Rising demand for local farms’ eggs amid soaring egg prices

CHARLOTTE, NC – As the country deals with an ongoing bird flu outbreak, Deep Roots farm in Charlotte is seeing a boom in business for their eggs. 

“We’re getting more interest and more customers, which means our eggs sell out pretty quickly at the farmer’s market,” Cheri Jzar said. 

Cheri Jzar said their flock of chickens have not been infected with bird flu and with the recent hike in egg prices the demand for her eggs at local farmers markets has increased. 

“So because people feel the pinch at the grocery store, they look for alternatives. So then they reach out to a small farm like ours. So we are getting lots of calls, more calls than we’ve gotten before,” Jzar said. 

Jzar said they’ve had to increase their flock of chickens to keep up with the demand. 

“Last year we had about 85 birds. Now on the farm we have 150. So we’re producing more eggs to take to market.” 

Matt Cabana, owner of The Accidental Baker said he is also looking to farms for eggs for his gluten free bakery. 

“All the eggs that we use are farm raised. We don’t use any cage eggs or cage chicken eggs,” Cabana said.  

Cabana said many other bakeries are now looking to farms for their eggs because of the shortage and higher prices. 

“The price of the farm-raised eggs are almost lower than the cage eggs. So a lot of people are starting to order them now so that does affect our supply because we’ve already ordered those and we already had been using those eggs and now other people are trying to use them too. So it makes it a little more competitive to get them,” Cabana said. 

The Trump administration plans to spend $1 billion to combat bird flu and, ultimately, bring down prices. 

In the meantime Cabana said he won’t be raising prices  for his customers and he’s optimistic the  administration’s efforts will bring egg prices down. 

“I just keep hoping that everything gets back to normal,” Cabana said.