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.
Mongolia has barely enough rainfall for grass (for the most part).
And even then, grass barely survives there in some seasons. So for people to survive, they require a diet consisting of animals that can eat grass and convert calories in grass into calories humans can use. Game and herd animals are the most effective way of surviving on the steppes.
This also made them extremely potent against agricultural civilisations they faced in sieges. If the Mongols reach your agriculture and destroyed your crops, you’ve basically lost. They, on the other hand, can survive off animals that survive off grass.
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.
Mongolia has barely enough rainfall for grass (for the most part).
And even then, grass barely survives there in some seasons. So for people to survive, they require a diet consisting of animals that can eat grass and convert calories in grass into calories humans can use. Game and herd animals are the most effective way of surviving on the steppes.
This also made them extremely potent against agricultural civilisations they faced in sieges. If the Mongols reach your agriculture and destroyed your crops, you’ve basically lost. They, on the other hand, can survive off animals that survive off grass.
Given that it’s a desert, I’m guessing not a lot of edible plants growing there?