TITLE:
Developing the Agro-Grassland System to Insure Food Security of China
AUTHORS:
Ruichao Li, Huilong Lin
KEYWORDS:
Food Security, Grassland Agriculture, Arable Land Equivalent Unit, China
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Agricultural Chemistry and Environment,
Vol.3 No.3B,
July
14,
2014
ABSTRACT: China’s food security has
always been the top priority in China. As the huge increase of animal food
consumption, the current agriculture system in China namely “grain farming”,
whose major animal feed are grains, seems to meet a great
challenge to ensure China’s food security in the future. Not only the current
situation, but also the production capacity as developing grassland agriculture
is analyzed in this paper. The results show that half of provinces don’t have
enough grain to meet their various needs for grain, and the whole country’s
potential of grain yield is reaching a limited position. On the other hand, implementing
cereal-forage rotation on 20% of the total arable land and developing high
productivity sown pastures on 3% of the total rangeland areas could create
approximately 1.2 times Arable Land Equivalent Unit (ALEU) than ever. So
changing the traditional agriculture system into Grassland Agro-Ecosystems is
an effective way to insure China’s food security. It includes utilization of
rangeland rationally, establishment of more sown pasture and implementation of
cereal-pasture rotation system, increase livestock production, and use of
arable land more efficiently.