2006 Farmgate

$455,713,606

Fast Facts

Every day, 76 million Americans eat beef.

Every year consumers spend more than half of their meat budgets on beef, making beef the consumer meat of choice.

Hamburgers and roast beef sandwiches make up most of the beef servings consumed away from home.

A 1,000 pound market steer yields approx. 425 pounds of beef. Of the carcass, 99 percent is either used as meat or recovered as byproducts, both edible and inedible. Byproducts are used to make a wide variety of goods including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and clothing.

The average Georgia Cattlemen's Association member owns 123 head of cattle and owns or leases an average of 447 acres of land.

News: Media Kits: Georgia Agricultural Resources

Beef

Georgia-raised cattle descend from stock in Europe, Africa and South America. Breeds including Angus, Charolais and Simmental are the cornerstone of the multimillion-dollar Georgia Beef industry.

Georgia cattlemen own approximately 1.3 million head of cattle worth more than $676 million. Annual cash receipts total more than $262 million, making cattle the state's sixth largest cash crop.

Because cattle are grown in all 159 counties of Georgia, the beef industry has a large impact on the state's economy (estimated at more than $2 billion).

About 71 percent of Georgia cattlemen are commercial cow-calf producers (they sell calves that are eventually fed to finish weight for beef); 21 percent are purebred cow-calf producers (they sell purebred cattle for breeding); and 8 percent are stockers (they buy calves, add weight to them and sell them to feedlots for finishing).

In Georgia, 87 percent of our 23,000 producers own less than 100 head. Yet this group owns only 46 percent of cattle. The other 13 percent of Georgia cattlemen (3,300 producers) own 54 percent of the cattle.

Cattle are usually sold through county or area livestock markets. Each animal is typically sold individually on a per-pound basis. More than 95 percent of all yearlings are shipped to the Midwest, where they are raised to finish weights.

With more than 6,000 members, the Georgia Cattlemen's Association, based in Macon, is the largest single-commodity producer group in Georgia and the sixth largest state cattlemen's organization in the United States.

Points of Interest

Irwinville: Bull Evaluation Center, 229/386-3407
Tifton: Rural Development Center, 229/386-3407
Athens: University of Georgia, research on beef cattle and meat, contact Dr. Larry Benyshek, 706/542-1852
Griffin: UGA Center for Food Safety and Enhancement, contact Dr. Mike Doyle, 770/228-7284
Tours of cattle farms, interviews with beef producers: contact Georgia Cattlemen's Association, 912/474-6560

More Information

Bobby Freeman, Georgia Cattlemen's Association, 912/474-6560
Anne H. Griffeth, Georgia Beef Board, 1-877-444-BEEF
UGA's Animal Science department offers information on raising beef cattle.
Georgia Beef Industry Website: http://www.gabeef.org
Interested in having a backyard bar-b-que? Check out these tips.

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