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MongoliaCollectivized Farming and Herding
Mongolian agriculturalists, most of whom were actually
herders of animals, worked either for state-owned farms or for
herding cooperatives. State farm workers were on the state
payroll, just as were those who worked in state factories or for
the national railroad. Influenced by the Soviet Union, stateowned farms represented a more creative adaptation of Soviet
models to the Mongolian environment than did factories or
government offices. In practice, membership was compulsory, and
the collectives owned the means of production in the form of both
the livestock herds and the rights to use pastures and winter
campsites. Member families carried on a modified form of
traditional herding by dispersed small herding camps of several
households. Households were permitted to own a limited number of
private livestock--analogous to the private plot allocated to
collective farmers--about 20 percent of the total herd.
Households received much of their income in kind, and they earned
a share of the collective's profit from the sale of animals and
animal products to state purchasing agencies. Their total income,
in kind and in cash, varied, from year to year and from
collective to collective, along with the condition of the herds
and the weather.
The average herding cooperative had about 300 households. The
cooperative employed some people as administrators, truck
drivers, and the like, but most work consisted of the traditional
tasks of herding and milking animals, and of producing butter,
cheese, and wool products. As in the past, herding was done by
herding camps of two to six households. The herding cooperatives
in most cases had the same boundaries as the
somon (see Glossary),
the third-level administrative units into which
Mongolia's eighteen aymags were divided, and the
administration of the somon and the herding cooperative
appeared to be in the same hands.
Data as of June 1989
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