Goat’s milk for health was an old wives’ tale, but 20
friends gave up their jobs to make it a marketable product
Vistara Farms in Kunthur, Karnataka. The auditory
accompaniment is the bleating of hundreds of goats and the hysterical barking
of the Mudhol guard dog. Inside the farm, the goats, grouped according to size
and sex, stand in their wooden stalls, eyeing us.
The big male goats reach almost to our shoulders. They push
around in their pens, their long, silky brown ears flapping around their big,
bony faces. As a welcome drink, we are offered a glass of fresh goat milk,
still warm and frothy. The taste is not unlike cow milk, but with an added
smokiness. Krishna Kumar A.N. and his friends show me around their farm with a
sense of proud proprietorship.
With kid gloves
When Krishna starts talking about his goat farm, it’s
difficult to get a word in edgeways. On the nearly 160 km drive from Bengaluru
to this farm in Kunthur, Krishna has barely paused in the recital of his dream
of promoting goat-milk products. His loquacity is apparently quite typical,
quip his close friends, who are now his partners at Vistara Farms and are
travelling with us.
“I’m just a bridge,” Krishna says, when described as the
prime mover behind Vistara, but he is not just any bridge. He has been the link
that has brought together 20 people from diverse experiences to turn an
ordinary village remedy into a business venture.
Krishna persuaded them to put in their small savings, and he
took a personal loan by mortgaging his mother’s jewellery. They bought a farm
near Kunthur and began stocking up on goats. Now they have two farms and 200
goats supplying 50 litres of milk per day.
“When we were young, if someone fell ill in our village,
they would say, ‘give him goat milk,’” says R. Chetan Kumar, 31, one of
Krishna’s friends, who now manages Vistara’s marketing. And as the last days of
school drew to an end and the discussions of what to do with their lives got
more heated, they remembered the health benefits of goat milk and the fact that
it wasn’t easily available. Nor had goat milk caught on in the cities. Krishna
and his friends wanted to turn this to their advantage. “We decided to go into
business together and start a goat-milk farm,” he says.
The village wisdom is seconded by Sagari Ramdas, veterinary
scientist and member of Food Sovereignty Alliance. She says: “In rural areas,
the milk of the mother goat is reserved for the goat kids and some of it is
used for tea and as a medicine. Traditionally, goat milk has always been used
for the sick, the elderly, children and TB patients. It is thought to be good
for healing fractures.”
It’s different
The dream notwithstanding, it wasn’t until 2013 that the
friends could buy four acres of land for their farm. Then it was time to buy
the goats. After talking to breeders, Krishna zeroed in on the Beetal breed.
They purchased the first 15 Beetals from Tavarekere in Begaluru, and the rest
from markets in Pune, Punjab and Mysuru. From here on, getting goat milk to the
market seemed easy enough.
But it wasn’t. In the first few months after starting the
farm, they lost over 150 goats. First, the feed was wrong. Next, the pens were
too cold. Next, mosquitoes attacked the goats. Neither villagers nor government
officials were able to help. The fledgling farmers drew a blank. So they fell
back on their own instincts to set things right. “Our goats are like us. If we
are comfortable in their pen, they will be too,” says Ravi Kumar D, one of the
partners.
They all had day jobs then, but started to visit the farm
more frequently. The pens were covered with polynet to keep out the mosquitoes
and the cold. The protein content of the feed was reduced. Finally, the results
showed.
By early 2016, the crisis was over and they finally began to
supply raw goat milk in 200 ml plastic packets in Bengaluru. Each of them would
take turns to deliver the milk. They could make Rs. 50,000 per month just by
selling in their own area.
However, the supply of raw milk always comes with the risk
of spoilage, which is not only a loss but also lowers the profit level. After
many rounds of discussion, the group decided to try their hand at making
cheese, which has a longer shelf life and fetches a higher price. They
contacted cheese-maker Aditya Raghavan, who spent days at the farm to finetune
the product.
Four months into production and Vistara now has three types
of soft goat cheese and five varieties of yoghurt under the brandname ‘Basta’,
which means goat in Sanskrit. Their factory is a small ground floor unit in
Vijaynagar.
Firm footing
We arrive there early in the morning to watch the raw milk,
which has been preserved in the fridge all night, being boiled in a double
boiler. In the fridge are two sets of soft cheese, made a day apart, wrapped in
muslin, and a big block of feta, ready to be packed.
Krishna and company are very proud of their feta as it is
100% goat milk, unlike most of feta available in upmarket stores that is
usually 90% cow milk and only 10% goat milk. Priced at Rs. 320 for a 100gm
packet, customers seem to love it, and feta currently accounts for 60% of their
sales.
Vistara’s other product is their fruit-flavoured goat-milk
yoghurt. They have four uncommon flavours — custard apple, honey-banana, chikoo
and tender coconut — and the yoghurt contains real fruit pulp. In 2016, Vistara
Farms was established as a private company. The friends are so buoyed up they
just bought a second farm in Malavalli, 40 km away. Other friends have opted to
join the business. A few months ago, the friends finally quit their jobs and
became full-time goat farmers.
Plans are on to increase the number of goats to 3,000 and
start exporting the cheese to other cities. One future model they are
considering is to give the goats to the villagers for upkeep and take only a steady
supply of milk.
