If you’re reading this you’ve been through the Goats On The Go® basic training, and many of you have been profiting from your goat grazing service for years. If there’s one thing you should know by now, it’s that your service is worth far more than the value of the food your goats get from your customer’s properties. Right? Right?! (Crowd responds with a resounding, “Yes!!”)
You’ve learned to not think like a farmer even though you are a livestock caretaker. A farmer would say, “I have livestock to feed, livestock feed costs money, so if you give me livestock feed (weeds and brush on your property), it’s like you’re giving me money!” We know better, don’t we? Providing our goat grazing service is hard and too valuable to give away for free.
But when it comes to deciding whether you want to offer grazing on solar fields in your territories, you should think like a farmer — sort of.
How does a farmer think?
Here’s some farmer-think that can help us with decisions about solar grazing:
Farmers think at scale. They deal with large expenses and large revenues all the time, and instead if being intimidated, they ask, “How do we get this done?” Their solutions are also big.
Farmers think in seasons and years, not days and weeks. They tolerate inconsistent cash flow in exchange for fewer, but larger payoffs.
Farmers covet land, buying or leasing every acre they can get their hands on so long as they believe they can make a profit by producing crops or raising livestock on it.
Suppose a landowner said to a farmer, “I have 500 acres of pasture you can graze your livestock on, and you don’t have to pay me anything to lease it.” Would the farmer say, “That’s mighty generous of you, but I don’t currently have enough animals to make use of it. I’ll pass.”? Um, no. The farmer would have his/her banker on the phone so fast your head would spin, asking to borrow money for an additional 100 cows, or 200 feeder steers, or a new hay rake and baler, or…800 sheep.
You see where this is headed, right? Suppose you’re offered 500 acres of solar farm to graze and, low and behold, the landowner wants to pay you $300 - $500 per acre for the season. You stand to make at least $150,000 just for the act of grazing. You might also be able to add 60 pounds each to 800 feeder lambs on that solar farm. That’s 48,000 pounds of lamb at — let’s be very conservative here — $1.80 per pound. That’s $86,400 (current market prices are $3 or more per pound, by the way). These are big numbers, and they demand big upfront investments and likely the help of a bank or backer. But, put those numbers into a decent business plan and your banker will smile.
None of this is meant to imply that solar grazing is simple, or that it doesn’t require more from the Sheep On The Go® affiliate than it would a farmer in a purely agricultural context. It may call for employees, haulers, and the solving of serious logistical problems. And, you’ll have to be the same expert targeted grazing professionals that you are when solving weed and brush problems with goats. But don’t let the size of the perceived obstacles stop you.
But I don’t own sheep!
The biggest obstacle for most of us is simply that we don’t own sheep, or not enough sheep, or don’t know where to get sheep and couldn’t afford them anyway. Let me share a secret with you: NO ONE HAS ENOUGH SHEEP. That’s right. And there’s really not much sense in starting your flock now thinking you’ll grow it to the right size by the time your first solar grazing project comes along. Get some sheep now to learn how to raise and care for them if you want, but there’s no way the 10 or 20 you buy today will grow to the 800 - 1000 you’ll need for solar grazing when your first contract comes around. And solar sites of meaningful size may not even pop up in every affiliate’s territory, and even if they do, you may not get the gig.
Instead, prepare by being listed as a solar grazing affiliate on the Goats On The Go®/Sheep On The Go® website and become a member of the American Solar Grazing Association. Learn everything you can about solar grazing, and work on your business plan in preparation for the day when you need to go looking for a huge number of sheep and other assets all at once.
And think big! We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue here! For that kind of money you’ll be searching all around the country for your sheep, not all around the county. Semis, livestock brokers, and big checks will probably be involved. You’ll also need to be creative. Do I need to keep 800 ewes through the winter and breed and lamb them, or could I buy weaned feeder lambs every spring? Could I lease the sheep I need? Could I strike a deal to raise sheep for someone else who is in need of more pasture? Could I get paid by the sheep owner for this “custom grazing” based on the pounds of lamb I return in the fall? Big problems, big solutions.
It’s probably crossed your mind by now that managing nearly a thousand (or more!) sheep would turn you into a full-time farmer/rancher who also offers a targeted grazing service, rather than a targeted grazing pro who takes a few animals to market every now and then. For some of you, that’s your dream and you’re champing at the bit to get started. However, some of you may love your goat grazing business just as it is, and you’re not really interested in growing an agricultural livestock operation beyond what’s necessary to do your goat projects. That’s awesome! Keep at it. No need to change.
But if your dream is to grow a livestock farm in parallel with your grazing business, there’s not a more profitable way to do it than solar grazing, and no one is better positioned to do it than Goats On The Go®/Sheep On The Go® affiliates! Don’t let solvable problems discourage you from chasing this opportunity.
