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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Why do you think alfalfa is low value? Should hay the primary input for milk and secondary input for beef and eggs be scarcer, more expensive? $7 for a dozen eggs is bad enough right now.

I didn't say anything about should, I said alfalfa was low value. A quick google says that alfalfa prices are about $240 per ton, and this is considered scandalously high with the long-term average price sub-$200. Wheat is $7.40 per bushel, which works out at about $270 per ton. Most crops worth irrigating are worth more than wheat, not less. Wikipedia says that alfalfa is 18% of California's irrigation water and 4% of the farm revenue - also consistent with low value.

I have no idea why eggs in California are $7 a dozen - it looks like they are quite a bit cheaper on the east coast. In the UK we pay about $3 a dozen, and our hens don't eat subsidised alfalfa. Does the $7 include reparations for black hens or something equally stupid?

Eggs in the US in general underwent a massive spike from a flu outbreak that wiped out a bunch of hens. The point of comparison is that minor absolute value but high percentage increases in price on common, high volume items like eggs greatly affect the day to day of consumers. Adding on to the current scarcity/pricing concerns for those items seems ill-advised to me but I'm economically insulated from it and will probably profit regardless. Alfalfa is a major hay crop for boosting productivity of dairy cows lowering the costs of milk among other uses for it in feeds. Constrain that crop and you'll have downstream effects on prices of things people care about like milk.