The sociocultural formation of prices in Mongolian medicinal plant supply chains

Project Information

PLANTECON

Grant agreement ID: 101090330

DOI

10.3030/101090330

Project closed

EC signature date 27 June 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 March 2025

Funded under

• Widening participation and spreading excellence

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 166 278,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI
Czechia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLANTECON (The sociocultural formation of prices in Mongolian medicinal plant supply chains)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2025-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

PLANTECON was originally conceptualised to investigate the prevalence and size of the medicinal plant market in Mongolia with a particular focus on two plants commonly used as Covid-19 remedies: fang feng (Saposhnikovia divaricata) and Asian liquorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis). The project was initially based on experiences from my previous research when I encountered widespread medicinal plant wild harvesting in rural Mongolia. The action was designed to confirm whether these wild harvesting activities were continuing and growing in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era; how large and in what form this trade was being economically carried out (research objective 1); and the internal sociocultural and material dynamics within supply chains funnelling Mongolia’s medicinal plants both nationally and internationally (research objective 2). Theoretically, the action was investigating the internal power dynamics within these supply chains, including the relative power of middlemen versus harvesters to determine prices and relative shares. The aim was to make policy recommendations concerning legislation on benefit-sharing or cooperative arrangements to strengthen the relative power and economic standing of rural harvesters (research objective 3). In doing so, the action originally intended to strengthen awareness of and avenues to conservation of Covid-19 plants valuable for medical usages.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project’s fieldwork began in June of 2023 and I discovered upon returning to Mongolia that the ethnographic context had shifted considerably. Sporadic raids had started in rural fieldsites changing the willingness of harvesters to talk to researchers and driving middlemen underground. This made the project’s focus on power and pricing within open-market supply chains inapplicable, as the trade was a largely economically closed market. Nevertheless, I was able to continue researching these two plants by taking special consideration for the needs of informants and shifting the ethnographic focus to urban, formal institutional (political, academic and business) settings. I was able to carry out fieldwork in two rural fieldsites involved in wild harvesting of the two respective plants amongst political, civil leaders and pastoral households; on informal urban markets amongst medicinal plant traders; amongst scientists and businesses jointly involved in the formalization of this market; within legal archives; as well as amongst political representatives. Over thirty-six in-depth ethnographic interviews with participants in the harvesting, sale or export of these two medicinal plants were carried out and transcribed.
Upon returning to the host institution, I started the process of post-fieldwork data analysis. During this period, I focused on better understanding the market circumstances in China and larger Asia that were influencing the activities of companies, politicians and harvesters in Mongolia. I hired a Chinese-speaking research assistant to support with collecting, searching for and collating Chinese-language research to complement the English language material. During this period, I also had my secondment at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Austria, to learn about the state-of-the-art on traditional Asian medicines as industries.
During the final six months, I transitioned to crystallizing the major results of the action, communicating and disseminating them. I was able to expand my knowledge on the overlap of medicinal plants and political economy, leading to several new research project ideals. Two scientific publications and a grant proposal were written based on one of these ideas. Only ten of the thirty-six interviews have been utilized so far in scientific publications and thus many future publications will result from the interview material gathered during the fellowship

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Because of changes in the research context in Mongolia, the project’s objectives shifted away from pricing and internal distribution of wealth within supply chains towards a focus on the geo-political, political-economic and legal factors that drove and influenced this trade. Through fieldwork, I was able to confirm that these two plants were being continually wild harvested from rural Mongolia and that this had continued throughout the pandemic and post-pandemic period despite border closures, shifts in regulatory contexts in Mongolia and legal enforcement. I was also able to trace through fieldwork the general size and market capacities of the informal and formal trades in these plants in Mongolia (fulfilling objective 1). I also learned in doing the fieldwork that the largest pressure or demand driving this trade in wild harvested medicinal plants came from outside of Mongolia from the Asian traditional medicine industries in China, primarily, and in Japan and South Korea, secondarily. In particular, the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) industry in China, which had been booming throughout and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, constituted the major driver impacting the wild harvest of these plants in Mongolia. There is growing concern in China amongst TCM consumers over industrial socio-ecologies, unstable health systems and anthropogenic climate change, which is encouraging TCM supplies to seek new sourcing opportunities for, in particular, wild as opposed to cultivated plants; in this case, from relatively unindustrialised Mongolia (fulfilling objective 2).
The Mongolian steppe is now a major sourcing location for medicinal plants for the Chinese TCM market, especially of root-based plants used against Covid-19. Unfortunately for the businesses, politicians and development programmes that hope to direct this market into a formal cultivation industry in Mongolia, the project was able to identify that it is predominantly wild plants, not industrialized or cultivated ones, that Chinese consumers and TCM suppliers were willing to pay large sums for. In addition, international consumers primarily want plants and fungi from Mongolia that are difficult to cultivate. This complicates any attempt to make a benefit-sharing programme or rural cooperative around these plants, because these institutions are based on assets created through pooled labour (answering objective 3). In 2021, a Genetics Resources Law was passed in Mongolia that could potentially copyright or patent the genetic material from plants used in international products. This is one potential avenue through which companies or academic institutions could make money from wild plant materials sold to the formal Asian traditional medicine market; but it remains to be seen how this could lead to sustainable benefits for local, rural and marginalized communities.