Steadily promote the development of grassland agriculture

Storing grain in the land and grass is an important way to adjust the structure and transformation of agriculture. However, with the accelerating process of urbanization in China, people's diet structure is also changing-grain consumption is declining and animal food consumption is increasing. This promotes the rapid development of the aquaculture industry, aggravates the demand gap of forage, and forms a new threat to food security.

At the same time, due to the long-term extensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in agricultural production in China, the pollution to soil, water sources and agricultural products and the imbalance and degradation of soil nutrients have seriously threatened the sustainable productivity and stability of agro-ecosystem. Traditional farming agriculture faces great challenges.

Improving the productivity of crop-forage-livestock system is the way to solve the food security of our country. However, the agricultural production environment in China is complex and diverse, the regional production conditions are quite different, and the crop, forage planting and breeding structures are very different. Therefore, the establishment of grassland agriculture and sustainable land use model adapted to the regional characteristics is the inevitable choice for the development of modern grassland agriculture.

In rural areas, a large-scale and benefit-oriented development model of grassland agriculture should be established.

The first is to adjust the dual planting structure of grain-economy to the ternary planting structure of grain-economy-feed, and change the mode of straw animal husbandry in agricultural areas into an efficient animal husbandry with high quality and multiple forage feed structure. The second is to increase the proportion of herbivores, reduce the proportion of livestock competing with people for food, improve the transformation efficiency of high-quality forage grass, match fine livestock varieties, and improve the efficiency of animal husbandry by optimizing planting, processing and breeding methods. The third is to rely on the new rural cooperative organization, expand the scale of land production units through land circulation, and establish a large-scale production base of high-quality forage forage such as alfalfa and silage corn with "base + farmers". Realize the integration of planting, production, processing and marketing, and improve the systematic efficiency of grass and animal husbandry in agricultural areas. Fourth, introduce grass into the field, adopt land rotation, intercropping, interplanting, multiple cropping and other ways, implement circular rotation agriculture, maintain a good soil ecological environment, and improve the comprehensive productivity and sustainability of the land system.

In the ecotone of agriculture and animal husbandry, the development model of grassland agriculture with the combination of planting and breeding should be established.

The natural resource endowment of the agro-pastoral ecotone is special, and planting and animal husbandry are parallel in the same region and complement each other. The special climatic conditions in this region determine that the benefit of seed agriculture is much lower than that of nutrient agriculture. The areas of oat, whole plant silage corn and alfalfa have been expanding and are becoming the key areas for the development of grass industry in China.

This region should vigorously develop grassland agricultural production dominated by nutrient agriculture, vigorously develop cultivated grassland, and change the production mode of half-house feeding and supplementary feeding to full-house animal husbandry, so as to improve the conversion benefit of forage-livestock system. At the same time, the area should be built into a forage guarantee base for grassland, a fattening base for livestock in pastoral areas and a straw absorption and transformation base in agricultural areas, so as to reduce the pressure on grasslands in pastoral areas and meet the nutritional needs of livestock.

In pastoral areas, establish a green, efficient and environmentally friendly ecological animal husbandry development model.

The climatic conditions in pastoral areas are bad, and the production level of animal husbandry is low. Ecological and environmental protection should be the prerequisite for the development of grassland animal husbandry in this area. For natural grassland, by optimizing grazing utilization system, such as rotational grazing, household grazing, no grazing and grassland management, no-tillage improvement of degraded natural grassland, increasing forage yield and quality, and enhancing forage supply capacity. Solve the contradiction between ecological protection, forage supply and the development of animal husbandry.

Under the premise of restoring grassland ecology, vigorously develop green, characteristic and brand ecological animal husbandry. Through livestock breed improvement and short-term fattening, we should standardize and standardize the production of green and natural meat and dairy products, improve the processing level of traditional animal products, improve quality and added value, and gradually improve the overall function of grassland animal husbandry production system. promote the transformation from quantity growth to quality benefit growth, and promote the transformation of grassland animal husbandry to a green, efficient and environmentally friendly mode of production. To achieve a win-win situation between grassland ecological protection and economic growth in pastoral areas.

(author Shi Shangli is a professor at Gansu Agricultural University, a grass field rotation expert in the national forage industry technology system, Cao Wenxia is an associate professor at Gansu Agricultural University, and Zhang Yingjun is a professor at China Agricultural University and the chief scientist of the national forage industry technology system.)