In Mongolia, a Woman Farmer Challenges Traditional Local Practices

In Mongolia, a Woman Farmer Challenges Traditional Local Practices 
PHOTO: Under EMIRGE-Mongolia, group members invested $27K in building better shelter for their animals.
As many in Mongolia, Battsetseg Davaa has been raising cattle for years using traditional local practices. She often thought of increasing the quality of her animals in hopes to increase the yields from production. But, as many in the Selenge region, she lacked the knowledge and experience to challenge traditional rising practices.
This interest led Battsetseg to meet with some local farmers who were attending EMIRGE training and who were experiencing similar problems. After observing their efforts and their results, she decided to participate in several initiatives and established her own business group, which she named “Devjih.” She also was determined to try the new ways of doing things.
First, Battsetseg started to produce homemade feed and worked together with group members to produce three tons of silage made of corn, oats and barley for her usage. Later on, she also built new shelter for her cows and invested 3.5 mln MNT (US $ 2,666.67) to keep them warm during winter. In addition to building a shelter, she also made contact with other service providers and farmers from whom she purchased quality breed (Holstein) to improve her cattle breed. 
But she did not stop there and started to make changes in breeding cycle to have more milk in winter months when the price of milk is high. On the business side, Battsetseghas also made improvements in basic accounting and bookkeeping, as well as in costing and pricing, which helped her correctly calculate the costs of production and do the cost benefit analysis for silage production. As a result of these significant changes, in just two years, Battsetseg’s milk production and sales have increased more than 35 percent. Now, after reaping great results, she is proud to share her knowledge and experience with other community members and hopes to help them improve their farms as well.