Year of the goat
On the vast steppes of Inner Mongolia, herders learn how to earn more income from the animals they have raised for generations.
Vast, empty expanses of green stretch in every direction from Payin Gacha, a village located about 150 kilometres from Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia in China. The area is home to more than 300 households that have long relied on goats to feed their families.
The government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is now encouraging small-scale farmers to be more commercially oriented as a way to combat poverty. The Agriculture and Livestock Department has been assigned to help small-scale farmers, partly by encouraging them to look at new ways to generate income from goats.
“Currently, there are about 60,000 goats in our village. We have been raising the animals for generations. We sell them to markets and to government representatives,” said Pu Khe Chao Lu, the 50-year-old village head. “We have money to afford our children’s school fees and many of them have now finished university in Beijing and other cities across China.”
Mr Pu Khe Chao Lu, who identifies himself as a Chinese-Mongol, said goat farming had proved to be a highly profitable business. Every four months, meat raisers slaughter their animals and sell the meat and organs to dealers, while many other residents also raise dairy goat breeds and sell to dairy factories producing fresh milk and cheese.
“Most farmers earn between 30,000 and 40,000 yuan a year (150,000 to 200,000 baht) from raising goats. We can’t do anything else in these green fields and because of the low temperatures, we can’t grow vegetables on the land here. That’s why Mongol people do not normally eat vegetables. We import vegetables from Beijing,” he told Asia Focus during a trip organised as part of the annual Thai-Chinese Media Exchange Programme between the All China-Journalists Association and the Thai Journalists Association.
The village headman said consumers who buy goat meat and milk from his farmers need not be worried about animal disease and hygiene because the community has generations of experience raising the animals.
At the same time, he said, local farmers have been absorbing modern knowledge and learning new techniques about goat raising from veterinarians and livestock department officials who visit each month to work closely with herders and hold training sessions.
Another goat raiser named Chen said he did not need to spend a lot of money buying feed to raise goats. They eat the grass in a field that is big enough to sustain them for their entire lives. Female goats give birth to one or two kids every four or five months.
“We don’t have problems selling goats. Traders come to our village to buy the animals,” said Mr Chen, adding that raising goats had enabled him to save money for his son who is now studying agriculture and livestock at a university in Beijing.
“My son told me that he really wants to return to help me raise goats after his graduation. He wants to apply his modern knowledge.”
In Payin Gacha, the village committee also places high importance on education. It built a Mongolian-style pavilion as a library for goat raisers and their children to spend their time reading different types of books in both Chinese and Mongolian languages.
“We were never disappointed with the decision to build the library as a lot of goat raisers and their offspring travel here to use it. We are very concerned about education,” said Pu Khe Chao Lu.
The library, which is also home to the village committee office, is also used as an assembly point for area residents to organise ceremonial and commemorative events.
Hsun Hsieng Wen, deputy director-general of the Livestock and Agriculture Department, said it was duty-bound to find traders and markets for goat raisers in Inner Mongolia. Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are the three main markets for them while some of the products are sold domestically in Inner Mongolia.
Apart from encouraging local villagers to raise goats, the department has supported them to raise meat and milk cows for commercial purposes.
“Chinese people and other ethnic people in China like eating beef,” said Ms Hsun. “We see that raising cows will also help farmers make a profit. Apart from the domestic market, we export beef products to various Asian countries.”
Mongolian beef is prized for its flavour in many restaurants across China, she added.
She said the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of Inner Mongolia in 2015 was 1.88 trillion yuan. The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, bordering both the Republic of Mongolia and Russia to the north, is the third largest Chinese province with a total area of 1.2 million square kilometres but very sparsely populated. It has about 24 million inhabitants, or just 1.8% of China’s total population.
Many ethnic groups live in the area including Mongolian, Daur, Oroqen, Ewenki, Hui, Han, Korean and Manchu. Hohhot is the capital. The official languages are Mandarin and Mongolian, the latter of which is written in the traditional Mongolian script, as opposed to the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet, which is used in the republic of Mongolia, which traditionally has been aligned with Russia.
“We can’t do anything else in these green fields and because of the low temperatures, we can’t grow vegetables on the land here. That’s why Mongol people do not normally eat vegetables” PU KHE CHAO LU Village head