Egg farms in California produced 323 million eggs in May, a drop of 16 percent from the same month in 2014, says the Chicken and Eggs report. Production also was sharply lower in April. “Farmers are decreasing their hen numbers to comply with Proposition 2, the 2008 initiative that set minimum cage sizes,” says Capital Press, based on interviews with industry officials. “Rather than spending millions of dollars to build new facilities, many farmers are raising fewer birds in their existing structures to comply with the minimum cage requirements under Proposition 2.”
While production is down, egg prices in California are up. Prices nationwide are affected by the avian influenza epidemic, which killed 11 percent of the hens that lay table eggs, and the drought has affected every facet of California agriculture.
“But farmers mostly blame the drop in production on the requirement that each egg-laying hen have 116 square inches in a cage to spread its wings,” says the newspaper. As the most populous state, California relies on egg farmers in other states to help meet the demand for eggs. Out-of-state eggs must be produced under conditions that satisfy the California standard to qualify for entry.