Which wouldn’t be that odd if the conspiracy theory was true (since your local farms presumably wouldn’t be invited to the price-fixing meetings).

It doesn't take secret meetings; the industrial players are subject to regulatory costs that a small local farmer isn't. When "big egg" had to slaughter millions of layers because of a birdflu outbreak, then sell a limited amount of eggs while they waited for new chicks to mature, your local farmer's birds kept laying without an interruption in production or a sudden repeat of the startup costs.

Local farms are rarely selling directly to grocery stores. They sell to a number of organic/free range/whatever companies like Vital Farms that aggregate from the smaller farmers and sell to grocery stores (or grocery store suppliers).

At least that is my understanding of the way the scale is managed.

I was mainly reacting to that line which seemed to me a throw away that was never returned too implying: and if normal egg prices are high just think about those more expensive brown eggs. Which is too bad, noticing the higher end eggs not moving much in price might help the general argument of the article...