What's the food like in Mongolia? (How do Mongolians avoid scurvy?)

The Lonely Planet guidebook tries to pretend that UB has a wide food selection -- I believe it suggests that Ulaanbaatur is in the "upper echelons" as far as variety of cuisine goes in Asia. I beg to differ. Mongolia is a land-locked country that, for much of the year, is covered in permafrost. Nothing's growing. The fruits and vegetables that you can buy are limited in variety, and, because they are almost all imported, they're expensive.

The nomadic diet consists almost entirely of what they have on hand: a lot of milk products, from goats and yaks, many of which are fermented, so they can last through the winter, yak meat, and mutton. The other big ingredient is wheat. I was legitimately amazed they all didn't have scurvy until I learned that unpasteurized milk has some vitamin C in it, and, apparently, lamb liver contains quite a lot of vitamin C.

A friend of mine here who works for CHF International, (which, like Mercy Corps, is an organization that works on poverty reduction and sustainable change across the world) was telling me that two of the big funders of CHF's Mongolian operations are United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Apparently, the USAID tends to give money, and USDA works with CHF to help "monetize" American wheat. The USDA currently subsidizes wheat production in America. Then, because there is a surplus of wheat in America, the extra wheat gets shipped off to countries like Mongolia. CHF sells the wheat to Mongolians and uses that income to subsidize their programs.

In countries like Mongolia where it's difficult to grow wheat, this is a really effective way of giving people access to wheat. In countries in Africa, however, where this apparently also occurs, and where there is already wheat production, it can be devastating to the market as the surplus lowers the overall price of wheat.