How many eggs are produced in Canada each year? About 10 billion! Here's my plot, using @StatCan_eng's open dataset. But wait, what's with the big dip in 1974? I did a bit of digging... #rstats #opendata (1/n)

It all started when Eugene Whelan, Minister of Agriculture, formed the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency (CEMA) in the early 1970s. They introduced a new system where CEMA would buy eggs from farmers based on quotas, and then sell them to consumers at high, fixed prices. (2/n)

Higher prices -> Canadians bought fewer eggs -> a LOT of excess eggs. CEMA sold some to the U.S. at a sharp discount, but most of the excess was stuck in storage. In total, food inspectors discovered 28 million eggs in storage that were spoiled and had to be destroyed. (3/n)

It was a total disaster. CEMA had to get a bailout from the federal government. And farmers, now dependent on CEMA, saw a huge drop in revenue. Flocks had to be cut; in Ontario alone, 500 000 birds were cut from egg making duties. This led to a big production drop (4/n)

CEMA was restructured in 1976, and prices went back to normal. You know them today as the Egg Farmers of Canada!

Anyways, that was the explanation I found for the production blip in 1974-1975. Very cool that this dataset exists, and goes all the way back to 1951. (5/n)

My code: https://github.com/carsonfong/canada_egg_prod

Sources:

- Dataset: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/91128b7e-bae0-4659-929e-6fb4bbe8a12a

- CBC archives: https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/1974-28-million-rotten-eggs

- New York Times archives: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/07/archives/handling-of-egg-market-spurs-a-rift-in-canada-a-rift-in-canada-on.html

- EIR: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1974/eirv01n22-19741007/index.html

(6/6)