Mongolia to move up food chain
With vast farmlands, the country wants to progress from basic exports to processed foodstuffs and needs foreign funds to get there
Mongolian agricultural officials envision their organic meat and vegetables being served on Chinese dinner tables and are looking to foreign investors for help in making this a reality.
“Usually, the money coming into Mongolia is for mining. There is never much interest in the agricultural sector … But we see great potential,” Duursakh Luvsandorj, a department director at the Ministry of Industry and Agriculture, said on the sidelines of the Hong Kong Mongolia Investment Summit recently.
With additional capital investment, the sector can move from merely exporting raw materials such as milk, cashmere and meat to processing value-added agricultural products as well, Luvsandorj said.
If successful, the shift would allow Mongolia to retain a greater share of revenues and possibly develop food brands with wider international appeal.
According to ministry data, Mongolia has 41 million head of livestock, including sheep, goats and camels, worth US$7.15 billion. The country supplies 21 per cent of the world’s unprocessed cashmere.
Only 10 per cent of animal products are processed locally, with the remainder sent to Russia or China. In some cases, the final product is then imported back into Mongolia.