IAA and AGNR foster young innovators in agriculture and natural resources through unique classes and programs, including the upcoming AgEnterprise Challenge
Image Credit: Caroline Beall
The College of Agriculture & Natural Resources (AGNR) is rich with young innovators and entrepreneurs. Encouraging students to think creatively about the agricultural industry of the future, the college provides unique and transformative in- and out-of-classroom experiences that help students to grow their own fearless ideas. With the AgEnterprise Challenge finals coming up this week featuring many new innovative ideas in agriculture, natural resources, and environmental sustainability, the college is highlighting another path to innovation and entrepreneurship through the Institute of Applied Agriculture (IAA) that sparked a new goat milk soap business, Left Teat Soap Co.
Caroline Beall is a freshman in the IAA studying Agricultural Business Management and planning to transfer into the college’s four-year program for her bachelor's degree. Along with her team members Sydney Weaver, Jessica Mendez, and Gabby Williams, she developed and has now successfully launched her own business making and selling goat milk soaps. Left Teat Soap Co. currently has a presence on Etsy, and you can follow the business on Facebook and Instagram. There are four varieties of soap available for purchase, including unscented, lavender, lemon verbena, and unscented with a coffee bean massaging bar on one side for exfoliating.
“I had never made soap before,” says Beall. “I came into class with the idea of breeding goats for a business, but others in the class had ideas for soaps and fragrances, so we got the idea to combine them and make goat milk soap. My family has seven goats right now, five of which are dairy, one of which I milk to make the soap.”
And most of the milk from Cocoa, Beall’s golden goat-milk goat shown below at the AGNR Open House with Beall, happens to come from her left teat - hence the name, Left Teat Soap Co. “We had a lot of trouble coming up with a name, but when we did, we knew we would have to own it. We have little tags on each product now that tell the story of my goat and her left teat, which gives the soap more character,” laughs Beall.
Beall developed this business with her group as a part of INAG102 Agricultural Entrepreneurship, a class available through the IAA. Every student comes into the class with an idea for an agricultural business venture, and over the course of the class, students move through the business model canvas, giving presentations every other week. For Left Teat Soap Co., the process involved interviewing potential customers, testing different recipes, tweaking the product, assessing the financials, and taking that final step to actually launch the business. The class is taught by Larisa Cioaca, lecturer with the IAA.
“Between Larisa’s class and the marketing class there, they really tied into each other and helped a lot with the process of starting a business. Larisa said only one in five entrepreneurs actually launches a business, and there were five groups in our class and we were the only ones to launch something. Having that experience and education definitely gives you more confidence to feel like you can do it,” explains Beall.
Beall grew up on a small farm in New Windsor, Maryland, and her family raises horses and goats. She still works on the farm on the weekends with her younger brother. She has been in 4-H since she was eight years old, taking pigs to the Howard County Fair with her family and showing off her goats in the petting zoo there. She just joined Block and Bridle, an animal husbandry club at UMD, and hopes to show beef cattle at Ag Day this year. She is also still actively involved with her high school, with the goal of sharing an agricultural education with as many people as possible.
“I’m still close with my old agriculture teacher at Century High School, so I went there over winter break to teach the students how to make soap,” says Beall. “Goat milk soap is a cold-process soap so it is more difficult to make than most soaps. You have to have everything measured out beforehand for fragrances, and mix in lye with the milk, which heats it up, and if it heats it up too much the milk is pretty much ruined and you have to start over. So you have to have the bowl in an ice bath and keep things cold the whole time, which is really difficult. The students loved it though. All of them followed our social pages after that class. Once we can get it out there, I know people will enjoy it.”
Beall plans to apply for a formal business license and start selling at local farmers markets to get the product in front of more people. “The soap is great. I use it, my family uses it - everyone really likes it. And things like this that you can touch and smell and that have a story behind them are great ways to get people familiar with agriculture, because so many people don’t understand all the ways it affects them.”
The IAA provides ample opportunities for hands-on learning and innovation, as does the college. For more examples of innovation in sustainability, agriculture, and natural resources, be sure to stop into the Edward St. John Learning & Teaching Center Room 1224 at 6 pm on February 27th for the AgEnterprise Challenge finals. The winners last year invented and launched a new fertilizer made of algae, cleverly named Fergie. Algae used to make the fertilizer are harvested with a sustainable eco-technology called an algal turf scrubber designed to remove excess nutrients from the water, effectively taking a waste product of water purification and sustainably reusing it as fertilizer. See ideas like this and more at the finals and support the college’s commitment to innovation in agriculture and natural resources.
