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 In
1933, per capita farm income was said to be $72 per year and the predominant
crop in the South, cotton, sold for only a nickel a pound. A young agronomy
instructor at the University of Georgia, D.W. Brooks, had seen many farm cooperatives
fail, but took up the challenge to start yet another farm cooperative. With
a $2,100 loan from an Atlanta bank and thirteen farmers from Carrollton, GA,
he organized Cotton Producers Association to market cotton. In 1972, the cooperative
changed its name to Gold Kist. Soon after its founding, the cooperative purchased
a fertilizer plant to enable members to get better fertilizer at lower prices,
and the diversification of the cooperative had begun.
In the 1940s, the cooperative expanded into animal feeds. Its first retail
farm supply store opened in 1944. It was through these retail farm supply stores
that Gold Kist entered the poultry business.  The
Gainesville, GA, store was the first to begin supplying feed to broiler producers,
which led to financing some producers and operating a hatchery through the store.
These ventures provided a service to local farmers and enabled Gold Kist feed
mills to operate more efficiently by expanding the market for feed.
Broiler production provided an opportunity for farmers to supplement their
decreasing incomes from their main cash crop - cotton. The interest in growing
broilers and the relative ease of financing for construction of facilities led
to a steady increase in the supply of broilers during the 1950s. However, many
times an oversupply of birds caused prices to fall below production costs. The
cooperative saw a dangerous situation developing for its farmer-members. Broiler
producers had no guaranteed market for their broilers. Often processors were
under capitalized and producers did not receive payment until the broilers had
been processed and sold. To protect the incomes of its members, Gold Kist took
steps to become a fully-integrated poultry operation.
In November 1951, Gold Kist acquired its first processing plant in Holly Springs,
GA. It had a weekly capacity of 60,000 broilers. A year later it purchased another
poultry operation, which included a processing plant, by-products plant and
hatchery. Over the years, Gold Kist continued to purchase and build more poultry
operations. In 1957, Gold Kist exported its first broilers to the Federation
of Grocery Cooperatives in Zurich, Switzerland.  In
1998, Gold Kist sold all its agronomy operations to another cooperative to focus
on protein production, primarily chicken with some pork grow-out operations.
In October 2004 with the approval of its membership, Gold Kist converted from
a farm cooperative to a for-profit company. Its stock is traded on the NASDAQ
stock exchange under the "GKIS" symbol. Gold Kist is the one of the
largest chicken processors in the United States. It has nine divisions, which
include 11 processing plants, 19 hatcheries, 12 feed mills, 10 distribution
centers and 3 by-product plants. These operations process 14 million birds per
week and employ more than 16,000 people. Gold Kist products are sold to customers
all over the United States and in addition approximately 16 percent of production
is exported to countries around the world.
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