Annotations - herder debt

he government says it is trying to encourage quality over quantity. But if every herder culls enough to restore the pastureland the crash in meat prices would eat away at their ability to pay off the banks. "Every herder has a loan. The more livestock you have the bigger the loan," says Batzorig, a 20-year-old, motorcycle-riding herder with a wide smile and 2m tugriks ($900) of debt, equivalent to about three months' wages in a city job. Batzorig and his younger brother have their mother to thank for cutting their dependence on the herding cycle. A few years ago, she trimmed the family animals from 1,000 to 600 and bought a house in a town.

The claim that herding debt reduces capacity for sustainable production is important; look for use of this frame in support of microcredit initiatives. #too-many-herders -- The "threatened herders" frame in this formulation is reversed as a positive, "cutting dependence on the herding cycle" by seeking wage labour in Ulaanbaatar (as opposed to proletarianization, impoverishment, alienation from herding, etc.)

n the spring, herders sell wool; in the autumn, meat. Sales go to pay off old loans and take new ones at rates that often exceed 20 per cent a year. The catch is the larger the herd, the easier it is to get bank loans but the larger herds also destroy the pastureland faster than new grasses can grow.

Even Mongolia's nomads have been caught up in the country's debt problem. Loans have become an annual ritual on Mongolia's steppes, where herders capitalising on a growing market for cashmere are hostage to a downward cycle of falling margins and deteriorating pastures

[publisher] It was one of the fastest-growing emerging markets during the commodities boom. Since the bust, the government and ordinary Mongolians have traded a culture of self-sufficiency for deep indebtedness.

Herders face income instability and uncertainty and are often indebted to intermediaries for cash advances

Convergence's interpretations of the problem.