Milk is one of the four strategic commodities of Mongolia. According to the National Statistics Office, Mongolia’s milk production potential was estimated at 892 million liters per year while only 81.2 million liters of liquid milk equivalent (LME) was received and processed by dairy factories. The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry (MoFALI) is considering to establish a Dairy Sector Working Group to utilize the full capacity of the dairy sector and develop long-term sector policy to improve production and export.

To better understand the challenges faced by dairy sector stakeholders, a team led by Mr. Tsogbaatar.D, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Mr. Ulaan.Ch, Minister for Food, Agriculture and Light Industry ; Mr. Terbishdagva.D, Member of the Parliament and President of Mongolian Food Industry Association; and Mr. Vinod Ahuja FAOR in Mongolia visited Ulemj Organic LLC and APU-Dairy to see their dairy production system and meet with the representatives of dairy industry.

During the meeting, Minister Mr. Tsogbaatar.D requested MoFALI to conduct scientific research that can identify unique characteristics of Mongolia rangeland bred livestock and said “With this, we can uniquely position Mongolian livestock-based products (meat, dairy, cashmere, leather, wool etc.) in international market and have competitive pricing.”

Representatives from dairy industry openly discussed with government officials and FAO about the challenges that they face when entering foreign markets. Most critical issues addressed were the inefficiencies in milk supply chain and; quantity and quality of milk provided to processors; and incentives for dairy producers. Everyone agreed to the need for a consistent long-term policy on dairy sector as a strategic commodity.

Mr. Terbishdavga.D informed all participants that President of Mongolia has instructed to organize National food safety forum within June with the aim develop step-by-step plan to increase domestic food supply and fully meet demand with domestically produced food by 2020. He invited all participants to actively take part and assist in developing the plan for Dairy sector.

Minister Ulaan.Ch, discussed the possibility of establishing a working group consisting of all stakeholders, including private entities, NGOs, Ministries, tax office, General Agency for Specialized Inspection and others to develop a complex unified long-term development plan that looks at the sector as a strategic commodity which can contribute to the economic growth of the country.

Mongolian dairy production is based on 2 pillars: intensive and semi-intensive dairy farms near big cities and traditional pastoral husbandry system in the countryside. As of 2017, 66.2 million heads of livestock were counted. The number of cattle was 4.2 million, from which 989.7 thousand heads were milking cows from pastoral husbandry.