Our last days in Mongolia.

I've been a little lax lately in my posting.  I apologize, but sometimes it seems with all the things we are actually doing, its difficult to sit down and write about them.  When last I left off we had just two days left in Mongolia.

Wednesday (the 17th, yes almost 6 days ago) was a day to see some farms.  After a brief meeting with the Executive Director of the Mongolian Wool and Cashmere association, we climbed into Mr. Tuvshin's truck, and we headed north.  we drove about 90 km out of UB and pulled into the center of a small town, and up to the municipal buildings.  We were met by one of the Governor's deputies to be our local guide, and we headed north once again.  After a short drive our new guide pointed off to a set of buildings a few kilometers off the road to the road to our left, and as is the way in Mongolia, we just pulled off the road, and headed straight that way.  At times there was what resembles a dirt road, at other times, it was just driving through washes and across open ground.


We pulled up beside a concrete block wall and the four of us climbed out of the vehicle.  There were just two buildings within the walled area - a small house built in the american style, and a small to medium size barn.

I was on visiting a 60 cow dairy farm that in some ways looked like many back home, but in others was very different.  The family was just three years into the dairy business.  They got into it with no farming experience and little beyond internet research to work from.  They have a 5 year loan at 20% interest (pretty standard for Mongolian lending).  They also opened a yogurt factory in UB and all of their milk goes to the yogurt factory.  The farm has 4 employees, the yogurt plant 6.  They milk the local breed of milk cow which yields roughly 1-3 liters of milk per milking, twice a day.  Feed is 100% pasture, and the cows only come into the barn to be milked each day from April-November, but November-April they come inside at night as well.

Perhaps one of the most impressive thing was the home made methane digestor.  There is a pit in one corner of the barn where the manure is pushed.  It is mixed with hot water, and pumped into a tank where it digests for up to 3 weeks.  The bio gas produced provides 100% of the barn's power needs and heating needs.   It was simple, practical, and 100% made by them.  We talked about some of the improvements that they want to make such as alley scrapers, a yard for the cows, and the largest - growing their own feed.  They had purchased 26 Holstein embryos from France, and frozen semen from China.  They now, among their herd of Mongolian cows, have 24 Holstein calves which they hope will improve their milk production dramatically.  They tried raising corn this year, but like a few other farmers I met, the crop failed.  They buy seed from China, and I suspect it is just not suited to the incredibly short growing season.  Add on top of that the complete lack of fertilizer that is used and the crops simply don't grow.  I promised to do some research and see if any of my contacts in the states knew of international suppliers of short season silage corn.  That's a project for my return.

We next visited with the largest dairy farm in the aimag (province).  Mr. Tsogtbuyan worked on a large state run dairy farm for roughly 10 years before the fall of communism.  At that time state run farms, including the one he worked on, collapsed   The knowledge, operating capital and most of the connections for supplies returned to Russia.  He worked at various endeavors for several years, mostly trading between Russia, Mongolia, and China.  He saved his money and soon leased some land, and began a small farm, including a small dairy operation.  Over the last 15 years it has grown to 260 milking cows.  They too buy embryos from France and frozen semen from China.  They cut wheat, stalk and all and store it in an "in ground" silage bunker, fermenting it as we would corn silage.  Their attempts to grow corn have been just as successful as other farmers here I have met.  After the tour of his farm he invited me into his house to talk at length about his operation, his life, and farming in general.  We talked about crop insurance and government backed loans - two things that help stabilize agriculture in America.  He told me about some of the most basic challenges - while crop land can be leased, grazing land in Mongolia cannot.  Herders graze their land on anything that is unclaimed.  Or they are supposed to do it that way.  In reality they graze their animals where ever they please (even if that area happens to be an almost ripe wheat field, fences being no barrier to wire cutters.)  The herders practice natural breeding, the bull cattle, boar goats, and ram sheep all running in the herds, meaning that a farmer who takes great care to improve his herd is constantly at risk of his imported bloodlines being diluted by a nomadic herder's straying bull.  It was a touching and long conversation in which I learned a lot about the last 30 years of Mongolian agriculture and some of the challenges it currently faces.

When we returned to UB we had one last "official" event to do.  Ms. Batchimeg, a 2010 Eisenhower Fellow has been crucial to the success of my visit to Mongolia.  At the time it was first decided that I would be visiting Mongolia she was serving as the National Security Adviser to the President of Mongolia.  She graciously volunteered to oversee my visit, even going so far as to provide the services of her assistant to Eisenhower Fellowships.  We had met briefly at the Eisenhower Day of Fellowship, and we got to have a delightful dinner with her and Enke, her assistant who has been in charge of planning my days in Mongolia.  In the most recent elections here in Mongolia Ms. Batchimeg has joined two other Eisenhower Fellows in the Mongolian Parliament.  Not only that, but with an influx of new, young, successful Members of Parliament in the recent election, her party, the Democratic Party is now in power.   Dinner was a perfect capstone to our stay in Mongolia.  She and Enke are both insightful, optimistic, outgoing and smart women.

Thursday was our last day in Mongolia.  But reality kicked in, and I had a lot of work to get done.  Eisenhower Fellowship Foundation has provided me an amazing opportunity.  While I need to take full advantage of the physical opportunities given and see the country, I also need to be a good guest.  This means writing e-mails and notes to the people I met with, following up on some things I promised to look into, and doing some of this stuff.  So that meant that while Liz was having an amazing time holding eagles, seeing camels up close and visiting a really neat temple and monument to Genghis Khan, I was stuck in the room doing work.  She'll have to blog about the first part of Thursday, I missed it.  That evening Mr. Tuvhsin and Mr. Shagai (our driver and translator for the 8 days) took us out to a local restaurant pub.  The were celebrating Oktoberfest.   The beers were 1 liter each, so Liz and I just had one each.  And of course there was much toasting with the Vodka.  In Mongolia, like Russian, Vodka is not for sipping, it's for toasting.  These two gentleman made our experience what it was.  I spent most of each day with them, Liz almost as much.  They were hard working, courteous, went out of their way to make sure my trip was a success, and opened their minds and their hearts to us, sharing not only their country, but their honest thoughts and opinions on issues as diverse as the US election, Abba, religion, and more.

The next morning they both joined us to see off bright and early at the train station for our trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  But more on that in the next blog entry!