Trying to buy eggs but finding store shelves empty? You’re not the only one scrambling to find eggs. Avian influenza, or bird flu, has led to the deaths of millions of chickens on large continental U.S. farms, leaving Hawaiʻi with fewer imported eggs.
Many residents and restaurants are now turning to their local farmers to fill in the cracks. Across Maui County, egg producers say that in the past few weeks, they've become overwhelmed with a huge spike in demand.
Raven Kaufman-Lujan is one of many small-scale farmers on Maui who can't keep up with egg requests.
“I have a waitlist. I think now it's close to like 300 people that are wanting eggs, and it grows every single day,” said the owner of Pu’ukea Farms in Kapuna, Maui. “There's so many new [customers] reaching out, wanting eggs from me. It's crazy.”
Korey Harris of Simple Roots farm in Upcountry Maui has over 300 pasture-raised hens, producing more than 100 dozen eggs each week.
Along with residents' requests, he’s also getting a lot of larger orders from businesses.
“We've noticed that a huge demand, specifically from the bakeries and restaurants that use a lot of eggs in their dishes and in their products,” he said. “And they're the ones that are having a really rough time.”
On Moloka’i, the situation is similar
Moloka’i homesteader Cameron Hiro has about 250 hens that lay between 70 dozen and 100 dozen eggs per week. That’s enough to fill about 80% of the requests he’s been getting — but there’s a waitlist.
“We receive texts and phone calls, and because of the way things are right now, it's like, 'oh my goodness, can we fulfill it?'” he said. “Most often it's like one week reserved. So when people are asking as of today, [it] won't be available till next week. So that's the way it is right now.”
Hiro and his wife, Jacqueline, and their family own Kamakani Farms in Ho’olehua, and started raising egg layers a few years ago through Sustʻāinable Molokai’s poultry education program.
They’ve continued to expand the operation. Hiro said he built an egg stand at the beginning of this year.
“I told my wife, let's do an egg stand to kind of help increase our sales of eggs,” he said. “So got the egg stand all situated. And I think in the first several days, I had to close it because it started getting busy. I didn't know about the shortage of eggs — we noticed the egg demand is increased a lot.”
Now, a sign on the stand reads, “Sorry, sold out,” though it still holds a cooler for pre-order pickups.
Statewide egg crisis
Across the state, many stores are limiting the eggs sold to each customer — and that’s if they have any on their shelves at all.
The shortage won’t just disappear. Farmers can’t snap their fingers and make more eggs. It takes five to six months for a hen to mature to laying age.
“It's not like a quick process for you to raise a chicken and then have eggs,” Kaufman-Lujan explained. “There's not like an instant thing. So there's a huge wait in between when you get your chicks and then when you're doing the eggs.”
To help prevent the spread of bird flu in Hawaiʻi, state agencies called for a voluntary pause on interisland transport of birds, starting Dec. 13, for 90 days.
No outbreaks among commercial flocks in Hawaiʻi have been reported, though bird flu has been detected among wild birds, and in a backyard flock in central Oʻahu.
Harris says he’s not overly concerned about bird flu affecting their free-range hens.
“Our birds are outside 24/7, so it's not like I can keep wild birds away from them,” he said. “So we more focus on keeping our birds as healthy as possible and making sure that the environment that they live in is optimal.”
Though the price of eggs on many store shelves has skyrocketed, Maui County farmers say they want to keep their prices steady.
For Harris, he just wants to make sure they’re able to cover their operational costs.
“We're in this to make a living, but we're also in this to try to make really good, high-quality food accessible to people too,” he said. “We're not trying to price people out.”
Will people stick with local?
While many farmers understand customers may go back to mainland eggs later because they’re a little cheaper, Kaufman-Lujan says they’re just not the same as local farm fresh.
“When you get an egg from the grocery store, it's already 45 to 60 days old,” she said. “That's really old, as opposed to if you're buying a cart of eggs from me, they were probably all laid yesterday or the day before, or within the week — they're just a lot fresher. They're better quality. I would say you can taste the difference for sure.”
Small farmers hope their new customers will stick around after the shortage has passed.
“When the Costco eggs come back, remember, who was there for you when you didn't have the Costco eggs? Support those people," Harris reminds his community. "There's a lot of farms out there that are wanting to do eggs and they want to grow, but the demand has to be there, too.”
