“What shall we do with these various seeds? Do they think we can grow all these vegetable varieties here, when the names of some are even unfamiliar to us? Total absurd! I think, these vegetables only grow in Khangai (a mountain range in Mongolia) and other countries” exclaimed a 37 year old man, living in Erdenedalai soum of Dundgobi aimag, the region with lowest agricultural production, who is a far relative of Erdmaa, a 41 year old single mother from Bayanovoo soum of Bayankhongor aimag, where this story is all about.

The country’s transition into market economy from centrally planned economy in early 1990 left food producing sector, specifically cropping subsector untended, triggering food insecurity and poverty to hit Mongolia. With the collapse of state owned enterprises following the futile attempt of privatization, extensive migration of rural population into urban centers started. The migration itself, set off as thousands lost their jobs in rural areas and preferred moving to urban centers in hope of finding new jobs and alternative means of livelihood, created another surge of unemployment and poverty hitting hard both rural and urban population. Inevitably, food insecurity and poverty emerged as the main problem of nationwide concern. Country’s growing reliance on imported food and vegetables to meet the domestic demand for food even worsened the situation.

Nutrition issues or adequate daily intake of nutrients through diet was virtually neglected at the time when the country failed to maintain food availability at the same level as in previous system. Ever since, the food basket of an average Mongolian is largely dominated by flour and flour products, meat and meat products with insufficient amount of vitamin and micronutrients rich vegetables and fruits. Average daily intake of vegetables for adults, 1.6 serving size is more than twice less than WHO recommendation of 4 serving size per day. Rural population is more susceptible to micronutrients deficiency and the per capita energy intake for low income families was 1,728.2 kcal, which is only 63.3% of the total requirement.

Most alarming fact is that the complementary child feeding practice in Mongolia is very poor. Infants aged between 4-5 months begin to be fed with energy dense but micronutrients-poor complementary foods that basically consist of grain gruel, meat broth with flour and meat broth. The caretakers who prepare complementary child food using micronutrients rich vegetables and fruits are very limited, recording only 2%, in some cases. Under these circumstances, it is needless to say that children under 5 years old seriously suffer from nutritional anemia, rickets, micronutrients deficiency such as vitamin A, D and zinc that affect sizeable proportion of pregnant women as well, according to Mongolian child and woman’s nutrition status 3rd national survey by MOH, UNICEF and Public Health Institute.

On average, 35.2% of the population was estimated to live in poverty in 2009. Per/capita income reached 80-120% of minimum subsistence level in Mongolia, while the minimum subsistence level was MNT108,000 or below 100USD. The total population in Mongolia was estimated at 2.73 million as in 2009 with registered 677 thousand households of which 171 thousand were herder households. Most of the herder households live in precarious circumstances isolated from villages and populated areas, where apart from herding opportunities for livelihood are almost non-existent. Extremely harsh winter in 2009-2010 left many herders without livestock, pushing them to join the army of unemployed. The country’s unemployment rate stayed at 9.9%, while rural poverty was claimed to be persistent at 47.8%, as of 2010. Livestock sector continues to dominate rural economy accounting for 51%, employing nearly 60% of rural labor age population.

To address all these problems, the Government of Mongolia launched National Food Security Program for 2009-2016 under the SPFM/MON/8801 project funded by FAO. The overall goal of the NFSP is to provide the entire nation with secure supplies of accessible, nutritious and safe food to enable healthy livelihoods and high labour productivity, founded on the participation of people, government, the public and private sector.

To support Government initiative to improve food and nutrition security and reduce poverty, the FAO launched “Enhancing Food and Nutrition Security for Vulnerable Segments of the Population of Mongolia through Capacity Building in Small Scale Vegetable Production” in August 1, 2010 with financial support of European Commission. The overall goal of the project is to enhance food and nutrition security of the poorest and vulnerable sections of Mongolian farmers through building these farmers institutional and technical capacity to grow ranges of vegetables for improved production, productivity and consumption by using innovative technologies in participatory manner. The project is being implemented in 2 peri-urban districts and 15 soums, one of which is Bayanovoo soum in Bayankhongor aimag.

Project selected 830 farmer households who received full project support including potato and vegetable seeds, critical agricultural inputs, and capacity building trainings and 1024 households who received seed support from the project, total of 1854 direct beneficiary households.

Among selected project beneficiary households in Bayanovoo soum of Bayankhongor aimag, 16.6% are women headed families, 96.4% are living in yurt or typical wood/brick houses, 67.5% are herder households including subsistence herders, 25% are farmer households with different capacity, those who run another types of business or unemployed take up 7.5% of total households. Approximately 37.3% of beneficiary household members are under or school age children including students, 18.2% are unemployed, 6.8% retired and 3% of total household members physically or mentally impaired people. Landless households made up 95% of total beneficiaries, and 87.5% of beneficiary households lacked storage facility.

Per capita income of less than 30,000 MNT, equal to 24.8 USD, is earned by 13.1% of beneficiary households, and 72.3% of project households were found living below minimum subsistence level of MNT108,000 equal to 89.6 USD with per capita monthly household income ranging from 16.5 USD to 89.6 USD, as of first quarter in 2011.

Only 25% of the project households had different levels of agricultural farming experiences, less than 50% of which earned from agricultural farming, however 60% of income earners made moderate annual income of less than 1,0 million MNT (830 USD).

Potato, carrot, turnip and cabbages were the main varieties grown by farmers with insignificant amount of other varieties. Farmers’ knowledge and technical capacity to grow vegetables were found unsatisfactory, based on the baseline survey findings. The average land productivity of project households was poor; potato-13 ton/ha, cabbage-36ton/ha, turnip-17 ton/ha, carrot-16 ton/ha. 43.5% of farmers admitted they have sufficient knowledge of pest and disease management, however more in-depth survey revealed that the knowledge was too weak. The farmers preferred to act as individual players rather than as group/cooperatives during growing season which greatly reduced labour productivity, and harvest season when marketing off their produces, which again pushed them to fell victim to selling vegetables at lowest price demanded by middlemen. Very few of farmer households have access to provincial market, while majority sells vegetables to tiny soum market or neighbors.

The dietary pattern of beneficiary households in Bayanovoo is very monotonous with dominant combination of flour and meat products, with insufficient amount of vegetables. Weak development of vegetable production and still-dominant nomadic lifestyle of local community tend to induce excessive daily caloric intake versus very insufficient micronutrients intake.

Response action
Identified as highly susceptible to food and nutrition insecurity, crucially linked to inaccessibility to nutritious foods due to weak purchasing capacity, the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population deserve fine-tuned approach to enhance food and nutrition security. To address food and nutrition insecurity and poverty persistent among poor and vulnerable people selected in Bayanovoo soum, like elsewhere in all project sites, the project is more focused on bringing about behavioral change in beneficiary farmers, so that they recognize, be willing to accept and implement project pilot approach to improve household food availability and utilization.

The project aims at achieving its goal by facilitating successful knowledge transfer assisted by an opportunity to utilize critical agricultural inputs provided by the project. To assist poor and vulnerable people to increase their food availability and improve food accessibility, project facilitated 12.5ha irrigated land to 50 farmers at Hoolt irrigation scheme with support of local government. With a right to own the land granted by the government, each household now owns 0.25ha plot for potato and vegetable production. For the same purpose, the project supplied critical agricultural inputs including hand tools, high quality potato and vegetable seeds, 33hp small scale tractor with plough, potato seeder and digger, irrigation equipment and metal wire fence to protect crop land from livestock and rodent invasion.

To promote the production of ranges of vegetables rich in vitamins and micronutrients that are rarely planted in Mongolia for household diet diversification, 48m2 plastic greenhouse, 1000m2 plastic tunnel, solar greenhouse were supplied to the farmers. Transfer of technologies for protected horticulture, supply of drip and tube sprinkler irrigation equipment have been the part of project effort to introduce low cost and cost efficient innovative technologies for better production, productivity by poor farmers.

Provided with proper communal storage facility and adequate knowledge on vegetable processing/preservation technologies gained through nutrition trainings the farmers are granted with enabling opportunity to prolong the availability of various vitamin rich vegetables that facilitates sustainable utilization of these vegetables.

To help project beneficiaries to grow and consume ranges of vegetables for increasing household food availability and nutrition with application of innovative technologies, the project organized series of technical capacity building trainings. The knowledge transfer is facilitated through technical trainings and demonstrations, which is the integral part of project strategy to bring about behavioral change.

To foster the development of institutional capacity of beneficiary farmers for improved labor and resource management, and sustainability, the project organized group formation training in Bayanovoo soum to encourage farmers establish farmers organizations as an effective tool to strengthen value chain linkages between producers, traders and processors.

The trained trainer/PIO organized onsite trainings on cropping practice and plant protection to disseminate knowledge in vegetable production, plant protection and nutrition.

Food based approach to reduce malnutrition is being piloted in all project sites including Bayanovoo soum. Project promotes farmers’ consumption of ranges of newly introduced, vitamin and micronutrients rich vegetables from own garden by providing accurate nutrition education, leading to improved nutritional intakes and better dietary utilization. The nutrition education activities are focused on improving knowledge, attitudes and behaviors related to nutrition, diversification of family diets. The main objectives of the nutrition training is to sensitize farmers the on the importance of nutrition as health and life sustaining factor, that stimulates mental and physical performance of human; implementing GAP for safe and healthy food production and consumption. Cooking demonstrations of various hot and cold dishes with ranges of vegetables, and vegetable processing and preservation techniques add value to the nutrition training.

Results impact
“It is particularly difficult for rural women to find job. Jobless women are often neglected in family and society. I had tried to carry out artisanal mining, however it’s tremendous burden for women” says Erdmaa, a 41 year old single mother of 3 girls including the oldest one mentally impaired, in Bayan-Ovoo soum in Bayankhongor aimag. She added “Now I am legitimate member of farmer group, who has role and words”. Erdmaa had no experience in vegetable production along with 75% of project beneficiaries in Bayanovoo soum.

“Unlike the time when we had only potato, onion and carrot occasionally because of living in isolation from soum center, where an access to vegetable and fruits is virtually non-existent and high price we cannot afford, now we have decent foods made with self grown radish, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, spinach. Project showed us how to make tasty dishes made of various vegetables. We learned to grow many other leafy green vegetables in protected horticulture. My kids are especially happy, saying that now we eat roasts wrapped in lettuce like in the movie” says Shonkhor, 58 years old lady.

Soon after Erdmaa disconnected a call from her relative in Dundgobi, she shared his opinion about project intervention in Bayanovoo soum. “It may have sounded like a bizarre joke if someone said I would eat nutritious food made of vegetables from my own 1ha land, and sell surplus vegetables for money. Although, the land I was given with is limited to only 0.25ha at the moment, our soum governor promised to give us more land when he saw us working on our communal land last summer. So, with technical trainings, agricultural inputs from project and land given by soum administration, it is no more a bizarre joke!” She also admitted “I heard word “nutrition” at the cooking training conducted in Bayanovoo by our project officer, which I haven’t heard before, or I may have heard but I never minded. Now, I have at least a brief idea of why nutritious food and diet diversification are important to me and my children.

My far relative from Erdenedalai soum and I started to call each other more often since we both had been selected as beneficiaries of this project. I just learned that most project farmers in Erdenedalai prepared carrot chutney last autumn like we did here in Bayanovoo, and it became favorite feast for guests. I found it quite shocking that people in Erdenedalai didn’t know the maturity period for radish and they didn’t eat it. It is such a nice delicacy when shredded, salted, seasoned and mixed up with other greens. However, we can’t make pumpkin pancake as good as they do in Erdenedalai. I will make this pancake for my kids this summer when I grow pumpkins. We have lot to learn from each other”. These are the few examples of what project farmers in Bayanovoo soum of Bayankhongor aimag say.

The project is making changes in poor and vulnerable peoples’ behavior and practice in Bayanovoo soum. Farmers have been provided with knowledge, their skills have been improved, and farmers are optimistic about bringing in expected project results. The project achievements in Bayanovoo include 4 farmers groups merging into one big farmers cooperative, farmers grow and utilize ranges of vegetables including potato, carrot, cabbage, turnip, beetroot, radish, spinach, tomato, cucumber, capsicum, lettuce, parsley, celery, pumpkins, cauliflower, broccoli, and melons. The farmers learned to cook various vegetables for diet diversification, and availability of some vegetables for households has been extended by 7-8 months through preserving/pickling and storing in newly constructed 30 ton capacity storage.

The project contributes to create strong sense of confidence to poor and vulnerable people to live with right goal to improve their livelihood, and strengthen family food and nutrition security meanwhile. The project future activities will be targeted to strengthen achievements and to deliver expected project results in timely manner through improving efficiency of trainings, working closely with PIOs and farmers at grass root level and adequate monitoring.

Future potential/Replication
Considering the results achieved so far i.e. the project activities are likely to have positive impacts on food and nutrition security of poorest and vulnerable population, farmers’ enthusiasm and commitment to project activities, accompanied by Government’s strong will to reduce poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition at national level, the prospect for replicating project intervention is high. This assumption is strongly supported by the fact that project farmers, a once poor and vulnerable people with no particular experience in agricultural farming, began to speak of expanding agricultural farming activities after only one growing season passed, when access to knowledge and opportunity is enabled

Project: Enhancing Food and Nutrition Security for Vulnerable Segments of the Population of Mongolia through Capacity Building in Small Scale Vegetable Production.

Published: June, 2016.