Cracking eggs - and prices - this holiday season

Among the many skills for which I particularly admire my mother and my wife is their ability to gracefully crack eggs.

Nimbly holding the white oval in their fingers, they'll tap it once against a bowl's rim and before the sticky yolk spews out, raise the two part shell so all that's inside plops instantly upon the flour. Then with a slight twist of the thumb, half of the shell slips into the other, as if pieces of a matryoshka doll set.

In home economics, I also learned how to crack eggs, except my brownies and omelets usually included some tiny shell fragment. After my army days, I determined that one could literally crush the egg open, and if quick enough with the wrist, the yolk and its white would hit the target - without any shells and without any of the egg's inside sliming one's hand.

It was brutal, but these days so is the price of eggs.

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Since May, the cost of eggs has risen sharply. By November, supermarket prices for Grade A eggs reached a national average of $1.20 a dozen - a third more than a year ago - the Agriculture Department says. Some Boston supermarket chains are charging $1.79 a dozen.

That's sort of good news for Iowa. As America's leading producer of eggs, our state delivers roughly 1 of every 6 of the nation's table eggs.

Driving the prices is a tight supply of eggs and stronger demand. Con-sumers eat more eggs on av-erage than a decade ago.

Consumption tapered beginning in the 1980s when scientists questioned whether eggs contributed to heart problems. Wholesale prices fell dramatically, and some farmers went out of business; the number of egg producers in Johnson County alone fell from 104 in 1992 to 65 in 1997, the most recent year for which the Iowa Agricultural Statistics Service has available numbers.

But when a 1999 Harvard study concluded that a daily egg did not contribute significantly to heart disease, consumers started frying more than just bacon while restaurants offered new breakfast sandwiches featuring eggs. The protein-heavy Atkins and South Beach diets also have gained in popularity, further boosting egg sales. Meanwhile, avian influenza struck European chickens, providing the United States with an opportunity to in-crease its foreign market share.

Iowa's farmers now are churning out 30 million more eggs a month than a year ago.

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The downside for consumers is that higher egg prices will hurt bakeries, restaurants, college cafeterias, public schools and companies that make egg-based products such as mayonnaise and salad dressings. Eggs also are an important ingredient in many easy-to-make food products and baked goods, meaning that consumers can expect to see higher prices at grocery stores.

Because Iowa is a center of egg production, we may be buffered from the most severe increases. Still, chain restaurant prices for dishes often are standard across the nation, so if egg prices remain high, expect to soon pay a little more, even here.

It probably won't be enough of a price hike to keep us home. Though there is something to be said for making one's own omelet or cookies from scratch - assuming you don't have any eggshells in them.

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For the serious minded, the numbers raise a question: Will higher egg prices boost the state's declining rural economies, considering most production facilities are located in economically weak regions, such as Estherville, Lenox and Sioux Center? It certainly will help, but the state's diverse agricultural economy, which shields against a total crash should a lone crop or livestock suffer, also prevents a single crop or livestock from raising prospects too considerably.

Meanwhile, new federal regulations require egg farms to reduce the number of hens per cage; meeting those demands as farmers expand production may offset some of the profit gains.

They might be wise not to.

For the moment, tight demand is proving beneficial; some New England egg producers, for example, say they're being paid the highest prices in half a century.

Overproduction, after all, has been the bane of farmers trying to get a good price for corn, milk and sugar - so much so that the federal government is compelled to subsidize farmers and even pay them to take cornfields and other land out of production.

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Sometimes, when driving and getting hungry for an old-fashioned cake like my mother once made or the Norwegian krumkake my wife stirs up each Christmas, I imagine them at work on their masterpieces: setting out all the ingredients, pouring an unmeasured amount of sugar and melted butter into a bowl, then cracking an egg open over it.

At that point, my mind usually gets stuck in a feedback loop as I ponder the secret of their method: Is it better dexterity? Greater confidence in their abilities? A sixth sense?

Perhaps, like today's consumers, it's simply a more relaxed attitude toward the egg.

(originally published Dec. 14, 2003)