Too Many Chickens

Shopping housewives had a pleasant surprise last week. Frying chickens and broilers were selling under 40-c- a lb. in many a store, down from about 55-c- a month ago. Prices of medium and small pullet eggs were also down at a time when egg and poultry prices usually rise.

But the good news for shoppers was bad news for poultry-and-eggmen; there are too many chickens and eggs. Monthly chick output has soared to around 100 million from 91 million a year ago, and the farmers are getting only 24.8-c- a lb. for broilers compared to the postwar average of 31.1-c-. Monthly egg production is up to a record 4,545,000,000, some 15% above the postwar average, while farmers' prices dropped to an average 37.4-c- a dozen, from 50.2-c- a year ago.

Last week Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson summoned his 24-man Egg Advisory Committee to Washington to hear poultrymen's demands for support buying of both chickens and eggs. But after the meeting the committee announced that it "believes in selfhelp, leaving to the industry the solution of its own problems."

The best method for ending the trouble of overproduction was suggested by Agriculture's Poultry Division Director W. D. Termohlen at Purdue University's annual Broiler Day meeting. Said he: "I would like to suggest to you broiler growers that this would be a good time to take a . . . vacation. The expenses . . . would probably be no more than what it would cost you to raise your next batch of broilers . . . we are heading for a long period of rough times, certainly through December."

Agriculture Secretary Benson also told dairymen last week that his flexible support program was working out just as he had hoped. Dairy-products consumption has increased, said Benson, and the U.S. has not had to add a single pound of butter to its 408 million lb. hoard since Sept. 17. Furthermore, overall surplus buying since April, when the new program providing for supports at only 75% of parity went into effect, has been cut some 13% below 1953 levels.

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