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.

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

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

herder debt Herders experience high levels of household debt. This has the effect of keeping them in poverty and preventing them from investing in improved, diversified, or otherwise more sustainable forms of production; it also places artificial demands on them to produce more to achieve a reasonable standard of living.