“To first save and extend the lives of hundreds of individual goats every year, and at the same time enhance biological diversity in forests and land. And then also to use the entire raw material from nose to tail, and create greater gastronomic diversity for both private individuals and restaurant guests.” The jury’s reasoning.
Throwing kids in the bin: that sounds extremely drastic. Who actually does that? The truth is that thousands of goat kids are euthanized in Sweden every year, right after birth. It is mainly small goats that are not considered economically viable to breed for the dairies involved. After all, the goats will not give any milk as adults and it is considered expensive and difficult to raise them to sell meat.
Anna Sundberg had no idea this was the case until she herself worked on a farm that has goats and makes goat cheese. She took a course in sustainability at Färnebo folk high school in Österfärnebo in Gästrikland. The focus was small-scale animal breeding.
– There I learned how to run a small farm, she says.
During her internship, Anna Sundberg realized, slightly shocked, that the newborn goat kids were beaten to death.
– The dairymaid told me that she simply did not have time to raise them. I said: Then I can take care of them.
All told, Anna bought 20 kids which she raised and had slaughtered for her family’s own consumption in late autumn. That was eight years ago: today Anna, who lives with her husband Niklas Sundberg in a villa in Huddinge, takes care of 200 kids a year.
– Where we live, we are surrounded by nature reserves and at the same time there is a lack of grazing animals. It’s a good combination.
Meadows and natural pastures typically contain many species and are extremely important for biological diversity. These grasslands have declined sharply in Sweden over the past 150 years. The Swedish University of Agriculture, SLU, has calculated that today’s approximately 400,000 hectares of natural pastures would need to be five times larger.
The season starts in early spring, when Sundberg buys kids that have stopped shedding and are at least 45 days old. The kids are transported directly to their pastures, either the nature reserve in Huddinge or the archipelago island of Landsort. There they can stay until at least the end of October, when the pasture starts to run out. So Anna is a goat farmer eight-to-nine months a year, with a break in the winter. In this way, she avoids costs for feed and winter stables. It is therefore perfectly possible to be an “08 farmer” and live in a villa.
She buys her kids – and sometimes also retired dairy goats – from five or six different farms.
– Some farms call me before housing their goats to know how many kids I can accept.
All the kids and goats eventually become meat, which is also sold as sausages, hamburgers, liver pies and smoked meats. The products are mainly sold at REKO-rings in Stockholm and Uppsala. To try to preserve as much as possible from the animals, Sundberg now also sells the fine skins. And the entrails. Smoked kid hearts and liver pate are very popular. The very last parts of the goat remaining, she sells as dog food.
But before that, Sundberg wishes that more people than her and Niklas might be able to enjoy the kids’ pleasant company. She therefore organizes study visits for children’s groups and goat yoga for all ages. Something she struggles with, however, is that there are many people who don’t know what kid and goat meat tastes like and how to cook it.
– That’s how I want to use my prize from Circular Gastronomy: to do a food lab with chefs. It is said that there is no demand for goat meat, but I know that there really is. I want chefs to work with the meat, learn how it works and what you can do with it.
So what does it taste like? Sundberg describes it as a mixture of deer, beef and lamb. Handling the meat takes some practice, as it is lean and needs to be cooked slowly and carefully.
– Personally, I think the minced meat is underrated. It is so crazily good. A favorite dish is bobotie, a sweet and sour South African mince pie with scrambled egg and bay leaves.
Sundberg has also been active in a three-year EU-funded project called Getnära, whose basic idea is to connect goat farms with companies that want to carry out nature conservation work with the help of goats. It has resulted in a series of collaborations and made it possible for approximately 3,000 kids to come out to graze.
– You could easily have a hundred thousand goats in ten years. Land exists, and if I can do it, says Sundberg, so can everyone!
Ann-Helen Meyer von Bremen