Southwest Iowa Egg supplies Adair County Great Egg Giveaway

MASSENA — With nearly 900,000 laying hens that produce eggs every day, Southwest Iowa Egg in Massena is a farmer owned cooperative that is one of the largest producers in the Adair and Cass County areas of high quality eggs. SWIE also prides itself on providing good jobs within the community, its Facebook page states.

Rich Hall with SWIE was on hand at many of the stops last weekend of the Great Adair County Egg Giveaway. Southwest Iowa Egg supplied the egg for the event.

Between Friday and Saturday, this egg giveaway tour made stops in Bridgewater, Fontanelle, Adair, Casey, Orient, Greenfield and Stuart. People were also giving out eggs the same weekend at locations in Cass County. Sponsors of the project were the Adair County Farm Bureau Federation, Connie Hohertz Farm Bureau Financial Services and the Farmacy, which is owned by farmers Dan Dreher and Chris Nelson.

Hall, who is generally active on the local agriculture scene as a volunteer with Ag for All and other organizations, explained that eggs are the "ultimate protein," meeting all the nutritional needs a human has. They help with eye sight, memory while providing a quality protein.

"We want to say thank you to the community and to our sponsors today," Hall said at the Greenfield stop on the tour, in the Greenfield Lumber parking lot. "It's been a tough time for everybody. This is a little bit of celebration to try to help people meet their needs and provide a very nutritional meal for families."

Hall explained that just like there have been strains on small businesses or other parts of agriculture because of the pandemic, there have been strains on the egg industry too. Eggs bottomed out at 8¢ per dozen two weeks ago, which was a staggering figure for producers to face.

"The market has come up a little bit in the last two weeks, but due to the shutdown of hotels, travel and things, the egg market was at an all-time low. That led to part of this with us asking how we can add value to the community and help people," Hall said. "It was an idea our sponsors had to say let's help Southwest Iowa Egg while saying thank you to the community."

When asked what consumers can do to help in the distribution of food in times of crisis, Hall said the biggest solution would be if they would only buy what they need.

"Patience and buying what you need would help more than anything," he said. "Continue to eat meat, continue to eat meat. There is plenty of supply, we just have a distribution problem right now that we've gotta work through."