Giving fresh impetus to green development across northern frontier

This autumn, herder Aodu in Sonid Right Banner, west of the Xiliin Gol grassland in Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was seen driving the last batch of sheep onto a freight truck. Each sheep wears a small electronic traceability tag between its ears — an exclusive "electronic ID" issued under the "Meng" brand certification system for Sonid sheep.

The sheep are destined for Beijing, Henan province and other places by air-conditioned transport, where they will be sold in some high-end supermarkets at prices nearly 20 percent higher than those of ordinary free-range lamb.

Behind the small ear tag lies a complete industry chain encompassing standardized breeding, brand certification and cold-chain logistics. Inner Mongolia is endowed with exceptional ecological resources. For a long time, however, the region struggled to turn its high-quality agricultural and livestock products into stable market returns.

Jalaid Banner in Hinggan League is widely recognized as a natural home of premium rice. Several years ago, however, farming there was dominated by scattered households and small cooperatives. Production standards varied, resulting in inconsistent rice quality. The relatively high cost of green and organic testing and certification discouraged many producers from seeking certification.

In response, Inner Mongolia encouraged scattered small-scale operations to move toward larger-scale production. For example, standardized rice cultivation is being promoted along the Xiliao River Basin; large-scale green grain production is expanding in the Hetao Irrigation Area; and ecological grassland-livestock systems are being developed in pastoral areas.

This differentiated approach helps avoid homogeneous competition and allows different leagues and cities to leverage their respective strengths while complementing one another. Supporting subsidies have also lowered the threshold for green and organic certification.

In the past, rice grower Chang Cunfeng's rice paddies were scattered across a village in Jalaid Banner. After signing an order-based planting agreement with a rice company, he began following unified green rice production standards and receiving technical guidance. As a result, his rice quality has become more consistent, while the contracted purchase price is higher than the market average.

East Ujimqin Banner, located in the heart of the Xiliin Gol grassland, is a core production area for Ujimqin sheep. However, before regional public brands were integrated, Xiliin Gol's meat-processing industry was characterized as small-scale, fragmented, and disorderly. Numerous operators registered their own trademarks and developed markets independently. Homogeneous, low-price competition not only weakened the industry as a whole but also made it difficult to build market strength.

Inner Mongolia tried to reshape the industry around the "Meng" brand, a shared regional brand for premium products from the grasslands. It has introduced dedicated certification and management measures and established a uniform model covering brand, standards, identity, publicity and marketing.

In the past, herder Batu in East Ujimqin Banner relied on middlemen who came to buy his sheep, leaving prices to market fluctuations. After joining an order-based partnership with a company authorized to use the regional brand, his sheep are now raised according to standardized practices.

Rice from Hinggan League is known for its outstanding quality. In the early stages of industrial development, however, most of the rice was sold outside the region through individual farmers, without stable offline distribution outlets or well-developed online sales channels.

To address the challenges, Inner Mongolia developed an integrated online-and-offline marketing system and introduced mobile exhibition halls in the form of agricultural and livestock product "caravans" that traveled across all 12 leagues and cities and 19 major cities across the country.

To tap into the vast southern market, Inner Mongolia has also deepened cross-regional industrial cooperation. At a brand-launch event in Shenzhen promoting the shipment of fresh beef from northern China to South China's Guangdong province, 32 leading beef enterprises from Inner Mongolia met with 76 buyers from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, leading to the establishment of the Inner Mongolia-Guangdong beef industry alliance, creating a stable supply and distribution channel.

Hulunbuir grassland lamb was selected as an official food product for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Behind this achievement is a comprehensive quality-control system.

At the source, ecological quality is protected through differentiated farming and animal husbandry practices tailored to local conditions. At the processing stage, the region is strengthening processing and preservation capacity while improving clean and low-carbon facilities. Leagues and cities are also accelerating the construction of cold-storage facilities and field-level preservation infrastructure. As a result, fresh produce can now be moved directly into nearby storage facilities and released to the market in a staggered manner.

By continuing to build the "Meng" brand into a trusted name for green and organic agricultural and livestock products, Inner Mongolia is giving fresh impetus to green development across the vast northern frontier.

The author is an associate researcher of the Governance Academy of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.