As long as the pastoralists were organized in the people's communes, the trade in caterpillar fungus was controlled by the state. This started changing in the 1980s. The communes were closed down and the economic reforms freed the trade from the constraints of the command economy. The pastoralists were allocated land and livestock and started selling their products, including caterpillar fungus, on the private market. At the same time, people across China embraced their newly regained mobility and sought income opportunities outside their place of residence. The growth in the popularity and price of caterpillar fungus triggered seasonal migrations of diggers to pastoral regions where it grows. Tensions over the land intensified and so there emerged a need to create a system governing access to the land and caterpillar fungus resources. How was it to be organized, if anyone else, apart from the pastoralists, wanted to dig the fungus? Should this be possible free of charge or upon some sort of payment? Who should decide about the payment and the use of that income? The following decades witnessed a series of attempts to regulate access to the caterpillar fungus-producing land: new policies replaced old ones that turned out to be contested or ineffective.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, diggers coming to Domkhok paid a Grassland Tax (Tib. rtsacha) to the township where they wanted to gather caterpillar fungus. The size of this tax was decided by the herders committee (Tib. drok u khang), the smallest administrative unit in the township, and it depended on the caterpillar fungus production capacity of a given area. Between 1988 and 2000, this tax in Domkhok rose from 500 to 1000 yuan per person. The diggers could dig ‘wherever they wished’ within the area they paid for, as the local officials informed me. The major part of the Grassland Tax went to the herders committee and the rest to the county legislature. In Domkhok, this money was spent on road and house construction, fencing pastures, connecting electricity to the township, and building a bridge over the Domchu. A man who worked in the local administration during that period recounted: ‘This money went on developing the local society.