Fall Break 2007: Pigs Gone Wild

I'm back to site now, getting settled back in, and continuing to finish up a little work on our Pork Production Value Chain Analysis. I've learned a lot about pork farming in Mongolia the last few weeks-- and I've learned a lot about the difference between "provider" and "facilitator" of development services. My placement agency has a lot of work to do in the next few years in terms of transitioning into a sustainable NGO, and this Value Chain analysis was a good first introduction into these ideas.

But back to the good stuff! Pigs! I met some of the most interesting people in the last few weeks! My favorite is one of the small scale pork farmers I met in our first round of interviews. We visited her farm, and after we got over the initial "oh my gosh, your hair is blonde!" discussions, she taught me about how she makes her pigs "smarter" buy playing them classical music. They love it she says, and they are much smarter than other farmer's pigs. I felt bad that those smarties ended up the same place as the "less than average IQ" pigs from down the road, but it was interesting none the less. We also uncovered what seemed to be something that resembled a pork mafia -- one wholesaler seemed to have a monopoly of sales channels between the farmers and processors, and kept it that way (or so we heard).

Pork production is a growing industry in Mongolia-- and hopefully will continue to grow, especially with some of the market solutions we've begun to help facilitate. I'll keep you posted, but in the mean time, please continue to only eat pork that has the "This Pig Listened to Mozart" stamp of approval.