work
(Neg­ule­sco 1950) The Mudlark
(Wilder 1954) Killers from Space
(Ulmer 1944) Bluebeard
(Boet­tich­er 1953) City Beneath the Sea
(Nel­son 1964) Fate Is the Hunter

First-time listening for NOVEMBER 2024

Posted by on November 30, 2024 No comments

26791. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Piano Con­cer­to #4 in E “Les Adieux”
26792. (Doja Cat) Plan­et Her
26793. (Bil­ly Fury) The Com­plete Collection
26794. (Curved Air) Air Conditioning
26795. (Michael Bolton) Great­est Hits 1985–1995
26796. (Johann Nepo­muk Hum­mel) Piano Con­cer­to #5 in A‑f
26797. (Cass McCombs) Tip of the Sphere 
26798. (Tasaval­lan Pres­i­dent­ti) Live at Kuus­rock Fes­ti­vaali, Oulu 1990
26799. (Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt) Mr. Hurt Goes to Washington

READING — NOVEMBER 2024

Posted by on November 30, 2024 No comments

25335. (Grace Blake­ley) Vul­ture Cap­i­tal­ism ― Cor­po­rate Crimes, Back­door Bailouts, and the 
. . . . . Death of Freedom
25336. (Quinn Slo­bo­di­an) Crack-Up Cap­i­tal­ism ― Mar­ket Rad­i­cals and the Dream of a World 
. . . . . With­out Democracy
25337. (Ben­jamin Isakhan & James Bar­ry) Iraqi and Syr­i­an Respons­es to Her­itage Destruction 
. . . . . under the Islam­ic State [arti­cle]
25338. (Wayne E. Lee) The Cut­ting-Off Way ― Indige­nous War­fare in East­ern North America, 
. . . . . 1500–1800
25339. (Andrew Du, et al) Pat­tern and Process in Hominin Brain Size Evo­lu­tion Are Scale-
. . . . . depen­dent [arti­cle]
Read more »

Image of the Month

Posted by on November 1, 2024 No comments

Karlovy Vary, Czechia

FILMS — OCTOBER 2024

Posted by on October 31, 2024 No comments

(Lumet 1957) 12 Angry Men
(Dod­son 1993) Quest of the Delta Knights
(Pow­ell & Press­burg­er 1944) A Can­ter­bury Tale
(Aldrich 1964) Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte
(Thomas 1959) The 39 Steps
(For­man 1984) Amadeus [director’s cut]
(Demme 1993) Philadelphia
(Wilder 1960) The Apartment
(Spiel­berg 1989) Indi­ana Jones and the Last Crusade

First-time listening for OCTOBER 2024

Posted by on October 31, 2024 No comments

26781. (Hayes Car­ll) Trou­ble In Mind
26782. (Rustin Man) Out of Sea­son [w. Beth Gibbons]
26783. (Buoys) Gold­en Classics
26784. (Ben Howard) Noon­day Dream 
26785. (Lana Del Rey) Lust For Life
26786. (Leon Bridges) Good Thing
26787. (Kataklysm) Meditations
26788. (Eivør) Trøl­labundin [with Dan­ish Radio Big Band]
26789. (Bil­lie Eil­ish) Don’t Smile at Me EP
26790. (Mod­e­se­lek­tor) Mod­e­se­lek­tor Vol. 04

READING — OCTOBER 2024

Posted by on October 31, 2024 No comments

25222. (Dan Davies) Lying for Mon­ey: How Leg­endary Frauds Reveal the Work­ings of the World
25223. (Zek Faux) Num­ber Go Up ― Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Stag­ger­ing Fall
25224. (John Ken­neth Gal­braith) The Great Crash, 1929
25225. (Chuan-Chao Wang, et al) Ancient Human Genome-wide Data from a 3000=year Interval 
. . . . . in the Cau­ca­sus Cor­re­sponds with Eco-geo­graph­ic Regions [arti­cle]
25226. (Andrew Collins) Kara­han Tepe ― Its Three Inter­con­nect­ed, Rock-cut Struc­tures Examined 
. . . . . [arti­cle]
25227. (Ben­jamin McKen­zie) Easy Mon­ey ― Cryp­tocur­ren­cy, Casi­no Cap­i­tal­ism, and the Gold­en Age 
. . . . . of Fraud
Read more »

Image of the Month

Posted by on October 1, 2024 No comments