Farmer dumps, donates eggs to protest low prices

MIDDLETOWN, Maryland (AP) -- A Western Maryland farmer said he has dumped or sold at far below cost more than 12,000 eggs this week to dramatize a steep drop in farm prices.

Randy Sowers said he would rather trash the eggs than sell them to a processor for as little as 6 cents a dozen.

"I don't like wasting food," he said, tossing a tray of 30 eggs into a huge manure pit on his egg-and-dairy farm near Middletown. "We're not planning on throwing them away if I can give them away."

Sowers is selling small eggs off his farm for 10 cents a dozen, which he said is 30 cents below his production cost. He said he has sold about 12,000 eggs and dumped 1,200 since beginning his protest Tuesday.

There is scant demand for small eggs, according to the United Egg Producers, a national cooperative based in Atlanta. But even Grade A large eggs, the type favored by consumers, have dropped from 60 cents to 48 cents a dozen nationally since 1998 while retail prices have held fairly steady, spokeswoman Billie Jo Corell said.

Richard Brown, vice president of Urner Barry Publications Inc., a Toms River, N.J., firm that quotes egg prices for the national market, blamed overproduction, especially in the Northeast.

"The whole industry is under a lot of pressure from the corporate farms," Brown said.

Sowers is not dumping large eggs. He said he has a lot of small eggs because many of his 106,000 chickens have not yet grown big enough to produce large eggs.

Brown said throwing away eggs has some logic, since a 1 percent shift in supply can affect the regional price by 5 percent or more. "He may make a difference in his neighborhood," Brown said.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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