Debt-Fuelled Sheep Farming: Qinghai Herders Endure Yet Another Year
I. Summer Pasture: The Last Pastoral Song
The Niang’e Jia household is a typical Tibetan herding family around Qinghai Lake, still practising traditional pastoralism. They were among the central figures in my documentary *Whose Table, Whose Pasture*, filmed last year. A year has passed since production, and I have returned to Qinghai both to show the finished cut to those I interviewed and to gain a deeper understanding of their recent circumstances.
As the grassland summer draws to a close, the Niang’e Jia family moves up to this collectively shared summer pasture at Cao Hun (phonetic). The area is rarely visited by outsiders. Aside from Niang’e Jia’s third uncle, who resides on the mid-slopes a kilometre or two away, the nearest households are several kilometres off. Almost no human presence is visible nearby; from a distance, one can only make out the white tents dotted across the pasture. Aside from livestock and Tibetan mastiffs, the most common creatures are the plateau pika and the white-bellied snowfinch, along with wolves that occasionally pay nocturnal visits.
Yet beyond the picture-postcard scenery, sustaining a livelihood on the grasslands has grown increasingly difficult. Since 2023, while documenting herder communities around Qinghai Lake, we learned of the sharp decline in livestock prices and the impact of imported frozen meat on pastoral markets. This prompted us to join Foodthink’s Lianhe Project, aiming to record how these shifting market dynamics are reshaping herders’ lives. Last November, a colleague and I completed our shoot after making a full circuit of the lake.
While Qinghai Province is not a national hub for cattle and sheep farming, it ranks as one of China’s five major pastoral zones and records the highest national volume of yaks and Tibetan sheep brought to market. For pastoral communities around Qinghai Lake, over half of their income relies on the Tibetan sheep sector. Slumping prices strike directly at their livelihood. As herders recount, they have already spent four or five years enduring a prolonged downturn in livestock prices.
National figures tell the same story: sheep prices entered a downward cycle in 2021, dragging live animal prices down with them. Cattle prices have taken an equally severe hit; by 2024, domestic beef prices had touched a five-year low, while live cattle prices plummeted to their lowest point in a decade.
Under the strain, some herders have been unable to weather the market trough and have sold off their entire herds, quitting the trade entirely.
This year, Niang’ejia’s family has held off on selling, planning to wait for traders after relocating to their winter pastures. They have also noted that prices have crept up slightly compared to last year. Could this rebound offer herders a little breathing room? It is against this faint sliver of hope that I began my follow-up visit.
II. Cheji West Road: Hard Bargains
National market data paints a similar picture: throughout September, the average price across China stood at 70.90 yuan per kilogram for beef and 69.59 yuan per kilogram for mutton. Yet, compared with 2023, prices for both have still dropped by roughly 10 yuan per kilogram.
I stepped into the shop to find out what was driving up meat prices. The shopkeeper explained that winter livestock are largely fed on commercial fodder, while summer animals graze on pasture. How the animals are reared makes a marked difference to the flavour of the meat. As a rule, intensively fattened stock tend to be overly heavy with thick deposits of abdominal and subcutaneous fat. For local diners used to traditional hand-grabbed meat, grass-fed cuts are naturally far more prized. This is precisely why prices tend to be higher in September.
With Xining behind me, the formal revisit began in Gonghe County, some 142 kilometres away. The G6 motorway heading towards Gonghe is lined with sweeping pastures; signs on either side warn drivers to watch for livestock, while herds of yaks and Tibetan sheep dot the landscape, standing or lying in the grass. As the administrative seat of Hainan Prefecture, Gonghe has an unspoken tradition: Qieji West Road has organically evolved into a hub for live sheep trading, drawing herders from the wider region to sell their stock.
It was along this stretch of road last year that I chanced upon another group for my shoot: Makeli’s father. Back then, he and his companions were waiting right here to procure sheep. These buyers function as the livestock trade’s middlemen, predominantly drawn from the local Hui community. It is through their network that herders’ stock gradually makes its way from the pasture to the market, and ultimately to the dinner table.
The summer grass-feeding season is traditionally one of the busiest periods for these buyers. I had arranged to meet Makeli that evening, but he stood me up at the eleventh hour, explaining he needed to head to Heishui River to collect outstanding payments. Left with little option, I decided to do as I had last year: head back to Qieji West Road and see if fortune would smile.
Live sheep trading typically takes place only in the mornings. On this particular day, just a single animal had turned up. Half a dozen buyers loitered by the roadside, occasionally scrolling through videos of cattle and sheep sent by herders on their phones, offering quick appraisals and catching up. There was little anxiety about the quiet day. In this season, most deals are cut directly on the mountain pastures. The younger buyers have already headed up there, where they can procure seventy, eighty, or even a hundred head in a single go, sparing herders the need to make the trip into town.
Yet none of them showed much interest in this particular animal. According to the buyers, something was amiss, and the trouble lay in its head. Its eyes darted sideways, and it trudged with a pronounced limp, utterly unable to keep a straight line.
To my eye, however, the animal didn’t appear diseased at all. The more probable explanation, I suspected, was a stalemate over the price. Veteran buyers can instinctively gauge an animal’s potential meat yield post-slaughter and factor in current market rates to arrive at a fair offer. Bid too high and you risk a loss; offer too little and the stock will be snapped up by a rival.
By their reckoning, the two-year-old ewe was far too undersized, yielding little more than twenty *jin* of meat. At the current wholesale rates of 25 yuan per *jin* for sheep and 27 for yaks, they calculated it was worth no more than 600 yuan to them.
The sheep’s owner, a middle-aged Tibetan man, was adamant: the animal wasn’t sick at all. In a bid to sell it, he had driven a small light truck for over three hours from his home some thirty or forty kilometres away. His asking price of 900 yuan was enough to deter several buyers who initially came forward. After a few turns of hushed negotiation with the herder, each group of buyers eventually shook their heads and moved on.
By midday, the buyers who had been holding out on Qieji West Road had gradually dispersed, leaving the solitary sheep without a purchaser.
III. Sheep Herders Trapped in Debt
The price slump has also squeezed their income. Meanwhile, fixed husbandry costs and annual outlays have not diminished. The herders I photographed all noted that their own grazing land is insufficient; to ensure their livestock get enough to eat, they must either rent additional pastures or purchase feed. When cattle and sheep prices are poor, they expand their herds to maintain income levels, creating a vicious cycle.
He uses whatever tens of thousands of yuan are left over to make loan repayments. When I returned this year, the outstanding balance stood at 200,000 yuan. Each year, when repayment day comes around, he has to borrow cash from relatives and friends to cover it, then pay them back once his new loan is disbursed. He has been caught in this cycle of rolling debt for seven or eight years now.
By Wang Sheng’s own reckoning, it will take him at least another four years to clear the debt.
Provided, of course, that his current practice of grazing sheep in secret can continue.
Four: The ‘Bachelors’ Alliance’ in the Grazing Ban Zone
To cut down on feed costs, the village herders have turned to guerrilla tactics, sneaking back onto the pastures to graze their animals. Without this illicit grazing, their debt-sustained herding livelihoods would be impossible to maintain.
Nearly all these herders live in disaster-relief tents, far from their families. The furnishings inside are sparse: a bed, a stove, and a basic table or shelf holding daily necessities, instant noodles, and biscuits. The tents migrate with the flocks. Wang Sheng does own a house in his village, several dozen kilometres away, but after years of vacancy it has fallen into disrepair. “What money would I have for repairs?” he asks.
Besides, sheep cannot be left unattended. Each morning, Wang Sheng drives the flock out to the pasture to graze, and brings them back at dusk. The routine of turning them out and gathering them in repeats every day. He must also keep a close watch on the flock’s health; if he spots a sick animal, he needs to buy medicine and treat it straight away.
On 13 September this year, when I arrived at Wang Sheng’s camp, he was in the middle of gathering the sheep.
The sheep were foraging on the lakeshore, pushing through half-metre-high clumps of feather reed grass. The grass around them had been grazed nearly to the stubble. Wang Sheng had to ride his motorbike to where they were feeding, and together with other herders from the village, he drove his bike straight into the flock, shouting loudly at intervals. Startled, the sheep would scatter in all directions. The herders would track their movement, riding after them or cutting them off to steer the stragglers back to the main group.
It took over an hour before the village’s more than 3,000 sheep were finally corralled back to their respective owners.
“What about cordyceps?” During my time in Qinghai, I had heard that other herders supplemented their income by harvesting them. “We don’t even have cordyceps here.”
“What about migrant work?” “A bit over a hundred yuan a day—how long would it take to pay off the loans?”
“E-commerce? Slaughtering and processing the meat yourselves, or even cutting out the middlemen to find your own buyers? Any other subsidies?” Every suggestion I could think of was shot down.
“So what about the future?” I pressed, growing anxious on their behalf.
Their answer was simple—hope. Hope for sheep prices to climb, hoping from this year to the next, and from next year to the one after.
Five. A Way Out?
When I returned to Qinghai to track down Tenzin Zongzhi, I found he had relocated to Gonghe County. He was renting a small room for 190 yuan a month, sharing it with his wife and their son, who was nearly three.
By coincidence, his home is just a stone’s throw from Qieji West Road, a well-known market for live sheep. Step outside the courtyard gate and you can hear sheep bleating in the yards nearby.
Livestock prices have rebounded slightly this year. But when it comes to the cattle and sheep he sold last year, Tenzin Zongzhi speaks with quiet resignation. ‘The prices were dreadful back then. But we had no choice; we simply didn’t have enough pasture. It was just an absolute loss.’
I was curious about how Danzen Zongzhi makes his living in Rongda County. The answer proved somewhat unexpected. After facing repeated rejections in his job search, he turned to food delivery, aiming to complete at least thirty orders daily. For a man in his twenties, this marked his first time leaving the grasslands for urban employment. City life often drains him of motivation; no matter how late he rises, he feels exhausted, a stark contrast to the boundless energy he experienced each day on the pastures.
“Herding is infinitely simpler than this.” Transitioning from a free-roaming herder to a delivery rider tethered to an algorithm, he has had to labour through a difficult shift in identity. To him, the work is fraught with peril; he must ride at speed to evade penalties for late deliveries. Just recently, a 200-yuan fine for a delayed order wiped out two days’ earnings. The risks also stem from theft. Since taking on the job, he has lost food deliveries, and only two days ago, carelessness led to him misplacing his own phone, forcing him to use his wife’s device just to keep up his deliveries.
He also makes every effort to sidestep confrontations with hostile customers during deliveries. On one occasion, a client sneered, “What are you, just a delivery driver?” The insult provoked such fury that he hurled the order to the ground.
I had planned to continue filming Danzeng Zongzhi’s story, picking up where last year’s piece left off. He agreed cheerfully and asked me to follow him the next day. To my surprise, when I arrived at his rented flat at our agreed time of 9 a.m., he was still in bed. My first instinct was that I’d met a young man fond of sleeping in. But a short while later, he shuffled out, washed his face, and explained that he’d been called in for a last-minute overnight shift the previous night and hadn’t returned until 6 a.m. He was simply too exhausted to take us out for the shoot.
He misses pastoral life deeply. “There is nothing more comfortable than grazing livestock at home. But the shortage of pastureland is a major problem. If you keep too few cattle and sheep, a family of five or six cannot live off them. Feeling cornered, I wondered if there might be another way forward, which is why I chose to come here to work.”
Perhaps this search for a new path will ultimately come to nothing. He told me he plans to return home in a few months, possibly to take up herding once more.
Yet even though prices have ticked up this year, the underlying market tensions have not been fundamentally resolved; imported meat continues to flood the domestic market. During the first three quarters of 2025, cumulative imports of beef and mutton remained steady, with beef alone accounting for 2.125 million tonnes, a year-on-year rise of 1.0%.
Import prices have also climbed sharply—beef averages $5,225.12 per tonne (approx. ¥37.88/kg) and mutton $3,846.16 per tonne (approx. ¥27.88/kg) at the port, representing a 23.5% year-on-year increase. Yet even after successive mark-ups from the border to the retail shelf, they retain a clear price advantage over locally sourced meat, which typically retails at ¥60–70 per kilogram.
Consequently, farmers across the country are beginning to exit the cattle and sheep sector. By the end of the first three quarters of 2025, the national cattle inventory stood at 99.32 million head, a decline of 2.4% year-on-year and 0.6% quarter-on-quarter. The national sheep inventory totalled 290 million head, down 6.9% year-on-year and 3.7% quarter-on-quarter.
Will the stronger market prices that herders are banking on ever truly materialise?
On the evening of 19 December at 19:40, the documentary *Whose Table, Whose Pasture*, directed by Jiao Xiaofang and Qiong Wu Danzeng, will screen at Guangzhou Pazhou South TOD 【Harvest Celebration Space】. Following the screening, director Jiao Xiaofang will join online for a Q&A session. All are welcome to attend!
Cleaner Amei Wants a Proper Meal | The Worker’s Table
In Malaysia, Chinese Buyers Only Want Grade A Durians
“Fake Meat” Drives Out Real Meat: Herders, Dinner Tables, and Amazon
Keeping Watermelons Sweet, While Cultivation Remains Bitter
Malan in Shenzhen, Without a Meal Companion
Where Has the Sweetness of Childhood Gone?
Technology, Pesticides, and Drone Pilots: The Other Side of the “Technological Revolution”
Who Drove the Wet Markets Away?
Will Fresh-Food E-commerce Wipe Out Wet Markets?
When Drones Become New Farming Tools: Who Defines “Scientific Farming”?
