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Photo essay, November 2009: Working Toward a Sustainable Camel and Cashmere Supply Chain in Alashan, Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, China
# 1: Alashan desert - grazing area
# 2: Alashan desert - shows advancing dunes, which are burying a grazing area and even a wetlands
# 3: Alashan Bactrian camels
# 4: Gerilitu's goat shed and corral
# 5: Goats inside Gerilitu's corral
# 6: Gerilitu combing raw cashmere fiber from one of his goats
# 7: Inside Gerilitu's house, with picture of Genghis Khan
# 8: Meeting of the Rong Yuan Goat Herders' Cooperative, De Ri Tu village
# 9: Meeting of the Alashan Camel and Cashmere Association, in Bayanhut, the regional capital of Alashan Left Banner)
# 10: Trademarked logos - created by the Alashan Camel and Cashmere Association
# 11: Mr. Han's animal husbandry research and breeding station for sheep and goats
# 12: Mr. Han caring for orphaned lamb
# 13: One of three wild pure-bred traditional Alashan cashmere goats, with 12 micron fibers
# 14: Fine quality fiber produced at the Alashan Yulian Textile Materials Co, Ltd. factory
# 15: Outdoor drying of washed and sorted (not yet dehaired) camel wool
# 16: A worker at the dehairing machine
# 17: Another of the skilled workers in the Alashan Yulian factory. Mr. Liu, its founder/owner, trains and depends upon skilled workers, paying them well and maintaining a stable workforce.
# 18: By contrast, this is a highly mechanized cashmere processing factory in neighboring Ningxia autonomous region. Theese factories have far greater capacity to process large volumes of fiber. They have lower quality production, and do more damage to the fiber.
# 19: Mr. Liu's factory manager shows the intermediate stage of cleaning fiber
# 20: Laboratory analysis of fiber quality
# 21: Light table for making quilts (duvets) filled with camel fiber
# 22: ECOLOGIA staff with Mr. Liu's factory manager
# 23: Camel quilt marketing with “HELANMOUNTAIN” trademark in upper left and “China Fibre Testing Ecological Textile” label in upper right. Box end reads “Alashan China Unique Quality Camelwool in the World” and “Noble Natural Fibre - Green Ecological and Environmental”
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