A Goat Catcher’s Pilgrimage

The Global Focus Program came to an end for us after almost 7 weeks of travelling around the world together. It’s funny sometimes how something can be over before it ends.  Yesterday we left India and flew home via Bangkok. As we rose above the smog of New Delhi the Himalayas stood magnificently in the distance for miles and miles, absolutely unbelievable how long and high that mountain range is. After the absolute awe of seeing the mountains we were blown away again as we flew in over the delta to Bangkok. We saw the highest mountains and the biggest valley that we had ever seen all in one day, sometimes life’s like that I guess. I’m writing this on my flight from Sydney to Broken Hill and from this height the crops look fantastic and all the water storages are full.

The GFP pushed me out of my comfort zone with 7weeks of conversations and intellectual stimulation, something I haven’t been familiar with since I left school. Of the 6 countries we visited the USA was the only one in which English was the first language spoken so it was difficult to understand and be understood and things often got lost in translation. Culturally we were thrown from the crassness of the US into French style, from there to the sombre Ukraine, the hubbub of Turkey, the Bahrainian experience of Islam to incredible India where 30% of the population are starving.

tumeric crop

verandah conversations

I’m very grateful for the telephone and internet connection to the world, my travelling companions were a lot of fun and I’ll miss them, but it’s home to get a bit of work done and plan out the next stage of my Nuffield tour which I hope will involve the kids. Really want to share this adventure with them. It’s a big world out there.

From a goat industry point of view, Australia still has the best goats I’ve seen and I believe it will be a solid industry to be in well into the future.

goat herders

scrawny Bahrain goat

Markets at Bahrain

I’m not what you might call easily intimidated but when we arrived in Bahrain in the middle of the night and I was the only woman in an airport ful of Arabian taxi drivers I attempted to hide behind my Nuffield brothers, wondering how I’d survive a week in the Middle East. But I needn’t have worried, after I’d adjusted to the lack of women on the street Bahrain was easy to cope with and much more tolerant than I expected.

The heat and humidity were extrordinary, I’m pretty used to hot weather but I’ve never felt humidity like that, not even in the Kimberly in the build up to the wet. It was unbelievably uncomfortable and after having to don black robes and headscarf to visit the Grand Mosque I gained a lot of respect for Islamic women who wear these styfling robes in the heat. After speaking to them about why they cover up I still couldn’t rein my overly practical nature in enough to really understand, but they respected my choice as I did theirs and that’s all there really is to it isn’t it?

Bahrain Heat

causeway from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia

Bahrain is a major export destination for Australian products, namely mutton, cars and bauxite. My sponsor, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) were great hosts, especially Peter and Sharon who welcomed us into their home for the absolute luxury of a home cooked meal and a swim in the pool. We got to observe first hand the live sheep trade and slaughter by Bahrain Livestock Company. There is often a bit kicking around inthe media about the cruelty suffered by our livestock being exported live to the Middle East and Asia but all we saw was a professionally run livestock business where animal welfare was a priority and fully addressed.

Aus Mutton at the wet markets

Choosing a sheep in Bahrain

The climate in Bahrain has changed markedly over a short space of time to become one of the most desolate places I’ve ever seen. Being a small island amidst deserts, they’ve created a micro climate change by lowering the water table enough to kill almost all the vegetation, leaving the country totally reliant on desalinated water and imported food.  It’s a vulnerable position to be in, without their oil and gas they’d be in a bit of trouble. They’ve focused on becoming a financial hub in the gulf but so have a lot of places. Processsing oil from Saudi is an important industry, but it’s cheap energy that drives the country, without that they’d have no water and no air conditioning.

We flew from Bahrain to Southern India for yet another eye opener. We’ve visited silk farms and a silk research station, goat and dairy operations, dairy distributor, a coffee plantation in hills straight out of a Rudyard Kipling story and we’ve spoken with a researcher developing super bamboo for biofuel. It’s all been fantastic but visits to the local markets along the way are a highlight and best described with photographs.

mysore markets

verandah conversations in India

Salem, southern India

dairy processing

A week in the Ukraine was enough to get us excited about the potential of the agricultural sector and frustrated with the limitations created by a country that slept through the industrial revolution and woke in the mid nineties with a post Soviet hangover.

Fresh water in Kiev

more water

kiev from my window

kiev

Humus laden topsoil up to 18’ deep and a river that would make any Australian farmer cry are the jewels of the country. We were like a mob of kids in a lolly shop digging our hands into the black earth and talking about ways to get into the Ukrainian agriculture business. As the week wore on our enthusiasm waned when we realised the real risks of doing business here could only be handled with a good bodyguard and top-level connections.

Dutch owned farm

harvesting soya beans on US owned farm

Land in the Ukraine is owned by the people, usually in 4 hectare plots. These can be used for subsistence farming or rented out to another farmer at around 3% of land value. This is a form of social security that is pretty effective when you think about it. As farmers in Australia we are always trying to get around the problem of such a large portion of our capital being tied up in land. This system allows investors and agricultural professionals to amalgamate a parcel of land and get busy with production. Rates of return are very high, a 20% return is considered a bit of a flop and 100% return seemed to be fairly common. I know, it’s hard to get your head around but that’s what happens when inputs are negligible, the market is strong and the soil is fantastic.

We travelled from Kiev down to Odessa and visited with farmers, factories and even the old Soviet missile base that housed enough neucs to decimate 600,000 square kilometres. We took a trip down into the bunker and saw the ‘buttons’ that could have wiped out nations. We went to the ballet at one of the most beautiful opera houses in the world but given the last three weeks the dim lights resulted in us nodding off rather than appreciating Ukrainian ballet. We witnessed first hand corruption when we were asked for bribes, we felt the effects of racial and sexual discrimination and all in all, we were glad to get out.

missile riders

fatal buttons

Ukrainian ballet

Markets in Odessa

dry fish at the markets in Odessa

Ukrainian mutton seller

We flew onto Turkey and had two nights in the vibrant city of Istanbul. We went to Gallipoli on a mad day trip and had the surreal experience of walking amongst the places that are an intrinsic part of being Australian. Not a day goes by that we don’t remind ourselves of the privilege that being part of this program is.

Lone Pine

Shrapnel Gully

The Sphinx

In the trenches at Gallipoli

We’re currently in Bahrain and are experiencing yet another aspect of humanity and culture. It’s an amazing place and we’ve got some stories to tell.

Bahrain

Bahrain streets at night

At the Saudi Arabia border

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting of France but I do know that it exceeded anything I’d hoped for. A beautiful and subtle sense of style permeates all that the French do, including agriculture.

Perhaps I expected grossly inefficient farming practices given the subsidies enjoyed by EU farmers over the years, perhaps I thought that because of their small scale they could not be viable, but in reality I just didn’t know a damn thing because France surprised me on all fronts, particularly when I realised just how easily I could stay and sink into this culture.

It was difficult to remove my mindset from the focus on growth that is the basis of our way of life and business in Australia, but essentially, that’s what I needed to do to understand agriculture in France today. Coming from the “Get big or get out,” frontier philosophy of Australia and after having spent a week in mid-west USA, I had to re-arrange my thinking in order to appreciate how farmers in France remained viable in a business where land is basically an untraded commodity. Their focus was on searching out the high value crops to maximise outputs and co-operating within their families and communities in order to minimise inputs, this resulted in a simple, relaxed and sustainable efficiency that I was a bit envious of.

We flew into Paris and drove north to the battlefields of the Somme where we met Phillippe, French Nuffield scholar and host extraordinaire. We visited the war memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, the Australian museum and a small school rebuilt after the war with donations from Australia. The walls of the museum were lined with photographs of young Aussie men, larrikins with grins on their faces despite the horrors of the battles they’d seen. They were embraced by the French as their own, a sign above the playground at the school we visited read; “Remember the Australians.” Our accommodation that night was next to the Notre de Amiens, the largest cathedral in France; 145 metres long and 42 metres high, built between 1220 and 1700. The sheer beauty of that place was spine tingling with the late afternoon light filtering through stained glass windows, statues of saints, ancient paintings and lighted candles, it was a moving experience for all of us and we were unusually quiet as we sipped our beers that evening in the shadow of the most magnificent man made structure I have ever seen. We had dinner that evening with a young local farmer who invited us back to his home next to the cathedral. We drank champagne on his balcony and watched the moon rise over the roof of the cathedral before walking the streets of Amiens at night. Thank you Nuffield!

cathedral Amiens

Villers-Bretonneux

Battle of the Steeples

From Amiens we drove south to Chartres and met another French Nuffield scholar who took us on a tour of a sugar beet factory then out to dinner next to another magnificent cathedral and so began our steeple grading tour of France.

sugar beets

corn flake

The following day we drove further south to the small village of Gaujacq. We were having a few problems finding the home of the Nuffield scholar we were supposed to meet and rang for directions and I quote, “go to the castle on the hill and knock on the big door on the right.” OK… and there it was. The home of Jean and Frederique Thoby and their Plantarium. Jean took us on a tour of the castle built in the 13^th century and their garden containing a million different species of camellias (or something like that.) It was a soak up the beauty and atmosphere and be grateful for the experience moment as we wandered through gates built to hold back the Romans into magnificent gardens overlooking the rolling hills of southern France into Spain’s Pyrenees Mountains.  We were staying that night in a beautiful house not far from the castle, the room was a little cramped with all 6 of us bunking together so I took a hit for the boys and stayed back at the castle sharing a room with Jean’s daughter. I took to the princess role easily, perhaps that’s what happens when your in the South of France. Jean and Frederique introduced me to French hospitality and we enjoyed some more of those fantastic “Nuffield kitchen conversations” over crepes for breakfast. We visited kiwi fruit plantations, crops, a ‘pick your own’ farm and a winery before making a very Australian bee line for the beach.

The Castle Gaujacq

Duck Farm

sand farmers

fields of corn

Gardens at Gaujacq

growing grapes in sand

lodgings

Leaving Gaujacq at 4am we drove to Paris, met up with Philippe, parked in the middle of the road and spent 80 euros on cheese and wine which we ate on an upturned wine barrel sheltering from the rain under an awning in the markets. That’s when we knew we were really in Paris. Philippe took us on a whirlwind tour of the sites and introduced Don to PIP (Parking in Paris.) The following day we met with the OECD and tried to understand European agricultural policy before walking across the River Seine and admiring the Eiffel Tower in the last light of day.

Eiffel Tower

WHere you park when in Paris!

Beef at the Paris markets

Another early start the next day and we were on our way to the Ukraine (south-eastern Europe,) where we were met by Australian Nuffield scholar from 2006 David Fulwood and our Ukrainian adventure began. The stark contrast between the genteel style of France and the harsh ambience of a country emerging from Soviet rule was in out faces from the moment we arrived, but that’s another story, stay tuned…

Back on the messy home front there have been some good outcomes that have allowed me to relax and enjoy this trip even more than I was already doing, very proud of  Matilda who is shining through it all.

I must becoming a little travel savvy as I’ve managed to sleep my way across the North Atlantic on our way to France. The Global Focus Tour seems to be as much about learning to manage getting yourself out of a meeting and onto an international flight on time as much as anything.

The 3 key points I take home my travels so far is this:

1)            Water is King

2)            Water is King

3)            Water is King

It doesn’t matter whether your in the USA, Mongolia or Australia, access to water opens up options and opportunities like nothing else.

calf pens at Braum's dairy

Apart from visiting farms, universities and research stations, we sampled American mid-west culture big time with a visit to the Oklahoma State Fair. You’ve got to hand it to their culinary genius, there really is nothing they can’t deep fry.

sampling the fried coke

The last two days in Washington DC helped us put the jigsaw that is the American Agricultural system together, basically, if you want to understand it, you need to understand the Farmbill which is such a work in motion that it takes a bit of keeping up with. They are currently crafting the 2012 Farmbill even though the 2008 bill hasn’t been implemented yet so how can they know if policies in the 08 bill will actually work? Tricky and complicated. Food stamps take up a large portion of the “ag” budget and are basically a welfare payment that people can use to buy food, can’t help thinking that in our area that would be a better system than weekly payments that often end up being spent on alcohol and cigarettes.

The bio-technology debate is interesting, America is much more open to the use of science for improving production than most of the western world. It seems to me that the evolvement of societal thinking starts when people are hungry with a focus on food on the table, shifts to profit at all costs as wealth increases, moves on again to science with the availability of profit and an interest in increasing profit, then to making decisions based on emotions as we become in Don’s words; ‘spoilt, fat and lazy.’

buffalo grass variety

Most of us agree that the best part about this trip is the discussions we have after a meeting or visit. With such a diverse mix of experience and skills we can dissect an interview or business and add dimensions to each other’s understanding that we couldn’t do singly.

GFP v's 3.1

We’re really looking forward to France, for the change of diet as much as anything else.

Football

Aus/Irish Senate on US ag

Wanaaring Road test vehicle

T

wildflowers

The wild flowers were out in bloom when I was home, I was expecting a mass of them after the winter rains but I think the density of grass built up over the last couple of summers has reduced the soft winter annuals that usually supply the colour show. Still, it is looking lovely there.

evening light at Myrnong, by Matilda

After a 4 day “break” at home after arriving home from Mongolia it was time to pack my bags and head out on the next leg of my Nuffield adventure. There’s been a lot of pre-planning and organising to be done to allow me to get away again and I’m grateful for the support of friends and family that have allowed me the privelege of this travel.

met up with the other 4 Australian scholars in Canberra for briefings and then we flew out to the USA, arriving in LA an hour before we left on Saturday thanks to a good tail wind. We have spent this week in the state of Oklahoma and it’s been a great start to our trip. The Irish chapter of our group joined us here and has added the seemingly required dairy farmer mix to the group. The Australians include two vegie growers from South Aus, a crustacean farmer from Tassie and a beef feed lotter from Queensland. It’s a great mix of industries and personalities and we have some pretty lively and interesting discussions. The productive nature of this soil and climate has made a few of us drool a bit, makes you wonder why you’d be scratching out a living in a bit of worn out dirt with little water when there is just so much beautiful country here.

We’ve had some great meetings and have been a bit humbled at how the red carpet has been rolled out for us, Nuffield certainly opens doors for us.

Nuffield scholars version 3.1

Pecan Trees

Stockyard City Oklahoma

Gobi accomodation

Well, here comes another rant on my time in Mongolia, it’s pretty difficult to encapsulate the privileged experience that has been mine for the past few weeks learning about one of the oldest herding cultures left on earth, but it’s a long plane trip home and I can enjoy a one way conversation.

The privilege has been sharing a moment in these people’s lives, laughing over a bowl of tea, cuddling their babies, trying to both understand their herding life and describe mine, lamenting the loss of livestock they experienced last winter, explaining how we survive long dry periods and trying to understand how they can build their animal numbers up quickly enough to remain “viable” when they can’t buy livestock in and have little opportunity to source outside income. We shared their concern about dropping well water levels, changes bought by mining and the exodus of youth to the city. I took with me a collection of photos from home, mostly of livestock and the landscape and some of my family and left a trail of these photos behind me as gifts to herders who would gratefully tuck them into the wall or ceiling of their ger amid pots, ladles, motor bike parts, bridles and Buddhist statues.

future herder

I guess what surprised me most was the fact that I could identify with the herders of the Gobi more so than I could with the goat producers I met in the United States last March who are often protected with alternative income streams from gas, oil and hunting and subsidised fodder. This parallel with a 3^rd world country seems a little absurd given that Australia is such a wealthy nation but so much of our wealth is contained in the green belt following our south-eastern coastline that the outback or “inner circle” as I like to call it is similar to Mongolia in that it shares both a lack of infrastructure and services as well as being at the mercy of a pretty harsh climate, though thankfully not as harsh as Mongolia’s.

The Mongolian people have experienced dramatic change since privatisation in the mid 1990’s. During Negdel (socialist) times herders cared for a set number of government owned livestock, around 150 small animals per family, and were permitted to have 75 of their own animals, any losses of government livestock had to be replaced from their own herds. Veterinary care, doctors, education and transport were provided and on the surface it sounds like life was better for herders then, but as one old man told us, though it sounds good, it wasn’t. They were told when and where they could move, they lost their independence and taking independence from a Mongolian herder would be akin to asking an Australian pastoralist to surrender their autonomy. With privatisation in the mid 1990’s, herder and livestock numbers increased resulting in an increase in grazing pressure. It seems that there was also a change in herd dynamics as herders increased goat numbers in an attempt to cash in on strong cashmere prices. I’d make the assumption (dangerously) that it was and still is cashmere that pays for education, mobile phones, TV’s, satellites and motor vehicles. Camels, sheep and horses are herder’s subsistence animals due to their ability to survive tortuous winters. Going into a tough winter some herders will only breed their camels to provide their families with milk in the summer, keeping their softer animals dry to help them make it through the winter and even tougher spring. Goats, with their lack of subcutaneous fat are the first to die, literally freezing to death and so represent a liability in the herd structure. In reality, it’s just another example of the market driving risky and perhaps inappropriate agriculture. Animal numbers were significantly reduced after a harsh winter in 2002 and again last winter, a tough though seemingly necessary cycle to maintain balance in the landscape.

winter carnage

Chart on livestock numbers in Omnigobi aimag from 1960 to 2007. Figures provided by Jane Addison- Thanks J

After around 20 interviews or so I started to get a sense of the role personal “drive” played in the success of these herders, much the same as it does anywhere I guess. As I see it there are two critical factors determining coming through winter in reasonable shape; the ability and willingness to move regularly throughout the summer providing livestock with the best pasture possible to maximise the “fat bank” in each animal, and harvesting as much fodder as possible during the summer to feed livestock when they are holed up in their winter camp. I think personal “drive” has a massive effect here because it’s a lot of work to regularly pack up and move camp following the grass. Once camels were used to transport herder’s belongings and while this was harder and slower than using a motor vehicle, it was less expensive so I think it’s possible that now the number of summer moves are also affected by a family’s available finances. Collecting forage by hand is arduous work, mostly done by the men who sometimes see it as an opportunity for a vodka drinking session with their mates. Obviously the less fodder you have squirreled away for winter, the more at risk you are of your livestock starving to death when energy requirements far outweigh available forage.

a ger in transit

We met one herder who had spent the last 3 years away from his home turf, following the grass, sort of like us having our stock in the “long paddock’ for 3 years. He was a fairly broken man when we chatted and it was hard to see how he could pull himself out of the situation that the climate had thrown him into. He’d had 700 animals last summer, making him quite a wealthy and successful herder. Last autumn he’d got caught in an early snowstorm in the mountains and had lost 200 head of sheep and goats and very nearly lost his life. He was in hospital following that and went into winter in bad shape, resulting in an almost total loss of livestock. He’d moved in closer to the mines in the hope that he could either get work or free fodder for his stock. It’s really unusual for a herder to tell this sort of a story, they are reluctant to tell of losses and I think perhaps we caught him at a weak moment. It was pretty sad.

There was a tangible difference in the herders we interviewed close to the mines and mining areas, perhaps best described as a loss of ‘genuineness’ or maybe even integrity. They appeared poorer, the gers were dirtier, children less clean and tidy, but there seemed to be more wealth. Often we felt a little uncomfortable with these families, individual mining is against the law and so we had to be careful to not ask direct questions that would incriminate them while still trying to understand their situation. There has been a noticeable difference in the number of herders congregating around these areas, perhaps they are the ones who lost their livestock last winter.

In answer to the questions, the area we were in has an average annual rainfall of around 100-150 mm, so it’s pretty arid and I think some of that may actually be snowfall measurement, not sure on that one. The area that herders move in varies according to seasonal conditions. Typically they have a registered winter camp that they return to each year, this allows them to build some infrastructure to shelter their livestock during winter. Some of these winter camps are really impressive, usually they have outer circular walls made out of stone with slabs of dry dung carved up and piled high to create additional wind breaks. During summer herders will try to preserve any pasture around the winter camp and there are occasional arguments amongst herders trying to secure their winter pastures. Some herders will move only in a radius of about 20-30km while others will travel for hundreds of kilometres, again this probably comes down to having both the means and drive.

Water points are quite close by Australian standards but an increasing number of wells are out of action as nobody seems responsible for their maintenance. It would seem logical that some of the money bought in from mining could be used for water point upkeep but I guess that remains to be seen. Most of the herders had noticed the standing water level in the wells was dropping. Some had made ingenious lever action pumps using an old tyre tube. One old camel herder had made a really effective counter balance bucketing system to reach water that was further than he could reach with a bucket on a stick. I guess the interesting factor in all of this is that the country is un-owned and herders basically co-operate in the use of pastures and wells.

Our translator, Chimeg, showed a lot of diplomacy; often she would introduce us as an Australian goat herder who was travelling the world looking at goat herding accompanied by an environmental scientist (Jane) who was doing her doctorate on the differences between Inner Mongolia and the Mongolian Gobi. Of course it was the complete opposite but when introduced like that and producing photos of our goats and asking them about theirs, the ice was broken and we enjoyed some fantastic unrestrained conversations. We even had some herders show us the gold they had found which was extremely unusual and an indicator of how accepted and trusted we were simply because we shared a common occupation and interests.

looking at pictures of home

I am forever grateful to Jane Addison for letting me tag along on her PhD research and ‘nobody knows the trouble she’s seen.’ Thanks Jane for taking a huge risk in inviting me along given that you didn’t know me from a bar of soap. Turns out we had heaps in common including a dangerous sense of humour, a definitive lack of “preciousness,” and now an abiding loathing of “you aint nothing but a hound dog” and an overuse of the phrase ‘I beseech you,’ when it comes to changing the music being blasted from the car stereo.

I’m also really grateful for Chimeg’s company on the trip. At just 23 with a bright future in front of her, she provided an interesting dynamic with her educated Mongolian insights. Chimeg and I had the best time horse riding together, we hired a couple of tough little ponies and delighted in terrorising Italian tourists by galloping flat knacker past them like a pair of unruly kids up to mischief. We had these ponies scaling hills so steep that to quote my grandfather, ‘we had to empty the horse dung out of the crown of our hats when we got to the bottom.’ Chimeg spent her childhood summers on horseback like a true Mongolian helping her grandmother who is still a herder in the cold north. Riding a Mongolian pony has been a long held dream of mine and I reckon Chingis Khaan would have signed us up.

It has simply been the best of trips and allowed me the time, space, company and environment to get my head and heart together and focus on the task at hand.

Getting back to Australia is the easy part, from the airport home is always an arduous journey but last night’s was pretty tough. I arrived back in Sydney after an overnighter from Beijing on Thursday morning and was met by my brother who took me to visit my folks and sister near Bathurst then onto Dubbo the following day. I caught a plane to Broken Hill and was met by my daughter Matilda. We then had to wait for Will’s plane to get in from Adelaide which was delayed due to the rough weather being experienced down there. We began the long journey home around 9pm, driving through the rain, arriving home at 2:30 am after 500 km of wet roads, 200 km of them muddy. I’m a little weary today but it is great to see the place looking so green, another 24mm or rain last night. Only 4 days to get station work caught up and then head back down to Broken Hill and onto Canberra for the start of the Nuffield Global Focus Tour, you don’t have to be mad or hyper but I’m finding it helps.

Driving back into the busy city of Ulaanbaatar after 2 weeks in the Gobi was a little confronting in its unfamiliarity. The constant beeping of the jammed traffic, noise and billboards were a far cry from the open stillness of the desert steppe and quiet calm of a herder’s ger. It was a none too gentle reminder of the change overtaking this country.

A land-locked country caught between Russia and China, Mongolia is basically un-fenced, un-owned and slightly smaller than Queensland. It has the lowest population density of any country in the world with about 1.4 people/square kilometre but we travelled throughout the most sparsely populated areas and there were people everywhere compared to home. It was difficult for the people I met to understand how isolated my home was in comparison.

Mongolia has a growing population, now around 2.5 million with a 2009 growth rate of 1.9%. Around 35% of the total labour force are involved in agriculture with 44 million livestock heads counted in 2009. 21% of the GDP comes from agriculture, 83% of that from the livestock sector. Copper, gold and coal have now overtaken cashmere, wool and leather as the country’s leading export products. “Mining Mongolia” is underway despite a firm cultural belief against disturbing the earth in any way. We visited Khaan Bogd in Omnigov aimeg, soon to be the site of the world’s largest copper mine. We camped one night not far from Tsogtseggi and heard the rumble of machinery all night from the nearby coal mine. We visited herders who blamed the decrease in pasture growth on the dust created by mining and the increased traffic servicing the mines, and many who blamed the lack of rain on the cloud seeding being carried out in both Mongolia and China. These people have a simple reverence of their land, an inherited lifestyle of living within environmental restrictions that has been successful for over 1,000 years, it is easy to see why they are uncomfortable with the change sweeping over their landscape. Still, mining their resources creates jobs for the growing population and has increased the standard of living for those lucky enough to secure work in the mines. It will bring money into the country that could be used to improve infrastructure and services. Herders who have lost almost all their livestock in the hell that was last winter are moving closer to mines in the hope of securing an income or some of the free fodder provided by the mines to herding families, the benefit of which is a bit dubious.

While I’m not anti-mining at all, I can’t help but wonder if this money will ever benefit Mongolians living in rural areas. If we draw some parallels between Australia and Mongolia, and it’s easy to do so, the wealth created from the country’s resources will most likely benefit urban Mongolians, not the people from the area the resource is taken, which can only lead to a continued flow of people out of the “countryside” and into the cities, leaving a dearth of youth and herding skills that are an intrinsic part of being Mongolian. Perhaps they will end up like Australians who drag out the image of the stockman as part of an identity far removed.

I’m still chewing over the grazing management/pasture issues, it’s incredibly complex and no amount of philosophising over Mongolian vodka is going to make it any clearer. The world’s rangelands are shaped by either fire or grazing, if we go back far enough in Australia’s history, our vegetation was most likely shaped by the grazing habits of megafauna, the sheer size of these animals is an indicator of the high nutritional quality of the vegetation. Years of management by burning changed the vegetative composition to be a landscape dominated by plants that had adapted to the fire regime and resulted in animal species that were far smaller than their ancestors. Now we have 200 years of grazing management under our belts we can see changes in the landscape again, if we look even closer we can observe changes on a species scale, landscapes moved to a certain state by the continual grazing of one species of animal. How does all this relate to what I saw on the Mongolian desert steppe? I guess it raised more questions than answers simply due to a lack of historical records. How much has the steppe changed under grazing is hard to know, historical pollen samples indicate a similar plant species composition 2000 years ago as what there is now, but I haven’t been able to find out how long this nomadic herding with these particular livestock species has been carried out. Perhaps what we’re seeing now are the least palatable vegetation species, perhaps their the same species that have been there since the climate has been relatively stable. Either way, all we can deal with is what we have now and the Mongolian climate is doing that by reducing livestock and herder numbers through tough seasons, hard as that is.

In answer to some of Graham the Grazing Guru’s questions, I’m against supplying pumps for these wells without some sort of provision made to ensure that the well watered areas aren’t chewed out. We visited a couple of water points that had water piped in and troughs on floats, the loss in ground cover surrounding these points was fairly significant as obviously, herders were reluctant to move their stock from such a good thing, and who could blame them, I mean, how many of us would be prepared to make a bucket out of an old tyre tube, tie it to a stick and water a  couple of hundred animals every single day? The other factor to consider is that these wells aren’t privately owned, so who pays for the pump and is responsible for maintenance? During socialist times the wells were better maintained and there has been some attempts to use “herder groups” in areas to co-operatively maintain the wells but the success of this when it is essentially every person for themselves is a bit dubious. Surprisingly enough I have heaps more to say, will add to this later.

Hello world from the Mozzies in Mongazs,

I love you man.

Tonight we have been on a cut out party at a Mongolian Pub serving German food with Mongolian girls singing  Swedish songs whilst Pakistanian news was screened on the Chinese TV.

However, we were very sensible and decided not to attend Strings nightclub, for fear of seeing a Philipino cover band covering ‘Land Down Under’ for the benefit of ageing Australian mining men drinking their rum and cokes at the bar.

Instead, we decided to drunkenly blog. A sensible decision.

And, in this state with our heightened understanding of the world, we can categorically inform you that Mongolian countryside music on repeat is really not that enjoyable. At all. However, hearing ‘You aint nothing but a hound dog,’ our suggested replacement, is also not suitable for playing 10 squillion times at 3, 000, 000, 000 decibels in your left ear for 2 weeks straight. And, whilst we are not necessarily a fan of excessive amounts of animal lard, we would like to open a new franchise selling floating camel meat pies in airag syrup. We think it would be a winner, and potential investors can contact us via Ger number 3, next to the Ovoo with the 15 blue scarves and the horse skull and the goat leg and wooden crutch, Genghis Khan soum, Mongaz.

But wait, there’s more. Every new investor receives a free roll of sandpaper-like toilet paper for stuffing up their noses, a free ride in our new Timee Taxi (limitied time only), unlimited aril (the type that sticks to the roof of your mouth despite repeated attempts to remove it whilst maintaining a polite smile on the face), a free set of blue pants to tuck into their Russian riding boots AND various packets of instant noodles (Chinese brand).

But don’t send any money, we’ll bill you. We’ll also throw in a hideously uncomfortable Mongolian saddle, one large flask of weak Mongolian milk tea, a ridicously beautiful sunset (followed by a sandstorm that blows you to China), an endless desert steppe, a plate of fried noodles and lard that you can labouriously pick the fat out of of (and some of us do), more sandpaper toilet paper for ‘washing’ the dishes with, and a roll of ‘scotch’ masking tape for absolutely anything including taping your tent down during before-said sandstorms.

BUT! I beseech you! Send no money. Ring 008023025, that’s 008023025.

Za, za.

The Mozzies.

P. S.  Love ya mum.

Not sure what happened with the last blog post, missed a few sentences or paragraphs at the end, maybe I just didn’t finish writing it in my hurry to go and ride a Mongolian pony.

But anyway, it is a little tricky to sort the whole herder well being/sustainable pasture usage issue, it is so multi-faceted that to waltz in here for a few weeks and speak with 30 herders gives me not much more than an overview at this point in time.

I guess what I’m seeing is that with privatisation in the mid 1990’s, herder numbers and subsequently livestock numbers increased. Whether or not they were better off under Socialism seems to be up to the individual’s experience. They were allowed to keep 75 animals of their own over and above their allotted animals, their own animals were used to replace any that they lost out of the allotted herd so they could get in real trouble in a tough winter.

With numbers building up post socialism the pressure on the landscape also increased, a bad winter in 2002 reduced livestock numbers as did last winter. An old couple we interviewed gave me the impression that it was all part of the natural cycle of herding in a climatically variable landscape. Bad winters reduced both livestock and herder numbers which increased pasture availability for those still able to make it work. The herders without livestock left move to the local town where there is little chance of employment and often end up moving to the capital city Ulaanbaatar and living in ger camps on the edge of the city, again without a lot of chance of employment.

To keep both their animals and the pasture in good shape herders need to move frequently. This used to be done with horses and carts and camels but now is with small trucks and jeeps which costs money. Basically it seems to me that the poorer they are now the less they move due to the cost of moving. This means their livestock are in worse shape and is a fairly destructive cycle.

Typically, herders move 3 or more times over the summer, chasing the pasture, the worse the season the more they move. Over winter they hole up in shelters in their registered winter camp and livestock draw on the fat they’ve laid down over summer to survive. Animals give birth in early spring which is the lowest point in available nutrition and at their lowest weight, but is done then to give the young time to grow big enough to survive the next winter and to allow the mothers a couple of months in autumn to put some fat on after they’ve weaned their young. It’s a tough gig.

Of course, all of this is just what I’m seeing in this snapshot in time and maybe I’ve interpreted wrongly.

Yesterday afternoon Chimeg and I hired a horse each and had a ball racing around the hills and valleys. These horses are small but full of heart and really surefooted in the hills. We were like a pair of kids terrorising tourists as we raced past them through gullies and up rocky hills. Thankfully we had Russian and not Mongolian saddles, not sure how they manage to ride in those things. Chimeg spent her childhood summers helping her grandmother who is a herder in the north of Mongolia so she rides a horse like a Mongolian herder and thankfully likes to go fast too. It was a great afternoon, lots of laughter and a feeling of absolute fun. That’s another one to tick off my Bucket List; rode a Mongolian pony and had a ball.