Almost no arable land and a culture of herding animals. Herd animals are the only ones able to make use of the steppe directly. They soil is too flimsy for agriculture. As a result, meat is the staple food and cheap, while anything else comes at a premium and often has to be imported.
Mongolia is also really good at breeding lifestock, back during the socialist period they helped the DPRK to get its breeding programs going after the war and donated many herds to start with.
Well, much of the region is desert and steppe. The former makes farming outright impossible, the latter often unfeasable, because steppe soil is quite thin. So it’s meat or starving to death. Unless you can digest grass, in that case you’re fine.
I think they have such high meat consumption because they don’t have much arable land and not them best infrastructure and budget to import plant stables on a large enough scale so they eat meat instead. Horses, camels, and goats grow easier than wheat, rice or whatever else.
Interestingly Mongolia has a high consumption too, thoughts on that?
Almost no arable land and a culture of herding animals. Herd animals are the only ones able to make use of the steppe directly. They soil is too flimsy for agriculture. As a result, meat is the staple food and cheap, while anything else comes at a premium and often has to be imported.
Mongolia is also really good at breeding lifestock, back during the socialist period they helped the DPRK to get its breeding programs going after the war and donated many herds to start with.
Mongolia also has a comparatively tiny number of people, because it’s not possible to sustain a large population without agriculture.
Makes sense since they were mainly animal herders for thousands of years instead of relying on farming.
Well, much of the region is desert and steppe. The former makes farming outright impossible, the latter often unfeasable, because steppe soil is quite thin. So it’s meat or starving to death. Unless you can digest grass, in that case you’re fine.
I think they have such high meat consumption because they don’t have much arable land and not them best infrastructure and budget to import plant stables on a large enough scale so they eat meat instead. Horses, camels, and goats grow easier than wheat, rice or whatever else.
Given that it’s a desert, I’m guessing not a lot of edible plants growing there?