Developing the Agro-Grassland System to Insure Food Security of China

Ruichao Li, Huilong Lin

State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.

DOI: 10.4236/jacen.2014.33B002                

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.

Keywords

Food Security, Grassland Agriculture, Arable Land Equivalent Unit, China

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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