By Will Atwater
The Northern Red Cardinal has worn the crown as North Carolina’s official bird for eight decades, but judging by the numbers in a new report, another bird is king.
In 2022 state poultry operations “housed”nearly 357 million chickens and turkeys, up from 250 million in 2007, according to data provided by the Environmental Working Group, an organization that does research to promote healthy living and healthy environments. The numbers reflect a 43 percent average increase across the state, solidifying broilers — chickens raised for meat production — and turkeys as the state’s top birds, economically speaking.
The organization used machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, to analyze U.S. Department of Agriculture aerial imagery of poultry houses, the report states.
“We are a big animal agriculture state ranking very highly in turkeys, chickens and pork production,” said Steve Troxler, North Carolina agriculture commissioner, during an interview in August. He told a group of farmers gathered to discuss the threat of bird flu that North Carolina was now No. 1 in the country for overall poultry receipts.
North Carolina’s agricultural industry has become an economic juggernaut. The state’s farm cash receipts for 2022 totaled more than $16 billion, according to USDA data. Of that amount, livestock, dairy and poultry sales accounted for 74.3 percent of the receipts. Nationally, the state ranks fourth in broiler production, which contributed to the state’s $111 billion agricultural and agribusiness portfolio.
But there’s another side to this story.