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Integrating Livestock Enterprises into Beginning Farmer and Rancher Operations

Shannon Neibergs

Summary

Many beginning farmers and ranchers view livestock as viable sustainable enterprises that fit into their available land and management resources. However there is a strong need for production management, value added marketing, and financial management education programs to help producers successfully produce and market their livestock production. As one component of our USDA AFRI Beginning Farm and Rancher grant, we developed a short course on sustainable sheep and goat production. The purpose of this proposal is to present the value added marketing and financial management education components of the sheep and goat short course developed for this grant. Live workshops were conducted in western Washington where there is strong, growing and underserved ethnic niche market for sheep and goats. The marketing component provides education materials on matching production to seasonal demand, how to legally transact custom meat sales and identifying commercial market outlets for animals that fall out of a producer’s value added market system. The financial component concentrated on developing enterprise and cash flow budgets. The grant is in the process of developing an on-line education component. The methods and technology used in developing the on-line education component will also be presented as part of this proposal.

Details

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