Corners of Altay: Herdsmen Planting, Cutting and Buying Grass
In early August 2025, I returned to a traditional Kazakh herding village in south-eastern Altay, just in time for the grass harvest. Since the TV series My Altay became a sensation two years ago, “Altay” has come to represent a “life to aspire to”. Yet, beyond the realm of tourism and popular culture, what is the actual reality for the herders of Altay?
These harvesting fields reveal one of the shifts the herding regions have undergone: over the past few decades, the area of agricultural cultivation in traditional herding zones has expanded rapidly, compressing the available grazing land. Consequently, herders can no longer produce enough winter fodder to be self-sufficient, and forage has entered the commercial market.
This demand for fodder not only requires herders to master farming skills but also forces them to purchase commercial forage. Amidst this long process of epochal change and livelihood transition, the harvesting fields mirror the “intermediate state” in which the herders now find themselves: facing the high-speed march of modernisation and marketisation, they are passively playing catch-up, caught between nomadism and settlement, herding and wage labour, self-sufficiency and consumption, cooperation and competition.
Therefore, before answering “what is to be done for the herding regions”, perhaps we should first try to understand why these harvesting fields appeared in the corners of the region, how they affect the herders, and why the herders must buy grass.
I. The Harvesting Fields of Altay
Historically, this was indeed the case. Altay is situated in northern Xinjiang, bordering Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. For generations, Kazakh herders have survived through nomadism in the alpine grasslands of the Altai Mountains—the grasslands nourished the livestock, the livestock sustained the herders, and the herders cherished the grasslands. This balance between “people, grass, and livestock” allowed the traditional nomadic way of life to endure for a long time.
Now, however, this way of production and life has changed. Since the 1980s, herders have gradually shifted towards a “semi-nomadic, semi-settled” existence.
In spring, after the snow melts, herders drive their flocks away from the settlements in the river valleys. From May to October, they engage in six months of seasonal migration, with the livestock feeding primarily on natural grasslands. This is the critical fattening stage for the cattle and sheep; only if they are well-fed and plump can they fetch a good price.
From November to April of the following year, the pastures within the Altai range are covered in heavy snow, and the winter lasts for half a year. During this time, both the herders and their livestock return to the settlements. To ensure the animals survive the winter, herders must prepare vast quantities of fodder in advance.
One of the primary sources for these fodder reserves is the harvesting field.
In August 2025, the Kazakh herders of J Village, located at the southern foot of the Altai Mountains, entered their busiest period before the end of summer: the grass harvest. J Village is a traditional herding village situated right against the border with Mongolia. For half a month, starting at 10 am (8 am Xinjiang time), the sputtering sound of mowers echoed along both banks of the river valley, and tractors transporting grass moved slowly along the roads between the fields.
It was only five or six years ago that the use of mowers replaced manual cutting in J Village.
Sailike, a local herder, bought a mower a few years ago. On one day in early August, Sailike spent the morning helping a relative cut 10 mu of grass, and by the afternoon, he was in his own harvesting field, working until nearly 10 pm. Mowers can only operate on flat, contiguous fields; on sloping or uneven ground, they must still rely on the manual swing of a scythe to cut the grass clump by clump. Once the grass is cut, a rake is brought in to gather the grass into rows.
Mutual aid among relatives during the harvest is a common occurrence here. On 6 August, Askar’s brother and sister-in-law, sister and brother-in-law, and his sister’s children all came to help; together, they aimed to bring all the grass from his 20-mu field back to Askar’s home.
In the field, one person drove the tractor forward slowly, while Askar and his male relatives walked alongside, using pitchforks to lift the hay and toss it onto the tractor load after load. Another person stood atop the tractor, responsible for layering the grass neatly. Children and women followed behind the tractor to gather any missed stalks. The grass had been drying in the sun for several days; as the moisture evaporated, a quick stroke of the rake would reveal a glimpse of vivid green still attached to the roots.
During breaks, people would stop and sit under the shade of trees to eat watermelon. Those whose fields were far from home would set off in the morning with two thermoses of milk tea, naan, sweets, and watermelon, spending the entire day with their family in the harvesting fields.
After the tractor returned fully loaded three times, the sun had shifted to the west by 8:30 pm, and the harvest was finally complete.
II. When Herders Begin Planting Grass
After the 1980s, pastoral regions gradually adopted the household responsibility system used in agricultural areas. Pasture and livestock were both contracted to individual households (known as “dual contracting of pasture and livestock“), marking the end of the commune era. The tradition of cooperative grazing and mutual aid, which had persisted from the tribal period through the collectivisation era, also came to a close. This ushered in an unprecedented family-based grazing system, where herders required a grassland permit to move their livestock to seasonal pastures. These permits recorded not only the boundaries, area, and carrying capacity of the summer, winter, and spring/autumn pastures, but also designated the hayfields.
Much like in agricultural areas, the number of grassland permits was fixed—neither increasing with births nor decreasing with deaths. In Village J, the government issued 92 permits to 92 households in the 1990s. Forty years later, the number of herding households has grown threefold to over 270, yet the number of permits and the total pasture area have remained unchanged. According to local government statistics, as a traditional pastoral village, Village J has approximately 553,000 mu of natural grassland, 641 mu of cultivated pasture, and 1,600 mu of hayfields.
This situation is common across pastoral regions. Dispersed family pastures have become limited resources for competition, and can no longer be integrated or shifted as they once were. In desperation, some herders have even erected fences to prevent their land from being occupied by outsiders or residents of other villages.
The children of the first generation of permit holders must still share the same single permit after they grow up and set up their own homes, forcing a transition in livelihoods. A new tradition has emerged: the permit is inherited by one brother (following Kazakh tradition, the youngest son typically inherits most of the parents’ assets and cares for them), allowing him to continue nomadic herding. The other brothers, lacking permits, make a living through diversified means: a few find employment in a limited number of government-funded roles, such as border guards or forest rangers, while most work as day labourers (for instance, harvesting sunflowers, digging potatoes, or watering fields for large-scale farmers in agricultural villages) or keep a small number of pen-fed livestock (most now own only twenty or thirty sheep and a dozen or so cattle).
Consequently, during the seasonal migration, those without permits entrust their livestock to the brother who holds the permit to take them to the natural pastures. In return, the herder who leaves the settlement for the migration leaves the hayfields to be managed by his other brothers.
With the emergence of hayfields, the activities of traditional nomadic herders began to blend with agricultural work.
As far back as the commune era, in addition to hayfields for natural wild grasses, the communes organised herders to plant forage crops such as lucerne and silage maize. Once the hayfields were allocated to individual herders, the practice of cultivating fodder continued on these plots.
Lucerne is regarded as the “King of Forage” in pastoral areas due to its high protein content and ease of digestion for livestock; of the dozen or so households visited during this trip, at least a third cultivate it. Silage maize, by contrast, is entirely an intensive agricultural crop. It not only demands higher quality soil and water sources, but also requires herders to master cultivation techniques such as spraying and fertilising, followed by anaerobic fermentation in silage pits after harvest. According to a herder from Village J who operates a tractor for transporting grass, the area currently planted with silage maize in Village J is less than 200 mu.
When herders begin growing grass, they find themselves more suited to managing natural wild grasses, which only require watering and no sowing or fertilising. The cultivation of artificial fodder requires greater agricultural skill; the willingness to plant depends on the herder’s own circumstances, including the costs involved.
III. The Ledger of Fodder Cultivation
By April, the snow on the hayfields has generally melted. From May onwards, herders must irrigate these fields every ten to fifteen days; usually, this is done five or six times before August, and in some cases, as many as eight or nine.
The irrigation water is sourced from River C. To secure agricultural water for the river valley basin, a section of the J Village stretch of River C—a tributary of the Ulungur River—was dammed in the late 1970s to create the well-known Reservoir D. Today, main canals run from the mid-stream grasslands and settlements all the way to the downstream agricultural villages, stabilising the water supply for both hayfields and croplands.
Irrigation fees are calculated based on the type of grass, the area, and the irrigation method. According to the prepaid water fee standards for agricultural irrigation in Qinghe County, the cost for drip irrigation in hayfields is 49.08 yuan per mu, and 54.23 yuan for flood irrigation.
Irrigation costs for Lucerne and silage maize are significantly higher than for hayfields where natural grasses grow. The water price for drip irrigation of Lucerne is 66.89 yuan per mu, and 83.4 yuan for flood irrigation. For silage maize, the prices for drip and flood irrigation are 75.4 yuan and 106.43 yuan per mu, respectively. The water station requires herders to settle these fees by October each year. In 2025, Askar’s brother-in-law planted 8 mu of maize using drip irrigation; he paid the water fee in July, totalling 603.2 yuan.
Irrigation is not the only expense; every stage—buying seeds, mowing, raking, baling, and transport—costs money.
Taking Askar’s family’s fodder cultivation in 2024 as an example: they have 20 mu of hayfields growing natural grasses and 10 mu of Lucerne. Using the lower-cost drip irrigation, the water fee was 1,650.5 yuan; for the harvest, machine mowing for the 30 mu cost 900 yuan; they spent 1,800 yuan on 30kg of Lucerne seed at 60 yuan per kg (Note: Lucerne seeds are purchased every 3–4 years); and in the first year after planting, the Lucerne yield totalled 160 bales, with baling fees of 480 yuan. In total, the costs from planting to harvest exceeded 4,800 yuan.
As the detailed costs multiply, herders are often unable to provide an accurate total when asked how much they spend annually on hayfield management. They focus more of their attention on their cattle and sheep, emphasising that there must be enough fodder to ensure the livestock survive the winter without starving.
Another area that has yet to benefit from refined management is the fodder harvest. Before the “dual contracting of grassland and livestock”, hayfields were managed collectively by the commune. Now, the responsibility for the harvest falls on the herders themselves.
Hayfield yields are influenced by various factors, including climate, soil, geographical location, water availability, and the frequency of irrigation, leading to variations in yield per mu. Based on data provided by herders and owners of tractors, mowers, and balers, the hayfields of J Village experienced varying degrees of reduced yields in 2025.
Herders are experts at grazing and caring for their livestock. They know inside out how to manage flocks during migration, how much fodder a cow needs to survive the winter, and how to judge the condition of their animals. However, cultivation management remains an unfamiliar agricultural skill. When asked about the reasons for the reduced yields, the herders’ opinions vary: “The weather was too dry”, “There were especially many locusts this year”, “The grass didn’t grow as tall as before”…
Overall, certain ecological changes in J Village in 2025 have had at least an indirect impact on the decline in yields.
On one hand, due to the degradation of upstream grasslands and a reduction in the land’s water-retention capacity, the snowmelt from high mountain pastures surged down after the spring thaw. This formed floods that hit the hayfields on both banks of the river valley, affecting soil fertility and seed quality, and in some cases, destroying hayfields and reducing their area.
On the other hand, J Village suffers from an arid climate, with an average annual rainfall of less than 200mm, making it an ecologically fragile area. Previously, there would be two or three periods of rainfall lasting several days in July. However, in 2025, herders noted that they either faced a sudden heavy downpour—where the water simply ran off the parched earth—or short bursts of light rain that evaporated before they could soak into the ground.
That said, the reduction in fodder yield is not absolute. Askar’s 20 mu of hayfields yielded three vehicle-loads of grass—about 6 tonnes—in both 2025 and 2024. In Aknur’s 19 mu, the yield increased from 5 tonnes to 8 tonnes; she suspects this was mainly because one of her larger hayfields was irrigated more frequently than the previous year.
IV. When the Grass Runs Low, Buy the Rest: The Marketisation of Fodder
Originally, the pastoral regions of the Altai Mountains had no dedicated agricultural zones. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, agriculture began to develop in traditional pastoral areas. Following this trend, the amount of cultivated land in C Township continued to expand, and more of the flat river valley grasslands with good water sources were converted into farmland. By 2023, cultivated land in C Township reached 42,200 mu, artificial grasslands reached 4,500 mu, natural hayfields reached 6,400 mu, and natural grasslands covered 2.05 million mu.
Following the distinction between agricultural and pastoral production teams from the era of people’s communes, C Township is administratively divided into three farming villages and three herding villages. During the collectivisation era, these two zones produced separately under the unified organisation and management of the commune. However, after the household contract system for grass and livestock was introduced in the 1980s, the number of cattle and sheep in the farming villages rose year by year, eventually equaling or even surpassing those in the herding villages. This situation has gradually created a rift between farmers and herders, bringing about a perceived imbalance in their livelihoods: herders in the herding villages rely on grazing for their living, and now face not only the reality of pasture degradation and declining carrying capacity but also the necessity of buying fodder from farming areas and taking odd jobs in farming villages. Meanwhile, residents of the farming villages enjoy a dual income from leasing land and raising livestock.
According to a resident of T village, another farming community, the lease price for agricultural land depends on the crop. His family’s land is leased to a large-scale farmer for wheat at 680 yuan per mu. For potatoes, the price is 800 yuan per mu, and the highest price is for oil sunflowers, ranging from 1,100 to 1,200 yuan per mu.
Yet, while the interests of farmers and herders may seem opposed, they are merely competitors at the very end of the chain; the bargaining power is held by stakeholders with greater capital, such as agribusinesses and fodder companies.
Within the broader blueprint of livestock modernisation, fodder in major grazing regions such as Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and Xinjiang has already become marketised.
Since the mid-1990s, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the construction of artificial fodder bases. The development plan for Qinghe County proposed that “Qinghe County shall adjust its agricultural planting structure to build a ternary model of ‘grain, cash crops, and fodder’.” By 2024, the fodder planting area in Qinghe County had reached 140,000 mu.
In the market, prices vary for different types of fodder of the same specification. Taking 20kg bales as an example, alfalfa is the most expensive; in 2024, a bale cost at least 30 yuan, peaking at 45 yuan. Dry grass is slightly cheaper than alfalfa, reaching 30 yuan per bale at its highest. Wheat straw is the cheapest, priced between 10 and 15 yuan.
Gurbann makes his living from grazing, raising 70 cashmere goats, 30 sheep, 20 cattle, and 11 horses. In early August 2025, he rode his motorcycle from the summer pasture back to the settlement to cut grass with his family. They eventually harvested 400 bales, and he decided to supplement this with a further 1,000 bales once the fodder market opened, including 400 bales of alfalfa and 600 bales of wheat straw. The amount of fodder he needs to purchase is two and a half times the yield of the cutting fields.
He expects fodder prices to rise compared to the previous year: “There wasn’t enough grass on the mountains this year; the cattle and sheep are thin.” Herders returning from the summer pasture all mentioned that “there wasn’t enough grass to graze on”: since moving to the Sandaohaizi summer pasture on 5 July, by 10 August, Sandaohaizi had already turned a scorched yellow across the hills, with only the grasslands around the wetlands showing a thin layer of pale green. Some herders have already begun dismantling their felts in preparation to move.
If cattle and sheep fail to put on enough weight during the summer, they are more prone to illness in winter, meaning herders must stockpile more fodder to ensure their livestock survive the cold months safely. Based on the prices from the previous year’s market opening (alfalfa at 32 yuan/bale, wheat straw at 10 yuan/bale), and accounting for potential price hikes, Gurbann says he needs to prepare at least 20,000 yuan.
Herders’ dependence on the fodder market is deepening, and the pressure of expenditure is growing.
Although Askar inherited a grazing permit, he has given it to his elder brother, who still practices nomadic herding. Askar stayed home to care for his elderly mother and focuses primarily on raising cattle. When visiting his home at the end of 2024, he had 16 cattle, 3 horses, 2 sheep, and 1 goat. Before winter set in that year, he bought 800 bales of wheat straw from the market at 10 yuan per bale, spending 8,000 yuan. Combined with the previously mentioned cutting field and alfalfa cultivation costs of 4,800 yuan, Askar’s family spent a total of 12,800 yuan on winter fodder.
This sum is equivalent to the income he earned from selling two cows that year. Askar’s household consists of six people, and their livelihood mainly comes from selling cattle, repairing border fencing, digging potatoes in farming areas, hosting a small number of family tourists, as well as annual government subsidies for grass-livestock balance and border resident subsidies. Altogether, the family’s total income in 2024 was approximately 78,000 yuan, which works out to a per capita income of 13,000 yuan.
This income is slightly lower than the 2023 per capita average for farmers and herders in C Township, where J village is located. Local government documents show that in 2023, the per capita income for farmers and herders in C Township was 17,900 yuan. For herding families, winter fodder is an expenditure that cannot be ignored.
V. A Way Out for Those Stuck in the Middle
Amidst these sweeping changes and the long process of transitioning their livelihoods, what other options do herdsmen have?
Since 2017, the Xinjiang Mountain and River Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre (hereafter referred to as Xinjiang Mountains & Rivers), a non-profit organisation working within traditional grazing regions, has been attempting to find an answer.
In the past, they helped villagers in their base communities establish environmental cooperation groups, produce and sell traditional handmade black soap, and develop eco-tourism as supplementary sources of income for the herdsmen. Now, they plan to take it a step further: while developing diverse alternative livelihoods, they are seeking ways to enhance the overall resilience of livestock owners’ primary income.
Last year, they took herdsmen from their base villages to visit grazing areas in Inner Mongolia. There, they encountered a retired village party secretary who had helped local herdsmen establish a specialised forage cooperative to purchase fodder in bulk each year, thereby reducing costs.
In these peripheral regions of geography and development, reviving some of the cooperative experiences from the collective era may be a path worth exploring for herdsmen currently caught in this “intermediate state”. The presence of Xinjiang Mountains & Rivers is helping to spark new possibilities.
[2] Data on arable land and grassland areas in Township C is sourced from the document “Implementation Plan for the Desilting Project at the Tail of Dongfeng Reservoir in Qinghe County, Xinjiang.pdf”.
[3] Data on forage planting areas in Qinghe County in 2024 is sourced from the official website of the Qinghe County Government: https://xjqh.gov.cn/xwzx/001005/20250812/856c3f7a-dbdb-4b32-827a-b8f02a1c3de9.html
[4] Per capita income data for farmers and herdsmen in Township C in 2023 is sourced from the document “Implementation Plan for the Desilting Project at the Tail of Dongfeng Reservoir in Qinghe County, Xinjiang.pdf”.
*The herdsmen interviewed in this article—Askar, Sailike, Nurbeike, Tasbuer, Gurban, Turgen, Nurtan, Aknur, and Yerbeke—are all pseudonyms.
Thanks to the Xinjiang Mountain and River Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre for their assistance with this article.
Thanks to the herdsmen for taking the time to answer questions during their work and for their kindness and trust during our conversations.
Thanks to Aibota, Ahzhol, Altenai, Gulimina, kuoerkeyisen, and Waliha, local students, for providing Kazakh translation support.
Thanks to Guljainat and her family for their warm and generous hospitality.
Unless otherwise stated, photographs were taken by the author.
Editor: Xiao Dan