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Feb 9 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
1. Seems like everyone is complaining about egg prices on my FB page. Why now and not a few months ago? I have no idea. But if you are interested in a great post on what is driving egg prices see this from @JaysonLusk jaysonlusk.com/blog/2023/1/27…
@JaysonLusk 2. Jayson has the lowdown on egg prices in this chart. Yes, egg prices have gone up a lot lately.
@JaysonLusk 3. Here is the main culprit: Avian bird flu deaths in the laying flock. Jayson shows how this can exaplain most of the price increase
@JaysonLusk 4. Here is what US egg production looks like. Again, mainly driven by #BirdFlu. Also, high feed costs the last couple of years have to also be contributing.

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Scott Irwin Profile picture
Feb 9
1. Soapbox alert. Going to step up here. A little background. There is a growing chorus of ag economists (all of whom I respect greatly) who argue that US ag has experienced a productivity slowdown in the last couple of decades or so. Some attribute it to climate change.
2. But then I look at trends in output efficiency like pigs per litter and crop yield per acre and they just keep going up and up and up.
3. If anything, the yield trend per acre for some major US crops like corn and soybeans has likely ticked UP in the last decade or so. These observations seem to contradict the productivity slowdown story.
Read 6 tweets
Scott Irwin Profile picture
Feb 9
1. Here is something really remarkable in US ag that almost no one talks about. Well, except on FDD, of course. Incredibly interesting FDD article from Michael Langemeier of Purdue on pigs per litter trend in US farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2023/02/long-t…
2. Here is the data on pigs per litter in the US going back 30 years. In simplest terms, each sow (female pig) in the US now produces 11 pigs per litter and produced only about 8 per litter 30 years ago. +38%!!
3. This productivity gain leads to some truly remarkable statements in the article: "We have increased U.S. swine production by 68 percent by increasing the number of sows by only 4.4%."
Read 5 tweets
Scott Irwin Profile picture
Feb 8
1. A big topics of discussion in ag today is the renewable diesel boom. I have been working on a project for much of the past year to dig into the economic drivers of the boom for the USDA. Very excited to announce the first fruits of the project! farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2023/02/biodie…
2. We are writing a series of FDD articles related to the renewable diesel boom. The first one released today looks at the technical production processes for FAME biodiesel and renewable diesel. You would be surprised how difficult it was to dig this out, especially for RD.
3. FAME biodiesel and renewable diesel are both types of biomass-based diesel and are often confused. The production processes used to make the fuels are radically different and the resulting fuels are very different chemically.
Read 7 tweets
Scott Irwin Profile picture
Feb 7
1. Recommended Reading for the Day: Robots for Week Control. Another outstanding read from @ASmithUCD. Post is interesting from several perspectives. Here is a pic of the robot weeders Aaron is studying. Obviously a big deal in vegetable production. agdatanews.substack.com/p/robots-for-w… Image
@ASmithUCD 2. Besides a glimpse at very cool new ag tech, I found the discussion of the economic impact of new tech to be the most interesting. Really like this "layered" way of thinking about the economic impact of new tech. Image
@ASmithUCD 3. This may be a helpful way to think about benefits of precision ag technology out here in the Corn Belt. Study after study finds it does not pay, but farmers continue to adopt the technology. I think layer 2 may be the reason. Something to think about. Image
Read 5 tweets
Scott Irwin Profile picture
Feb 6
1. Recommended Reading for the Day: Terrific post on the impact of automation in ag by @ASmithUCD. Such a basic point of economics but so widely misunderstood. Machines will never cause mass unemployment for the population as a whole.
@ASmithUCD 2. We have nothing to fear in general from machines and automation based on a long history. There will always be new jobs created (that we could not imagine) to replace the old lost ones due to automation. Market economies are job machines in the long run.
@ASmithUCD 3. However, there are also always winners and losers in the automation transitions in specific industries. This will happen in ag as another wave of automation sweeps through it. Manual labor will be replaced by robotic machines over team. Heck, even tractor drivers.
Read 6 tweets
Scott Irwin Profile picture
Aug 9, 2022
1. Recommended Reading for the Day: This really is a "wow" article. In 10 minutes or reading you can learn alot here about organic vs. conventional farming returns. Thanks Mike Langemeier! #boilerup
2. An awfully lot of opinion out there about organic vs. conventional crop returns. Mike has assembled invaluable comparisons from the same FINBIN database. Here are five-year average yields. Hits to organic yields are obvious and big for corn and soybeans.
3. Now lets turn to gross revenue per unit, or price. Some eye-popping organic premiums here across the board. Remember these are not theoretical. Based on actual farm return data. Organic corn premium was almost $5 per bushel!
Read 10 tweets

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