Increasing Rural Impact & Sustainability of Farmstead Soap Production

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Traditional farm families are capturing value-added dollars in goat milk by making soap on a small scale. Yet volume production possible from even a small herd greatly exceeds what a farm family can comfortably, efficiently and physically produce in a household kitchen. These families must juggle demands of milk production and farm - caring for animals, maintaining buildings, providing grain, meeting equipment costs, providing veterinary care, producing other crops. Goat milk soap-makers must also meet production and marketing expenses. Operating the two enterprises can become as complicated and difficult as working off-farm. Producing a high quality, value-added product and tapping solid markets attuned to specific characteristics pose additional challenges for farm families. Major commercial soap manufacturers have started producing their own lines of "natural" products. Soap-making with natural ingredients, including purchased goat milk, has also become a cottage industry and popular pastime with the general public. How can farmstead producers effectively compete, adapt their products to market changes, and successfully sell their goat milk soap? This project develops a farmstead production and marketing model that achieves a profitable scale of income from goat milk soap to help sustain a family farm and promote the well-being of traditional farms. It tests feasibility, production and market potential of a producer and marketing cooperative and a training guild of dairy goat milk soap-makers toward effective function without government assistance.