Annotations - breeding

Through the Gobi Revival Fund, the company has invested in veterinary care for more than 1 million animals and provides sustainable breeding programs. It also fenced off 500 square miles of Gobi Desert as a protected food source for 100,000 goats and fresh pasture for over 1,000 herders every year, according to the company’s website.

If the salacious strategy seems cheap, it’s actually not quite—Naadam is sponsoring a goat-breeding program in Mongolia, where it sources its cashmere. The program, working with local farmers and veterinary experts from Ulaanbatar, the country’s capital, is hoping to bring 500 to 1,000 more goats into the world. (Naadam, launched in 2015, bills itself as a socially conscious business with a model based on paying herders more while charging consumers less, by cutting out middle men.) In other words, the brand is just telling its story, as well it should.

This perhaps runs contrary to the "too many goats" sustainability frame, though the message in this case focuses on #fair-trade and #technical-expertise rather than ecological sustainability. The "goat-breeding program" fits within the sustainability frame insofar as it promotes selective #breeding for higher quality and productivity, rather than breeding for increased goat numbers.

One of the first actions Kering took was to help improving goat-combing, in order to make the process cleaner and more efficient. Local herders have learned how to sort cashmere by quality, packing the different grades into cotton, rather than plastic bags. Cashmere fiber quality is also now being augmented through improving goat husbandry and breeding. The project also supports veterinary services to improve the health and condition of goats.

(as livestock health)

The brand also introduced the Loro Piana Cashmere of the Year Award in 2015 to support the highest standards of quality. This year the winner produced exceptionally fine fibers only 13.6 microns in width—five times thinner than a human hair.

For more than six generations, Italian company Loro Piana, the world’s most revered wool and cashmere brand, has been sourcing the finest fibers from some of the most inhospitable places on Earth to create its famously exquisite fabrics and garments. After decades of buying its raw cashmere fibers directly from selected herdsmen from Inner and Outer Mongolia, in 2009 it launched a sustainable development program, the Loro Piana Method, with universities in Italy, China and Mongolia. This initiative aims to further improve the impeccable quality that Loro Piana’s devoted customers expect of its cashmere, support smaller herds through selective breeding, preserve the ancient and complex craft of harvesting the precious under-fleece, secure a premium price for the herdsmen’s precious fibers, and protect the local ecosystem.

(but not necessarily "improved" breeds?)

Herder cooperatives can work together to access high-quality billies that can be shared amongst herding families, and they should seek out traders and processors that are willing to pay a premium price for high-quality fibre.

It would be great to see the return to traditional Mongolian breeds that are known for their low micron, long fibres. For example, the Russian don breed has been popular due to its high yield, but the fibre is thick and short, and this contributed to Mongolia’s overall decline in quality.

We need large-scale breeding initiatives to raise fibre quality across the country, and we need to encourage herders to shift their focus to quality instead of quantity.