Market Watch Keeping Herders in Mongolia Informed

Mercy Corps' Gobi Initiative is helping to increase the income of Mongolian herders. Photo: Kim Johnston/Mercy Corps

With a land area slightly smaller than the state of Alaska, few paved roads and a population where only one in fifteen people own a television, it is not surprising that there is a premium for information in Mongolia. This is especially true for rural Mongolian herders looking to sell and buy cashmere, wool, meat, hides and skins, and other commodities at the country’s disparate markets for a fair market price.

Since 1999, Market Watch, a Mercy Corps-run program, has helped rural herders gain access to market information. A first of its kind in Mongolia, the program has become so successful and popular that it has been transformed into an independent, for-profit business with plans for further expansion.

Using local consultants, Market Watch compiles commodity price data at 20 markets throughout Mongolia twice a week. Rural herders and traders can then access this data through Mercy Corps’ Gobi Business News magazine, which has the largest circulation of any written media product in Mongolia and has been expanded to radio and Internet formats.

Market Watch was initially created by Mercy Corps as part of the Gobi Regional Economic Growth Initiative. The Gobi Initiative is a five-year rural economic development program managed by Mercy Corps, in a collaboration with Pact and Land O'Lakes, with financing from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Agriculture is the largest industry in Mongolia and plays a dominant role in the country’s sparsely populated southern region, the Gobi, where many families subsist as nomadic herders.