I just had a good conversation with Dad, and I brought up an idea we can discuss - it was sparked by an article in the Chicago Tribune, "Changing America, changing tastes: The increase of immigrants, particularly Muslims, is driving a profitable market for goat meat, a popular food in cultures around the world." Link here.
Dad as Goat Farmer, what do you think?
The article describes an auction for goats in New Holland, PA, where buyers from New York City come to buy goats for sale in delis, restaurants, etc. in NYC. A Chinatown store sells half their goats to Chinese customers, who like smoked kid goats, and the other half to Hispanic customers, who like older, bigger goats. Another big market for goats is the Muslim community - halal meat.
Another interesting fact is that the 2,000,000 goats sold in 2002 were raised on 75,000 farms. That's only about 25 goats for your average farm. (The article later states that 16,000 farms in Texas raised 1,000,000 goats, so outside of Texas, there were 59,000 farms for the other 1,000,000 goats, or only about 17 goats per farm, on average!)
A guy who trucks in goats from Tennessee to New Holland every Monday (536 miles) says that "it seems like every farmer with even a few acres in eastern Tennessee and western Virginia has goats. 'Everybody that has 5 acres has goats,' he said. 'If they have 2 acres, they have goats.'"
If you need only about a dozen and a half goats to be profitable, and the major east coast auction is only a couple of hours away, this might be a good project.
We have the land. There would be a capital investment at first (fences, housing, supplies, etc.), but this could work. And Dad would be a Goat Farmer.
What do you guys think?

C

- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 12/02/2004 01:30:00 PM