A Corner of Altay: Herders Planting, Harvesting and Buying Grass
In early August 2025, I returned to a traditional Kazakh pastoral village in south-eastern Altay, arriving just as the herders were beginning their hay harvest. Since the television series My Altay captured the public imagination two years ago, “Altay” has come to represent an idealised way of life. Yet, beyond tourism and popular culture, what does the reality look like for herders in the region?
The hayfields reveal one strand of transformation unfolding in pastoral areas: over the past few decades, agricultural cultivation in traditional grazing lands has expanded rapidly, squeezing pastures. Herders can no longer produce sufficient winter fodder to sustain themselves, and hay has increasingly become a market commodity.
Meeting this demand for fodder not only requires herders to acquire agricultural skills but also compels them to purchase commercial hay on the open market. Throughout this protracted period of societal upheaval and livelihood transition, the hayfields reflect a state of in-betweenness for the herders: confronted with the relentless advance of modernisation and marketisation, they remain forced to play catch-up, caught between nomadism and settlement, grazing and wage labour, self-sufficiency and consumption, cooperation and competition.
Therefore, before attempting to answer the question of “what should be done for pastoral regions?”, it may be worthwhile to first understand: why have hayfields emerged in the overlooked corners of pastoral life? How do they shape the herders’ daily existence? And why are herders turning to the market to buy hay?
I. The Hayfields of Altay
Historically, this was indeed the case. Situated in northern Xinjiang, Altay shares borders with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. For generations, Kazakh herders have lived through nomadism across the alpine meadows of the Altai Mountains—the grasslands nourish the livestock, the livestock sustain the herders, and the herders cherish the grasslands. This equilibrium among “people, pasture, and livestock” allowed the traditional nomadic way of life to endure for centuries.
Yet today, this traditional mode of life has shifted. Since the 1980s, herders have increasingly moved towards a ‘semi-nomadic, semi-sedentary’ existence.
Come spring, once the snow has melted, herders drive their flocks out from their settlements in the river valleys. Between May and October, they embark on a six-month cycle of seasonal migration. Livestock graze primarily on natural pastures, marking the most critical period for putting on condition. Only well-fattened cattle and sheep will fetch a premium price. From November through to April the following year, heavy snow blankets the grazing lands across the Altai region. With winters stretching over six months, herders and their animals retreat to their permanent settlements. To ensure the livestock see out the long, harsh season, the herders must stockpile vast quantities of fodder in advance.
Haymaking fields are a primary source of hay reserves.
In August 2025, Kazakh herders in J Village, nestled on the southern slopes of the Altai Mountains, entered their busiest period before summer drew to a close: cutting hay. A traditional pastoral settlement, J Village sits right on the border with Mongolia. For two weeks straight, the steady chug of mowers echoed across both banks of the river valley at 10am (8am Xinjiang time), while tractors laden with cut grass inched along the roads between pastures.
It was only five or six years ago that mowers started replacing manual cutting in J Village.
Herder Sairik bought his own mower a few years back. On one day in early August, having spent the morning cutting 10 mu of grass for a relative, Sairik was at his own haymaking plot by the afternoon, working until nearly 10pm. Mowers are only viable on contiguous, flat haymaking fields. On undulating slopes, the work still demands swinging a scythe by hand, cutting the grass clump by clump. Once cut, a hay rake is brought in to gather the grass into neat windrows.
Mutual aid among relatives during the grass harvest is commonplace here. On 6 August, Askar’s brothers, sisters-in-law, sisters, and brothers-in-law all arrived, along with his sisters’ children. Their task for the day was to haul all the grass from a 20-mu plot back to Askar’s homestead.
On the harvesting ground, a tractor advances slowly. Askar and the male relatives walk alongside on either side, wielding steel pitchforks to lift the windrows and toss them onto the vehicle, forkful after forkful. Another man stands on the flatbed, carefully spreading the incoming grass into neat layers. Children and women trail behind the tractor, gathering any scattered clumps. The grass had been spread out to dry for several days. Much of the moisture had evaporated; a quick drag of the rake reveals a vivid streak of green, still attached to its roots, peeking out from underneath.
During breaks from the labour, the group pauses to sit in the shade of the trees and eat watermelon. For herders whose fields lie far from home, the routine begins early: they fill thermal flasks with milk tea, pack naan, sweets, watermelon, and tableware, and spend the entire daylight hours working the ground alongside family.
After three return trips, each heavily laden, it was 8.30 p.m. and the sun had shifted to the west. The harvesting was finally complete.
II. When Herders Began to Cultivate Grass
From the 1980s onwards, pastoral regions gradually adopted the household contract responsibility system previously implemented in agricultural areas. Grazing land and livestock were contracted to individual households—a policy known as ‘dual contracting of pasture and livestock’—marking the end of the commune era. The longstanding tradition of cooperative herding and mutual support, which had endured from the tribal era through the period of collectivisation, now drew to a close. A previously untried model of family-based herding took its place, requiring herders to hold a grazing land certificate before they could migrate their livestock to seasonal pastures. These certificates recorded not only the boundaries, area, and carrying capacity for summer, winter, and spring-autumn pastures, but also allocated designated hay-cutting fields.
As in agricultural regions, the allocation of grazing land certificates adhered to a strict principle of ‘neither expanded for new births nor reduced upon death’. In J Village, the government issued ninety-two certificates to ninety-two households in the 1990s. Four decades on, the number of herding families had swelled from ninety-two to over two hundred and seventy—a threefold increase. Yet the number of certificates and the total grazing area remained unchanged. According to local government data, J Village—a traditional pastoral community—holds approximately 553,000 mu (around 36,867 hectares) of natural pasture, roughly 641 mu (43 hectares) of cultivated grassland, and about 1,600 mu (107 hectares) of hay-cutting fields.
This situation is widespread across pastoral areas. With grazing lands parcelled out to individual households, they have become a finite, highly contested resource, no longer capable of the unified management and seasonal mobility of the past. As a last resort, herders have even erected fences between plots to prevent outsiders or those from neighbouring villages from encroaching on their land.
For the first generation of herders who hold these certificates, their adult children, even after establishing separate households, must continue to share the same grassland certificate. This reality has compelled a shift in how herders sustain themselves. A new custom has emerged: one brother inherits the certificate (following Kazakh tradition, usually the youngest son, who also takes on the bulk of the parents’ estate and their care) to continue the nomadic lifestyle. The other brothers, without a certificate, rely on a patchwork of livelihoods. Aside from the handful of government posts available as border guards or forest rangers, most take on seasonal wage labour—such as heading to agricultural villages to harvest sunflowers for large-scale farmers, dig potatoes, or irrigate fields—and keep only a small number of livestock (most herders today keep just twenty or thirty sheep and a dozen or so cattle).
Consequently, when the season for transhumance arrives, those without a certificate entrust their livestock to their certificate-holding brother, who takes them to the natural pastures. Meanwhile, the herder who departs from the settled village with the certificate to lead the migration hands over the hayfields to his brothers to manage.
With the advent of these hayfields, the production activities of herders living a traditional nomadic life began to blend with agricultural practices.
As far back as the commune era, alongside hayfields that relied on native vegetation, the communes also organised herders to cultivate fodder crops such as alfalfa and silage maize. Once the hayfields were allocated to individual herders, this practice of cultivating artificial pastures continued on their privately managed plots.
In pastoral regions, lucerne is hailed as the ‘king of forage.’ Rich in protein and easily digested by livestock, it is grown by at least a third of the dozen or so herding households we visited. Silage maize, however, belongs firmly to the realm of intensive agriculture. It places greater demands on soil and water quality, and requires herders to acquire skills in spraying and fertilising. Once harvested, the crop is transferred to fermentation pits for anaerobic processing. According to a Village J herder who transports fodder by tractor, less than 200 mu (around 13 hectares) of silage maize is currently under cultivation in the village.
When herders take up forage cultivation, they often find themselves better accustomed to managing natural grasses that merely need watering, rather than sowing and fertilising. Growing forage crops from seed requires a higher degree of agricultural expertise, meaning the decision to plant depends heavily on the herder’s own resources and the associated costs.
III. The Ledger of Fodder Cultivation
The snow on the hay meadows mostly melts by April. From May onwards, herders begin irrigating the fields, watering them every ten to fifteen days. Before August, this is typically done five or six times, and in some cases, eight or nine times.
The irrigation water is drawn from River C. To secure agricultural water for the river valley basin, the section of River C—a tributary of the Ulungur River—near Village J was dammed in the late 1970s to create the locally renowned Reservoir D. Today, main canals stretch from the mid-reach pastures and settlements down to the agricultural villages in the lower reaches, providing a reliable water supply for both hay meadows and cropland.
Irrigation charges are calculated based on the type of grassland, its area, and the irrigation method. According to Qinghe County’s prepaid water tariff standards for agricultural irrigation, the cost for drip irrigation on hay meadows is 49.08 yuan per mu, while flood irrigation costs 54.23 yuan per mu.
Watering lucerne and silage maize costs considerably more than irrigating fields left to natural weeds. Drip irrigation for a mu of lucerne costs 66.89 yuan, compared to 83.4 yuan for flood irrigation. For silage maize, the rates are 75.4 yuan and 106.43 yuan per mu for drip and flood irrigation, respectively. The water management station stipulates that herders must settle these bills by October each year. Askar’s brother-in-law planted eight mu of maize in 2025, relying solely on drip irrigation. He paid his water charges in July, totalling 603.2 yuan.
Beyond irrigation, every stage of the process—purchasing seeds, mowing, raking, baling, and transporting—requires expenditure.
Take Askar’s family in 2024 as an example. They manage twenty mu of natural grassland and ten mu of lucerne. Opting for the cheaper drip irrigation, they paid 1,650.5 yuan in water charges. For the harvest, machine mowing across all thirty mu cost 900 yuan. They purchased 30 kg of lucerne seeds at 60 yuan per kg, spending 1,800 yuan in total (note: lucerne seeds need replacing only once every three to four years). In the first year after planting, the lucerne yielded 160 square bales, with baling fees amounting to 480 yuan. All told, from planting to harvest, their costs surpassed 4,800 yuan.
With the proliferation of cost items, herders often struggle to give an exact figure when asked how much they spend annually on managing their hay meadows. Their focus remains firmly on their livestock; their primary concern is ensuring there is enough fodder to see the cattle and sheep through the winter, keeping them from starving.
The hay harvest, too, has yet to be brought under intensive management. Prior to the ‘grass and livestock dual-contract’ system, hay from the mowing fields was managed collectively by the commune. Today, herders bear full responsibility for the yield.
Yields from the mowing fields are influenced by a variety of factors—climate, soil composition, topography, water availability, and irrigation frequency—resulting in significant variations in output per hectare. According to data collected from herders, tractor drivers, harvester operators, and baler owners, hay production in J Village fell to varying degrees in 2025.
Herders are adept at grazing and tending to their cattle and sheep. When it comes to seasonal migrations, they know exactly how to manage the flocks, how much fodder a single cow requires to get through winter, and how to accurately gauge the body condition of their livestock. Yet crop cultivation remains a comparatively unfamiliar skill in these parts. Asked to explain the reduced hay yields, herders offered a variety of reasons: “The weather’s been too dry,” “We’ve seen an unusual number of grasshoppers this year,” “The grass just isn’t growing as tall as it used to”…
Broadly speaking, the ecological shifts that occurred in Village J during 2025 have at least indirectly contributed to the lower harvests.
On the one hand, the degradation of upstream pastures and reduced soil water retention meant that following the spring thaw, snowmelt from the high-altitude grazing grounds rushed downhill. The resulting floods battered the hayfields along the river valley, degrading soil fertility and grass varieties. In some cases, herders’ hayfields were completely washed away, leaving them with significantly less land to work.
On the other hand, Village J sits in an arid climate with a long-term average annual rainfall of under 200mm, classifying it as an ecologically fragile zone. In years past, July would typically bring two or three spells of rain lasting several days. But in 2025, herders report that precipitation either arrives as a sudden downpour that runs straight off the parched earth, or as a brief shower that evaporates before it can soak in.
That said, the decline in hay yields is not universal. Askar’s 20-mu hayfield produced three truckloads of grass in both 2024 and 2025, amounting to roughly six tonnes. Aknur’s 19-mu plot, meanwhile, saw her yield rise from five to eight tonnes. She suspects the increase is largely down to her irrigating one of the larger sections of the field several times more often than last year.
IV. When Forage Falls Short, Buy In — The Marketisation of Pasture Feed
Originally, the Altay pastoral region contained no dedicated agricultural zones. Following the founding of the People’s Republic of China, traditional grazing lands began to pivot towards crop cultivation. In line with this trend, arable land in C Township has expanded steadily, with increasingly more of the flat, well-watered valley pastures converted into farmland. By 2023, C Township’s land use comprised 42,200 mu of arable land, 4,500 mu of artificial pasture, 6,400 mu of natural hayfields, and 2.05 million mu of natural grazing land.
Following the historical division between agricultural and pastoral production teams from the commune era, Township C is administratively split into three agricultural villages and three pastoral villages. During the collectivisation period, this segregated farming and herding system was uniformly organised and managed by the commune. However, after grasslands and livestock were contracted to individual households in the 1980s, the number of cattle and sheep in the agricultural villages has climbed year on year, now matching or even surpassing that of the pastoral villages. This shift has gradually fostered a sense of alienation between farmers and herders, alongside a palpable imbalance in their livelihoods: herders in the pastoral villages, traditionally reliant on grazing, now face degraded pastures and declining livestock carrying capacities, forcing them to buy hay from farming areas and take on casual labour in agricultural villages; meanwhile, residents of the agricultural villages benefit from dual incomes derived from both land rentals and livestock.
According to a villager from another agricultural village, Village T, land lease rates vary depending on the crop. His family leased their arable land to a large-scale operator for wheat cultivation at a rate of 680 yuan per mu. If the land were used for potatoes, the rate would be 800 yuan per mu, while oilseed sunflowers command the highest lease price, ranging from 1,100 to 1,200 yuan per mu.
Yet, while the interests of farmers and herders may appear diametrically opposed, they are merely the most marginal competitors at the bottom of this supply chain. Real bargaining power rests with better-capitalised stakeholders such as agribusiness firms and fodder enterprises.
Within the broader vision of livestock industry modernisation, fodder has become a commodified market product across major grazing regions, including Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and Xinjiang.
Since the mid-1990s, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the development of artificial fodder base areas. The development plan for Qinghe County proposes, “Qinghe County will adjust its agricultural planting structure to establish a three-pillar model of ‘grains, cash crops, and fodder’.” By 2024, the fodder planting area in Qinghe County had already reached 140,000 mu.
In the market, fodder of identical specifications commands varying prices. Taking 20 kg bales as an example, alfalfa is the most expensive; in 2024, its price ranged from a low of 30 yuan to a peak of 45 yuan per bale. Dried hay is somewhat cheaper, reaching up to 30 yuan per bale at its highest. Wheat straw is the most economical, priced between 10 and 15 yuan per bale.
Gurban relies on pastoralism for his livelihood, keeping 70 cashmere goats, 30 sheep, 20 cattle, and 11 horses. In early August 2025, he rode his motorcycle from the summer pastures back to his permanent homestead to cut hay alongside his family. Their total yield amounted to 400 bales. Anticipating the market release, he decided to purchase an additional 1,000 bales of fodder once they became available, comprising 400 bales of alfalfa and 600 bales of wheat straw. The volume he needed to buy was 2.5 times his own hayfield harvest.
He anticipates that fodder prices will rise compared to the previous year. “This year, there isn’t enough grass on the mountainside, and the cattle and sheep are thin.” Herders returning from the summer pastures to cut hay all speak of a “grass shortage”: having migrated to the Sandao Haizi summer pasture on 5 July, by 10 August the hills were already blanketed in a widespread sallow yellow. Only the meadows around the wetlands retained a thin wash of pale green, and some herders had already begun dismantling their yurts in preparation for the next move.
If livestock do not build up adequate condition during the summer, they are prone to winter illness. Herders therefore need to stockpile more fodder to ensure their animals get through the cold months safely. Based on last year’s initial market prices (alfalfa at ¥32 per bale, wheat straw at ¥10 per bale) and factoring in potential increases, Gurban says he needs to set aside at least ¥20,000.
Herders are becoming increasingly reliant on the commercial forage market, and the financial pressure is mounting.
Although Askar inherited the grassland permit, he has handed it over to his elder brother, who remains a nomad. Askar stayed behind to care for his elderly mother, focusing his livestock operations primarily on cattle. During a visit to his home at the end of 2024, he kept 16 head of cattle, 3 horses, 2 sheep and 1 goat. Before winter that year, he bought 800 bales of wheat straw from the market at 10 yuan each, spending 8,000 yuan. Combined with the 4,800 yuan cost of mowing the grassland and cultivating alfalfa mentioned earlier, the total expenditure on winter fodder for Askar’s household came to 12,800 yuan.
This sum was equivalent to the income from selling two head of cattle that year. Askar’s family of six relies on a patchwork of income sources: selling cattle, repairing border fencing, digging potatoes in agricultural areas, hosting a small number of homestay guests, and receiving annual government subsidies for grassland-livestock balance and border residents. Together, these brought in roughly 78,000 yuan in 2024, equating to a per capita income of 13,000 yuan.
This figure falls slightly below the average per capita income for farmers and herders in Township C, where Village J is located, as recorded in 2023. Local government documents show that the average per capita income for agricultural and herding households in Township C was 17,900 yuan that year. For herding families, winter fodder represents a substantial expense.
V. A Way Out of the “In-Between” Bind
Amid the sweeping changes of the era and the long transition of livelihoods, what other options are open to the herders?
Since 2017, the Xinjiang Shanshui Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre (hereafter referred to as Xinjiang Shanshui), a non-profit organisation operating in traditional pastoral areas, has been seeking answers to this question.
In the past, they helped villagers in their base villages set up environmental co-operatives, producing and selling traditional handmade black soap and developing eco-tourism as supplementary livelihoods for herders. Now, they plan to take it a step further – alongside diversifying alternative income streams, they aim to explore ways to bolster the resilience of their core pastoral livelihoods.
Last year, they took herders from their base village on a study visit to pastoral regions in Inner Mongolia. There, they observed a retired village party secretary who had guided herders to establish a specialised hay co-operative, pooling annual purchases to drive down feed costs.
In these geographically and economically marginalised regions, reviving some of the cooperative practices from the collective era may well be a path worth exploring for herders caught in this transitional phase. The arrival of Xinjiang Shanshui is helping to unlock new possibilities.
[2] Arable and pasture area data for Town C sourced from: “Implementation Plan for the Dredging Project at the Tail of Dongfeng Reservoir in Qinghe County, Xinjiang.pdf”
[3] 2024 feed crop planting area data for Qinghe County sourced from the official Qinghe County Government website:https://xjqh.gov.cn/xwzx/001005/20250812/856c3f7a-dbdb-4b32-827a-b8f02a1c3de9.html
[4] 2023 per capita income data for pastoral and agricultural residents in Town C sourced from: “Implementation Plan for the Dredging Project at the Tail of Dongfeng Reservoir in Qinghe County, Xinjiang.pdf”
* The herders interviewed in this article, Askar, Sairik, Nurbek, Tasbul, Gurban, Turgen, Nurtan, Aknur, and Yerbek, are all using pseudonyms.
Thanks to the Xinjiang Shanshui Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre for their support in preparing this article.
Gratitude to the herders who made time between their work to answer questions, and for the kindness and trust they shared during our conversations.
Thanks to local students Aibota, Ahzhol, Altenai, Gulimina, kuoerkeyisen, and Waliha for providing Kazakh translation support.
Thanks to Guljainat and her family for their warm and welcoming hospitality.
Unless otherwise noted, photographs were taken by the author.
Editor: Xiao Dan