Agriculture is one of Pennsylvania’s top industries, contributing more than $132 billion to the state’s economy and employing 593,000 people. The state produces $10 billion in agricultural products and recently passed a historic milestone – as of 2022, Pennsylvania poultry has surpassed dairy as the number one ag product in the state. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, poultry now accounts for $2.6 billion dollars in Pennsylvania compared to dairy’s $2.5 billion dollars.

Philip Gruber is the News Editor of the publication Lancaster Farming, who has reported on this explained the rise of poultry on The Spark Tuesday,"With dairy, a lot of it is at the mercy of the market. So, milk prices have been pretty volatile over the last ten years here. With poultry, there are ways to make more or less money, but, it's a pretty steady stream if you're producing eggs or broilers, that's on a set production schedule and you're on a contract and which runs for X number of years."

Gruber pointed out that poultry has thrived even though the state's poultry flocks have been hit with deadly avian influenza outbreaks in recent years,"Avian influenza did cost Pennsylvania about 4 million birds. The threat is still there that we could have future outbreaks. But, really, 4 million birds is a relatively small part of our Pennsylvania production when you're talking about millions and millions of laying hens and broilers, the meat chickens. It's a concern, but it's it's hasn't, you know, totally devastated the industry."

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