ABSTRACT
The Ozark Mountain region of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri is home to a large population of dairy goats. Primarily as a part-time enterprise, the dairy goat industry allowed farm families and rural homeowners with jobs in the small cities of the region to make use of available family labor and surplus land of marginal quality. In 1980 a study of the goat milk industry of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri was initiated by the university of Arkansas Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology and winrock International. The sources of data for the program were dairy goat experts in the region and an extensive survey of 29 dairy goat milk producers. An "opportunity cost" is the expected "market value" of labor applied to the goat operation or what it could bring if applied to an alternative enterprise. Break-even milk price is that price necessary to cover a given set of production costs assuming a certain level of production.
