“You have to show them respect,” said Frank Smits, the proprietor of the camel farm, which lies between Rotterdam and Eindhoven. “They`re a lot more stubborn than cows.”
Mr. Smits, currently the only farmer in Europe with permission to sell camel milk, is just as stubborn as his camels. Since starting his farm in 2006, he has faced opposition from college professors who doubted him, animal rights activists who maligned him and the Dutch agricultural authorities who briefly shut him down.
But Mr. Smits stuck to his guns. “I like to win,” he said. “When I get an idea in my head, I want to see it through.”
The camels may be far from home but Mr. Smits, 26, saw an untapped market for camel milk in the rising number of European immigrants from Somalia and Morocco.
He now sells camel milk, which has long been popular in Africa and the Middle East for its supposedly curative powers, for more than Û10 a liter, or about $14.60 a quart, at a few dozen Islamic groceries and health-food stores across the Netherlands, with the rest exported to immigrant communities in Belgium, Germany and Britain.
In muddy jeans and boots, Mr. Smits looks every bit the young farmer. His father, though, is a neurologist and Mr. Smits studied both marketing and agriculture at college.
Still, there`s one thing he wants everybody to know: He`s not in it for the money. “Working as a checkout boy at the supermarket would pay better,” he said. The camels cost about Û7,500 each, he said, and they produce only about six liters of milk a day.
His motivation came from a 2006 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which has been promoting camel milk not only for its nutritional value, but also as a viable source of revenue, especially for the nomadic farmers who have been milking camels for millennia. The report said the market for camel-milk products could be as large as $10 billion.
“We know there`s a huge potential out there,” said the F.A.O.`s Anthony Bennett, who has been fielding more calls from potential exporters and traders. There are an estimated 14 million to 20 million camels in the world, with about a quarter of them in Somalia. Most of the others are scattered throughout the rest of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Mr. Smits`s professors thought he was crazy. “They laughed at the idea,” he said, “which inspired me even more.” His final thesis, on the feasibility of introducing camel milk to the European market, earned him a 5.5, the American equivalent of a D-minus.
“They just didn`t understand it,” he said. “I used a lot of research and literature from the F.A.O., but my teachers said the literature I used wasn`t scientific enough. Then I used that same paper to apply for grants and loans, and it worked fine.”
Getting the camels was not easy, though. The European Union does not allow them to be imported, so Mr. Smits had to find some from within the trading bloc. He managed to do so in the Canary Islands, which, while off the coast of Africa, still belong to Spain, an E.U. member. Mr. Smits shipped in three pregnant females, and soon began milking them on a small plot of land in a nearby town.
Local animal-welfare groups cried foul, arguing that the Netherlands already had enough exploited animals. A few months after getting started, Mr. Smits was closed down by the authorities because camels were not on the official list of commercially farmable animals.
But Mr. Smits convinced the government that he could run a farm “without unacceptable animal welfare consequences.” The authorities have cracked down on raising animals like fox and chinchilla for their fur but they gave Mr. Smits the green light, granting him a two-year period to milk his camels. That period was recently extended for two more years, until the end of 2010.
He succeeded where others failed.
“I`ve been doing this for 35 years, so I know how difficult it is,” said Wilhelm Breitling, who keeps dozens of camels on his farm in Ebhausen-Rotfelden in Germany, but has not managed to secure permission to sell their milk. For that to happen there, the milk would need to be pasteurized, Mr. Breitling said, “and when we pasteurize camel milk, its curative properties disappear.”
Camel farms in Kenya, Mauritania and elsewhere have also failed to receive approval to bring milk into Europe or the United States, because unpasteurized milk is generally forbidden.
Mr. Smits, who was given permission to produce unpasteurized camel milk because of his pioneering methods, attributes at least part of his success to the automated milking machine he developed with a dairy-equipment manufacturer, mainly for hygienic reasons.
“In the desert,” he said, “camels are milked by hand, the milk is stored in the hot sun with flies everywhere, and all these steps can pollute the milk.”
Mechanized camel milking also takes place in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. But Holger Marbach, the managing director of Vital Camel Milk in Kenya, worries that while upgrading to modern equipment brings production advantages, it could also lead to a “tremendous loss of quality, in terms of healthy factors from camel milk.”
Joerg Seifert, the technical director of the International Dairy Federation in Brussels, said that “big is not necessarily bad.” He added: “Ultimately, if we like it or not, there may be little alternative to intensifying agricultural livestock production in the long term if we want to secure food for all, including meeting the growing demand for milk.” Some experts estimate a camel`s daily output could be ratcheted up to 20 liters and beyond using technology.
Despite several attempts, Mr. Marbach has so far failed to get his Kenyan products onto U.S. shelves, because camel milk is forbidden by the Food and Drug Administration there.
But things are looking up. The F.D.A. has agreed to allow camel milk to be sold in the United States, but only after it passes a battery of health tests. An F.D.A. spokesman was quick to point out that water-buffalo milk was initially approved in 2003, but took until 2009 before all the tests were completed and validated.
There are also several studies under way into the putative health benefits of camel milk. At Wageningen University near here researchers are investigating how camel milk may help people with diabetes.
For Mr. Smits, milk is only the beginning. Last year he developed a camel-milk cheese that sells for Û85 a kilogram, or two pounds, and he hopes to introduce a bread to the world`s growing array of camel-milk products, like chocolate, ice cream, and soap.
He now owns about 40 camels in Cromvoirt, about 10 of them milkable.
To make a profit, Mr. Smits said he needed about three times his current herd, a goal he hopes to reach before 2015. And he is on the lookout for a bigger farm.
© 2009 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
mmmmmmmm, interesting article. I highlighted the important stuff. 10 billion dollar a year industry, 25% of all camels in somalia, health benefits like treating diabetes, maybe i will set up a camel milk factory in garowe, and my family has thousands of those camels because they are reer miyi from nugaal. So far detox center for khat, camel milk factory, and outreach school for reer miyi kids to learn online to boost their reading and writing skills seasonally depending on when their free from their work. I love researching this shit, cuz i am planning my life out while i finish my degree and save up for these interesting adventures!!!
