Household food production
Practical training in growing, storing and selling vegetables, with seed, tools and follow-up advice for the families who need them most. 25 to 50 people every year.
Nar Khur Shim was founded by families who had just learned to farm and stayed on to teach. We train households to grow, store and sell their own food, run a year-round greenhouse farm as a working classroom, and defend the farmland and water that make it possible.
Who we are
In October 2005, twelve people who had come through a vegetable-growing project in the ger districts of Khan-Uul joined together rather than go their separate ways. They registered as an association so that what they had learned would stay in the neighbourhood.
Twenty years on, we still work with the same people: low-income households, women who head their families alone, people who have moved to the city from the countryside, people with disabilities and older residents. The work started in Khan-Uul and now reaches Songinokhairkhan District, Töv province and other localities. Every year we take 25 to 50 people through practical training in growing, storing and selling food.
Our work has grown outward from the vegetable bed: into greenhouses and year-round production, into ecological education for children, into flood channels, shelterbelts and a tree nursery.
What we do
We are a small organisation, so everything we do has to hold together. Training feeds the farm, the farm feeds the classroom, and the advocacy keeps the land under both.
Practical training in growing, storing and selling vegetables, with seed, tools and follow-up advice for the families who need them most. 25 to 50 people every year.
Winter and summer greenhouses, polytunnels and open ground — eight crops in more than twenty varieties, harvested through the whole Mongolian year.
Every year, pre-school and school-age children come to the farm to plant, weed, harvest and taste what they have grown. For many of them it is the first time they have seen food come out of the ground.
Legal research, training and advocacy for farming households whose land is threatened. In the Tuul river basin we represented 118 landholders through a seven-year case and had their rights restored.
Flood-protection channels, shelterbelts and a tree nursery in the localities where we work. Risk falls for residents, the soil stays where it belongs, and everything that grows on it does better.
Sensors in the greenhouse and Good Agricultural Practice on paper. We log temperature, humidity, CO₂ and solar radiation, then read the record back to decide when to vent, water and sow.
Flagship programme · Enkh Shim
Enkh Shim is not only a production site. It provides year-round and seasonal work for 7 to 12 people, and it is where every household we train comes to practise.
The turning point was the FAO project “Improving the food security of the population” (2010–2013). It left the association with land of its own and a new deep well with a ten-cubic-metre reservoir, enough to irrigate three hectares. In 2014 two 500 m² winter greenhouses were built with a 200 million MNT loan and 110 million MNT of the farm’s own capital. A second FAO project (2016–2020) brought Good Agricultural Practice into daily production, and certification followed in 2020.
Measurement · e-Kakashi trial
The trial was run with JICA and the Mongolian University of Life Sciences, alongside four other farms. A greenhouse in Mongolia swings from freezing nights to 30 °C afternoons, so guessing is expensive. With the e-Kakashi microclimate sensors we logged temperature, relative humidity, CO₂ and solar radiation continuously, then analysed the record day by day and month by month.
Education · Children and community
Every year we run courses for pre-school and school-age children: sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting and cooking potatoes, root vegetables and salad crops. The children come from the surrounding khoroos, and many of them live in households we have trained.
Alongside the children’s programme we run adult training in field and household agriculture, fruit and berry growing, and handicraft — sewing and shoemaking — for women who head their households alone. Trainees also get seasonal work on the farm in spring and summer.
Track record · 2005 to today
Registered on 7 November 2005 by a group who had come through a vegetable-growing project and joined together to keep the knowledge in the neighbourhood.
Training and hands-on support for low-income households in growing, storing and selling vegetables. Over three consecutive years, seed, tools and equipment reached more than 2,000 people, and household food supply and income measurably improved.
Skills and income training combining vegetable growing with small-scale production — sewing and shoemaking — so that a household had more than one way to earn.
Cultivation training and advice for more than 150 people, together with an integrated plant-protection programme for greenhouse crops.
The project that gave the farm its footing: land of its own, and a new deep well with a 10 m³ reservoir capable of irrigating three hectares.
Financed with a 200 million MNT loan and 110 million MNT of the farm’s own capital — the step that made year-round production possible.
Good Agricultural Practice introduced into daily production, and the produce moved from the roadside to contract buyers and city markets.
A gravel-extraction licence had been issued over 116 hectares in the 12th and 13th khoroos — land families were already farming. We traced every affected landholder, ran legal training, elected community representatives and took the case to the district, the city and parliament. In 2022, after seven years, the licence was terminated and 110 hectares belonging to 110 households were secured.
Certification of the practices already in use — record-keeping, plant protection, hygiene and traceability — and a stronger position with buyers.
An 800-metre flood-protection channel dug through the settlement, and trees planted in household yards to hold the ground and widen the green cover.
A supply route built so that members’ produce reaches retail chains continuously rather than in gluts — steadier prices for the grower, steadier supply for the shop.
Mongolia is the first country in East and Central Asia to host a UNCCD Conference of the Parties, under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope.” Nar Khur Shim holds provisional accreditation as a civil society organisation and is taking part in the food systems and soil health discussions.
What it adds up to
Seeking support · Project
Nearly 77 per cent of Mongolia’s land is degraded. The 14th khoroo of Khan-Uul — 1,749 households, 5,063 residents, 28 km from the centre of Ulaanbaatar — lives with thinning topsoil, dust-laden wind and almost no tree cover. Nationally there are about 6.5 m² of planted green space per person; in this khoroo there is no public park at all, no shaded seat, no place to take a class outdoors.
The Discovery Garden is our answer: a public park laid out so that walking through it teaches you the plants of this region, with a working training block at its centre — three summer greenhouses, a winter greenhouse, a seedling nursery and a 200 m² teaching building. It is a park that also produces, and a school that also rests.
The point of it is to give the people who live here — above all their children — both the will and the skill to restore the land around them. A child who has planted a tree, watered it and watched it take does not need to be told why a healthy environment matters; they already know it with their hands. The nursery will supply neighbouring households with trees and shrubs, so restoration can begin at each family’s own fence rather than waiting for a programme to arrive.
The plan, to scale — 29,800 m² across ten zones
What we are looking for
We are not asking for the whole park at once. The design is divisible: a funder can take one phase, see it finished, and decide about the next. We report against the same financial and internal-control procedures we already use for FAO, MONES and EU-funded work.
Levelling, soil preparation, boundary and the irrigation line that everything else depends on.
729 trees and shrubs — the shelterbelts first, then the fruit grove and the ornamental beds.
Greenhouses, nursery and the 200 m² teaching building — the part that starts earning and teaching immediately.
Paths, lighting, shelters, benches, the playground and the water features that make it a place people stay in.
On film
Video hosted on YouTube. Open in a new tab
Partners, donors and collaborators
We list these carefully. Some are donors, some are project partners, some are institutions we have worked alongside — the label after each name says which.
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