Pastoralism and Rangeland Management on the Tibetan Plateau in ...

for celebratory <strong>and</strong> sorrowful occasions. Butter oil is also sold within the village
<strong>and</strong> to nearby towns. The main purchasers are the non-farming households.
Photo 2: Dehydrated whey (qurut) is dried out of reach for livestock.
It is widely appreciated as a traditional product for storage <strong>and</strong> trade
(photograph © Hermann Kreutzmann July 8, 1990)
The fresh milk, yogurt <strong>and</strong> whey are the common milk products for daily utility
in the mountains. A large proportion of fresh milk is utilized in tea-making.
There is no tradition of converting milk into cream. The milk for converting
into butter oil is fermented using the goat skin.
2.2.2 Current milk products marketing issues <strong>and</strong> development interventions
The improvement in production of milk <strong>and</strong> improving the processing of
products particularly the cheese <strong>and</strong> cream <strong>and</strong> promoting their marketing
as organic mountain milk products can provide additional incentive to the
pastoral communities to improve the output of milk. Increasing dem<strong>and</strong> in the
market can make the labour <strong>and</strong> capital investment of the pastoralists in the
sector more attractive. Currently no organization is facilitating the production
of quality milk products <strong>and</strong> marketing, hence pastoralists prefer to follow the
least input <strong>and</strong> optimal output strategy oriented toward subsistence. The effort
to improve livestock management seems not to be so much successful.
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