Why Few Goats/Goat Knowledge in US?

[BetterHensandGardens]

I was writing a post this week about the why we got goats, advantages of having them, etc. and I googled some statistics on goats in US vs. other countries. Per capita, the US is way down there on goat ownership compared to other countries. Since they convert their food to milk more efficiently than cows or sheep - why is that? Does anyone know why the US is so non-goat? Few goats, goat vets, goat books, etc.............

 

[ohne]

I think it is a cultural difference, about 70% of the worlds population eats goat but that is way down here in the US.

 

[patandchickens]

I don't think it's just goats. I would betcha anything that if statistics were available (I don't think they are) on backyard chickens or 'family cows' (i.e people keeping just enough for the family, as opposed to giant huge industrial farm operations) the U.S. would have very very few of THOSE per capita EITHER.

The U.S. has just moved further from the basics of raising one's own food than many other countries have -- partly because of having the luxury of not *having* to raise one's own food, and partly because of it having become socially-looked-down-upon to do so as opposed to supermarket and restaurant food.

Also the US was initially founded largely by nationalities lacking a large goat component in their traditional foods -- British, German, French. My understanding is that goat meat demand/sales in the US has risen in parallel to the influx of immigrants from more goat-eating parts of the world.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[michickenwrangler]

It's not just our current ag practices. While there have been goats in the US, by and large we have always been a cattle breeding nation.

The largest ethnic groups in the US are British Isles descent and Germans, both groups of people who are descended from cattle-herding Indo-Europeans who both lived in a culture that favored cattle over other livestock.

The US has always had an appetite for beef and for some reason have favored dairy cows over dairy goats. However, the Southwest is the exception, the drier climate favoring goats and sheep instead

Also, when this land was first settled, the eastern and midwestern US had an abundance of both land and water: suitable for cattle raising. Goats tend to be the primary livestock in place where water, feed and/or space are issues.

Hope this makes sense, I'm pretty tired!

 

[warthog]

I don't think it is just the US, you will find Britain is much the same.

As a previous poster said, we have relied so much on "factory farming", that and regulations about keeping livestock, just made it more and more difficult.

I think now more people are begining to look at how their food is produced and don't like what they are finding. So those that can, are changing that by keeping their own.

It's really sad, just before we left England, Jamie Oliver, did a programme on school lunches. In part of that programme he asked children to identify certain veggies, whilst is was laughable it was also scary. Children didn't even recoginise that fries came from pototoes.

Ask most children in Britain now where a food item comes from, say eggs and they will say the supermarket.

What have we done???????????????

 

[cmjust0]

There was a point in human history where everyone's job was simply to provide for their own sustenance.. Maybe a given person was better at fishing than picking berries, but they picked berries anyway because they had to..

It only stands to reason that, at some point, someone else who was really good at picking berries approached that person and said "I notice you're really good at catching fish, but you suck at picking berries... As it happens, I'm really good at picking berries but I suck at fishing. Perhaps you'd be interested in trading some of your excess fish for my excess berries?"

Flash forward a few eons and you have the US economy in a nutshell.

Our economy is generally more productive and efficient than most because we're a highly "specialized" people.. We're taught from an early age that we have to pick one thing to do with our lives and work toward/at that one thing until we retire and/or die... I'll fish, you pick berries, and we'll trade -- no need for either of us to waste a second doing something we're not particularly good at when there's someone else who's better suited for the job.

Specialization is so rampant today that people aren't even raising their own kids anymore... Instead, there are people who specialize in efficiently raising gaggles of kids all at once (which is all "daycare" really is) so that the actual parents of the children can continue to focus on practicing their own specialties and keeping their overall productivity high.

Where does raising a goat fit into any of that?

If people want milk, they drive to the grocery where the people who specialize in producing milk have made all kinds of it available for sale. I don't have to buy the cow or goat, nor do I have to learn how to raise it...I just buy the milk and let someone else specialize in all that.

What's scary is that as social/connective technologies advance, the line between "home" and "work" becomes further and further obscured. I suspect it won't be very long at all before it's rare that people will have any room in their lives for hobbies, etc..

 

[Aped]

cmjust0, you are absolutely right. No one feels the need to know more than one thing and everything outside of someone's profession is just superficial fluff unless they have some hardcore hobby.

I still get people who say why do you raise goats for milk when you can go to the store and buy milk. All I can say is because I want to because i can't make them understand how knowing how to do different things and making your own food are good skills to have

But as for why goat products are not more popular in America, I really can't figure it out. I prefer goat milk over cow milk and don't really have access to goat meat but would definitely eat it in place of beef if I could find it readily. All I can say is the cows made it here first. It's hard to change people's traditions. If the goats made it here first people would be wondering why more people don't eat cow products since they are bigger and produce more milk. Either that or someone would have developed a cow-sized goat with 4 functioning teats.

 

[michickenwrangler]

All of you are forgetting the point that goats have NEVER been as popular here as in southern Europe or the Middle East or Africa. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency or factory farming.

As Americans we have always been cow obsessed, the exception being in the southwest where due to lack of water and true pasture, goats thrived where cattle couldn't.

 

[BetterHensandGardens]

Lot's of interesting thoughts on why we're so goat deficient in the US, and although specialization and factory farming are unfortunate in some cases - it seems like we needed a culture that appreciated goats to begin with for that to have had an impact.

Instead, since most of our ancestors came from Northern Europe (non-goat appreciative cultures), few goats got brought over, we had lots of room, etc. for cattle - became predominantly cattle society.

Only today, as some people are thinking about self-sufficiency, are worried about their food sources, or folks from regions that do appreciate goats immigrate to the US is the goat population and knowledge starting to increase.

Much clearer to me on how we got to where we are today.......