If you’re looking for an outdoor job with lots of travel, some on horseback, and camping out under the stars, I have the career for you: become a data collector in rural Mongolia.
In land area, Mongolia is the 18th largest country in the world, about the size of Iran, or more than twice the size of Texas. Yet its population of about 3.25 million puts it in the demographic minor league with countries such as Bosnia, Armenia, and Jamaica. Compared with US states, it has as many people as Utah or Iowa. Almost half of them live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, commonly abbreviated as UB. Another half million live in smaller urban centres. That leaves almost one million who are technically classified as rural.
According to the World Bank, Mongolia has the lowest population density of any country in the world—an average of two people per square kilometer. The average does not mean much. At any time, but especially in winter, there are many square kilometers with no people at all, or just a herder family passing through. That’s because Mongolia has little land that can be cultivated. Three quarters of the land area is grassland steppe, suitable only for grazing. There are mountains to the north and west and, in the south, the vast Gobi Desert, searing hot in summer, bitterly cold in winter.
Those jokes about “more sheep than people” play well in rural Mongolia because livestock numbers have been steadily increasing. According to the national statistics office, which has been conducting livestock censuses since 1918, the country had a record high of 66.46 million animals in 2018. That’s about 20 animals for every person. Sheep (46 per cent) and goats (40.8 per cent), whose cashmere wool is the main source of income for herders, accounted for most of the total. There are smaller numbers of cattle, yaks, horses and camels. The increase sounds like good news for all concerned—herders, consumers and government tax collectors--but it comes with a long-term environmental cost as pasture lands in some regions are overgrazed.
Keep counting those yaks
In any case, you have to wonder about the accuracy of the census, conducted in a 10-day period in December when most of the country was covered in deep snow and travel was hazardous. Did the data collectors survey the herds and hope they didn’t count the same sheep twice? Did they show up at the family ger—the traditional felt tent—and ask the patriarch about the size and composition of his herd? Or did they stay at their computers in their offices in UB and wait for herders to self-report using the app on their mobile phones?
It’s a little like asking people how much property they own or how much they earned without requiring titles or pay slips; when tax time rolls around, it’s a natural human tendency to under-report. Around the campfire, drinking airag (fermented mare’s milk) or vodka, herders like to boast about their livestock; in rural Mongolia, social status is measured by the size of the herd. But when census time comes around, the herder knows the information will be shared with the tax authorities. He’s more likely to be modest about what he owns, or claim he lost livestock in the latest winter storm. What’s a data collector to do? Ride out and look for dead sheep? Bottom line: in 2018, there may have been more than 66.46 million livestock, and the animals-to-people ratio even greater.
“Mongolia: Borders on the Steppe” is Chapter Fourteen of Postcards from the Borderlands, to be published by Open Books in November. You can pre-order here. Here’s what readers who had a sneak preview are saying about it:
In Postcards from the Borderlands, Mould takes us to the places where different peoples cross paths, compete for the same land, mix or clash; where different languages, ethnicities, cultures, religions, traditions or histories come together or come apart. The borderlands Mould takes the reader to are not where jetsetters go. Beyond the gated entrance of seaside resorts where the bikini clad models cavort and uniformed waiters bring piña-coladas on a tray, there are the towns where people live, or scratch a living. The farms, the fisheries, the unpaved streets, the old mosques or churches or temples, the town markets where women bring fruits from their orchards to sell, the schools where children study and dream of a better future. - Josep Rota, Professor Emeritus of Communication and Vice Provost Emeritus for International Studies, Ohio University
Preview of “Mongolia: Borders on the Steppe”
For centuries, Mongolia’s herders have used physical features to navigate the vast grasslands of the steppe and mark the borders of their summer and winter pastures. Since independence in 1991, overgrazing and harsh winters that have killed livestock have forced many to leave their pastures for the capital, Ulaanbaatar (UB), whose population has tripled. Most rural migrants still live in the traditional ger, clusters of which form a tent city encircling UB’s dreary, Soviet-era apartment blocks. The economic boom is in mining, with coal shipped to Chinese power plants, and valuable deposits of copper and gold in the Gobi Desert. Mongolia, long a buffer state between the Soviet Union and China, still depends heavily on its larger, more powerful neighbors. From UB, with its ostentatious Soviet public buildings, war memorials and Irish pubs, I travel northeast to the Gorki Terelj National Park to dine with dinosaurs, walk through the woods at a rundown Soviet-era resort, and come up with a plan to keep a group of media managers entertained and reasonably sober.
