A friend showed me this article in the Star-Ledger from New Jersey. It's about alpaca farmers in that state, and an itenerant shearer, and what alpacas are, and alpaca farmers across the country, and how the owners love their animals. A nice story. A little plug for the alpaca farmer it focuses on.
And then on page 3, there's this:
But not everyone is as optimistic.
There would have to be an enormous shift in demand for alpaca fiber to justify the animals' price, said economist Richard Sexton. And even if that happened, the American market would still have to contend with the alpacas available from Peru and other South American countries.
"When you've got a cost stream that exceeds the revenue stream, the asset that's involved is worthless. That's what we have in the U.S. alpaca industry," said Sexton, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at University of California-Davis.
"I think most of these people that are in the alpaca industry are well-intentioned, but it's just a house of cards that's sadly destined to collapse," he said.
Hm.
Okay. They're expensive. Got it. But...
Maybe they just don't have sheep'n'wool festivals in California.
Comments