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Korea's development model takes root on the Mongolian steppe

Published: 22 Apr. 2025, 18:04

LEE SOO-JUNG
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Byambasuren Davaajav, 65, a dairy farmer from a village of Jargalant, poses for a photograph with his cattle at his house in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia on April 15. [GLOBAL CIVIC SHARING]

ULAANBAATAR — Byambasuren Davaajav, 65, a dairy farmer in Jargalant, refused to join a large commercial cooperative and founded a cooperative of his own with 20 neighbors in the belief that milk produced by him and the other villagers should be sold under their names.

Davaajav's idea might have been inspired by Korean experiences in the 1970s.

“Mongolia benchmarked Korea’s Saemaul Movement and launched its own campaign that encouraged every county to have one cooperative each,” Tsevegmed Munkhnasan, the third top official at Mongolia’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry, said in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily and two other Korean media outlets near Sukhbaatar Square in the capital city of Mongolia on Friday.

The Saemaul Movement, also known as the New Village Movement, was a campaign to modernize the rural Korean economy through village-level cooperative production activities during the 1970s.

Munkhnasan, head of the ministry's livestock policy implementation department, added that Korean expertise helped develop today’s Mongolian rendition, titled “New Cooperative — Wealthy Herder,” which allows a single county to have multiple cooperatives.

“Korea has also assisted in developing feed for livestock and feed-processing technologies for pastoralists through the Korea Partnership for Innovation of Agriculture (Kopia),” the officer said.

Korea's Rural Development Administration manages Kopia.

He added that his ministry frequently uses the Mongolian University of Life Sciences' Livestock Technology Advancement Center, funded by the state-run Korea International Cooperation Agency (Koica), to transfer and learn agricultural knowledge from Korean counterparts.

A vehicle from the Korea International Cooperation Agency is seen in a village in Jargalant in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on April 15. [LEE SOO-JUNG]

Koica has provided official development assistance (ODA) in Mongolia since 1995 after opening its local office in Ulaanbaatar the same year. The agency has participated in extensive ODA projects ranging from education and public hygiene to female empowerment and livestock policies.

In Jargalant, a suburban town approximately 140 kilometers (87 miles) from downtown Ulaanbaatar, Koica has been implementing an ODA program designed to “maximize added values for herders” and “develop an inclusive livestock industry” since 2021.

Specifically, the 6.3-billion-won ($4.4 million) program has streamlined milk production and production by allowing dairy farmers to form their own cooperatives with Korea-based nongovernmental organization Global Civic Sharing, which flew reporters to the town in Mongolia.

Pastoralist’s story

Byambasuren Davaajav, 65, a dairy farmer in Ulaabaatar's Jargalant, speaks with reporters inside his ger (tent) on April 15. [GLOBAL CIVIC SHARING]

In 2018, Davaajav founded Urmun Shargal Cooperative with 20 villagers from his town in Jargalant.

Davaajav’s vision to form the cooperative came after his country reportedly lost 11 million livestock animals after severe snowstorms and cold snaps between 1999 and 2001. He explained that financial aid from Koica and Global Civic Sharing helped realize his long aspiration.

He did not join cooperatives managed by large dairy manufacturers such as companies like Suu JSC and APU Dairy, despite them paying higher prices for milk than Global Civic Sharing, he claimed. However, Global Civic Sharing said it pays the same prices as dairy corporations.

“The biggest merit of our cooperative is that members can process their milk at a factory of its own and sell dairy products at markets without intervening companies,” Davaajav told reporters. “Once our products are sold in the market, it leads to [additional] profits in the form of dividends.”

Dairy products made at Global Civic Sharing's milk factory are sold at an Emart branch in Mongolia. Their ingredient milk is collected by pastoralists who are enrolled in Jargalant Milk, which is managed by Global Civic Sharing. [GLOBAL CIVIC SHARING]

To sell milk produced by the joint cooperative Jargalant Milk, comprised of Urmun Shargal Cooperative, Khaan Shargal Cooperative and Deediin Shargal, Global Civic Sharing built a milk processing factory in 2018. The factory has been up and running since July 2019.

“Our factory processes around 300 to 700 liters of milk daily,” said Batdorj Narangerel, a director at Global Civic Sharing’s Mongolian office.

On April 15, the factory was undergoing renovation, including installing a pasteurizer. Narangerel explained that the facility aims to receive ISO 9001 — an international standard for quality management — as such a qualification could help expand its markets and raise consumer preferences.

Global Civic Sharing purchases milk from members of the cooperatives and processes raw cow milk into edible milk, butter and dried curd. Their products are available at Emart branches and Nomin supermarkets in Mongolia.

Better genetics, more milk

Cattle graze on dried grass in Jargalant in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on April 15. [GLOBAL CIVIC SHARING]

Such an end-to-end process did not happen in a day. It took multiple years.

Davaajav’s first initiative after creating the cooperative was improving the genetic quality of the cattle in his town, as he thought high-quality dairy cows would boost productivity. His idea matched Global Civic Sharing’s program to fund artificial cattle breeding.

“After Mongolia’s social system collapsed in the 1990s, the livestock health management system was also crippled,” said Narangerel. “After those cattle were left unmanaged, crossbred dairy cows were born, and this situation has continued for around three decades.”

The nongovernmental organization obtained qualified and foreign-origin frozen bovine sperm through Mongolia's National Center for Livestock Gene Bank and injected them into female cattle to reproduce healthy dairy cows.

The director said the approach was cost-effective as purchasing an adult cow with good genetics costs 6 million tugriks ($1,695), while a single insemination costs some 80,000 tugriks.

“Nowadays, daily milk production is around 120 liters [from 11 cows], which is remarkably high compared to the times before my cattle underwent genetic improvement through artificial breeding, when production per day was only about 20 liters [from eight cows],” Davaajav said.

Last year, he was named an exemplary livestock farmer by the Ulaanbaatar city government in recognition of his multiple years of hard work.

Dream bigger, closer cooperation

Tsevegmed Munkhnasan, a chief officer of the livestock policy implementation department at the Mongolia’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry, speaks with reporters at a place near Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar on April 18. [GLOBAL CIVIC SHARING]

Now, dairy farmers in Jargalant and Global Civic Sharing are chasing another goal.

“While we have been equipped with basic infrastructure in the first phase of the project [between 2021 and this year], we aim to articulate the management process in the upcoming second phase and expand the practice beyond Jargalant,” said Cho Hyun-ju, secretary general of Global Civic Sharing.

Mongolia's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry also dreams of further bilateral cooperation with Korea — from animal farming technology transfer to environmentally friendly projects.

Agriculture Ministry official Munkhnasan said he hoped Mongolians who had learned livestock farming technologies during their stay in Korea could localize and implement their experiences in the field.

“I wish there could be an opportunity for Korean environmental experts to share their knowledge with Mongolian public officials on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as livestock animals incur half the emissions in Mongolia,” he added.

Munkhnasan further requested Korean support in Mongolia's upcoming campaigns to preserve its nomadic culture and livestock industry as part of the United Nations' “Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists” next year.

“Korea voted in favor of Mongolia when the UN designated the ‘Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists,’”Munkhnasan said. “I hope the two countries could yield productive outcomes in the livestock field through productive management and utilization of resources.”

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [[email protected]]