Is Georgia really the Peach State?

Everybody knows Georgia as the Peach State. The fruit shows up on everything from our plates and driver’s licenses to the very names of our counties. But, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, we don’t produce as many as California or South Carolina.

So if we’re not number one, why do we brand ourselves as the Peach State?

Crawford County grower Lee Dickey says to find out, we need to go back to the years following the Civil War.

"The boll weevil came in and really decimated the South's cotton crop. Farmers were looking for alternatives," said Dickey.

To fill the void, Georgia ramped up its peach production. The introduction of refrigerated rail cars meant that if we grew more of our favorite fruit, we could pack and ship it further than ever before.

"By the late 1920's, over eight million bushels per year were grown in the state of Georgia,” Dickey said. “Up and down the East Coast, if you were eating peaches, they most likely came from Georgia."

Nowadays, that number is down in Georgia. According to USDA statistics from 2017, California more than doubles what our peak production was back in the 1920’s.

So we became the Peach State a century ago, and never gave up the name - but is there anything we are number one at producing?

"Everybody enjoys those peanut butter sandwiches and all the peanut products that come of that,” said Andy Lucas with the Georgia Farm Bureau. “We are number one in the nation for peanuts."

A staggering three and a half billion pounds are grown in Georgia each year. There’s a saying that everything is bigger in Texas, but the Lone Star State only grew 700 million pounds of peanuts in 2017.

Does that mean Georgians would be better off changing our state’s nickname? Peanut Streets instead of Peachtree Streets? Not so fast - our growers insist that quality is what counts, not quantity.

"I'll just come out and say that right out of the gate,” Lucas said. “Our peaches are Georgia-grown and they're the best in the nation."

"Absolutely! Hands down, we grow the best peaches," Dickey said.