Economic
Impact
This
document is available as a PDF download here.
The South Carolina poultry
industry represents 40% of all agriculture in
the state and is 80% of animal agriculture. Sales
represent $1.5 bilion per year
Egg Industry
South
Carolina averages producing 68 ½ million
dozens of eggs from an average of 5.5 million layers.
South
Carolina ranks 17th in the nation for egg production. Within
the state, Newberry County ranked 1st followed by
Kershaw, Darlington, Saluda and Lexington counties.
Broiler Industry
South
Carolina averages 235 million broilers in production
each year. This equates to about 1 ½ billion
pounds.
On
a countywide basis, Lexington, Aiken, Oconee, Clarendon
and Sumter are the leading broiler producing counties.
South Carolina ranks 13th in the nation for broiler
production.
Turkey Industry
Kershaw
County leads in turkey production followed by Lancaster,
Chesterfield, Lee and Newberry counties. About
10 million turkeys are raised in South Carolina
yearly. That
is about 335 million pounds produced. South Carolina
ranks 8th in the nation in turkey production.
Other Poultry Industry
The other
poultry industries in South Carolina include quail,
pigeon, pousson and squab. The production totaled
over 9 million birds raised. About 3 ¼
million pounds were processed. Most are raised
in the Sumter county area.
Jobs
The average number of jobs generated is approximately
7,500. This number reflects employees of poultry
companies and does not include allied jobs generated
due to poultry, such as refrigerated trucks, paper
boxes, egg cartons, rendering, construction companies
etc.
* The above statistics are provided courtesy
of the South Carolina Agricultural Statistics,
the South Carolina Department of Agriculture and
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural
Statistics Service.
