This festival is hosted by five aimags with yak herds each year rotationally. The “Mongol Yak-2018” Festival was hosted by the Khuvsgul Aimag Federation of Pasture User Groups (PUGs) in cooperation with the National Federation of PUGs, domestic processing companies and the Aimag government on the 22-23 July.
The theme for each “Mongol Yak” festival varies depending on the agenda of the hosting aimag. The Huvsgul Aimag Federation of PUGs and the Aimag Government organised the Yak festival under the theme “Festive Yaks” introducing new tourist products to the 300 foreign and 4500 local tourists who paid a visit to the festival. The new products ranged from yak polo, a “colourful yak herd” parade demonstrating the unique natural colours of yak wool and hair, a showcase of traditional folk music and dance performances, an exhibition of handcrafts, hand- made tools and equipment applied by nomadic herders in yak herding to various local cuisines made from yak meat, milk and by-products. Yak herders and local enterprises who participated in the Festival sold products worth MNT 25.0 million.
Continuing with the tradition initiated by the Green Gold Animal Health Project the “Mongol Yak- 2018” festival organised various activities to celebrate and reflect on the yak wool harvesting season of 2018 for yak herders, herders’ marketing cooperatives and processing companies. The amount of yak wool prepared by herders has increased from 60 tons in 2017 to 110 tons in 2018, so has the price from 12,000MNT per kg in 2017 to 25,000MNT per kg in 2018. The number of processing companies supplying yak wool through organised PUGs and herders marketing cooperatives are on the increase. Building on previous years’ partnerships, more and more companies are committed to establish long-term business relationships with PUGs and cooperatives, and make future supply contracts and pay deposits prior to the harvesting season during mid-winter, when herders have their biggest cash shortage.
During the yak festival, the quality inspection specialists of processing companies organised a demo training for herders on how to improve the quality and volume of wool during harvesting. This new method of video training demonstrated to the herders how the quality of raw materials affects the final products and was highly valued by participants. The “Mongol Yak” festival is attended by more and more local processing companies sponsoring various activities to promote yak products and capacity of PUGs, Aimag PUGs and local cooperatives. The “Mongol Yak – 2018” festival was attended by five meat and skins/hides processing companies besides yak wool processing companies.
