Mid-Atlantic Sheep - Goat Marketing Project

Mid-Atlantic Sheep - Goat Marketing Project

Summary

While demand for sheep and goat meat in the Eastern U.S. exceeds current production levels, many producers do not know how to take advantage of the opportunities that the ethnic/religious markets present. The Mid-Atlantic Sheep & Goat Marketing Project (MASGMP) will build upon the accomplishments of the Northeast Sheep & Goat Marketing Program (NESGMP) to improve the marketing infrastructure for sheep and goat producers in the twelve northeastern states and expand the impact of the program further south. The MASGMP will re-design and expand the web site created by the NESGMP to emcompass all states in the mid-atlantic region.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Of the 400 sheep and goat producers participating in the workshops or obtaining information from the web site and other educational materials: 20% will change their breeding, feeding, and/or marketing programs to target the ethnic/religious markets; 10% will pool their sheep and/or goats for transport to a regional livestock auction; 5% will increase their net market price by marketing their sheep and/or goats through a local livestock auction or special graded sale; 10% will direct market their sheep and/or goats to consumers, slaughterhouses, live markets, restaurants, and/or meat markets; and of the producers which allow on-farm slaughter, 90% will implement humane slaughter practices on their farm and dispose of offal in an environmentally safe manner (e.g. composting).

Accomplishments/Milestones

• The web site is currently being redesigned and automated using web database software. This process is very time consuming. The web site includes a producer directory, market inquires (for sale/wanted ads), a calendar of events, a marketing directory, news, links, and educational materials.

  Nine (9) posters depicting humane slaughter of sheep and goats were distributed.

  PI gave presentations on sheep and goat marketing at small ruminant meeting sponsored by NRCS (MO), Sheep and Goat Seminar (IL), Third Thursday Thing (KY), Missouri Livestock Symposium, Arkansas Valley Farm, Ranch, and Water Symposium (CO), and Marketing and Business Conference for farms (MD).

  Published web article, "Tips for marketing sheep and goats through public livestock auctions."

  Updated ethnic holiday calendar.

  Created a spreadsheet for comparing marketing alternataives.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

• The producer directory on web site contains 763 listings of farms from 37 states and one Canadian province.

  There are 297 records in the marketing directory.

  71 market inquiries were entered into the web site in 2006.

  The project cannot be properly evaluated until the programming of the web site is finished and the web site is up and running for awhile.