Inner Mongolian herdsmen harvest fruit of the desert

Herdsmen in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region have been supplementing their modest incomes by growing desert plants, using advanced techniques under the guidance of an enterprising Chinese pharmaceutical company.

Alxa League, an administrative division of Inner Mongolia, is a region notable for its fragile ecological environment, with two-thirds of its land covered by desert.

Herdsmen in the league, in the western part of Inner Mongolia, used to depend on raising cattle and sheep on grasslands which cover 90,000 square kilometers.