Agribusiness

Potential & Organic Agricultural Sector

Apart from vast mining recourses, we have also broad opportunity and potentials to develop traditional agriculture sector.

The sector is one of the priority sectors to the country’s economy and cultural heritage, food and agriculture production compounds 13% of the GDP of Mongolia, 35% of total Mongolian work force, and 73.6% of Mongolian land is agricultural land.

Investment in Food and Agriculture Sector

There is a great potential for exports of high value-added industrial products based on meat, cashmere, yak hair, sheep and camel wool and over the past decade, the agriculture sector-one of Mongolia’s oldest industries has remained integral to the country’s long-term development strategy, even as mining, telecoms and some other relatively new sectors have grown rapidly.

According to recent analysis, about 60 percent of Mongolian cultivated area is low in nitrogen and potassium which is easy to use in plants, and 34.7 percent low in phosphorus concentrations, respectively. Thus, there are opportunities to intensify and further develop crop farming by systematically using mineral fertilizers based on soil test results and physiological context of crops, and by extensively utilizing nutrients and biofertilizers made by local natural and farming resources.

Therefore, wide cooperation opportunities are open for investors in this field of enhancing pastureland management, producing competitive value-added agricultural products, ensuring food security, developing marketing of organic agricultural products and curing livestock from disease.

Based on investors’ interest to undertake farming, by owning a land solely or jointly with foreign investors and local organizations, or by leasing the land there are huge opportunities to plant and export food and nutritional crop of high quality and nutrition other than traditional crops cultivated in Mongolia such as buckwheat, rapeseed, soy, and produce animal feed from its byproducts.

Geography and climate

Bordered on the north by Russia and on the east, south and west by China, Mongolia has a total area of one point five million square kilometers, making it the nineteenth largest country in the world and the second largest landlocked country. For administrative purposes, the territory is divided into three cities and twenty-one provinces (aimags). The most significant population center is the capital Ulaanbaatar, home to approximately 1.3 million people.

Mongolia is situated on a plateau far from any oceans, with average elevation of one and a half kilometers. 5 This gives it an extreme continental climate which varies considerably across the country and between the seasons. Broadly speaking, elevation is lowest in the east of the country, rising to the Altai mountain range in the west. Mongolia’s highest point is a mountain peak marking the western border between Mongolia, Russia and China. Travelling from north to south, one would go from Siberian forests and lakes, pass through open steppe grassland and mountains, and ultimately reach the Gobi desert.

The country has long cold winters and short warm summers. Winters are dry and summer rainfall rarely exceeds three hundred and eighty millimeters in the mountains and is less than fifty millimeters in the desert areas. 6 Temperatures in Ulaanbaatar can regularly exceed thirty degrees Celsius from mid-June to mid-August, but are also often below minus thirty degrees Celsius in winter. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and snow can be seen in early June or late August. However, spells of warm weather also occur at early as April and as late as October.