Animal husbandry development faces seven major challenges

At the sixth Council of the third session of the China Animal Husbandry Association held not long ago, Wang Zongli, deputy director of the Animal Husbandry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, made a report on the review and prospect of China's animal husbandry development in 2014. Wang Zongli pointed out that at present, China's animal husbandry is in a critical period of transformation and upgrading, and the future development of China's animal husbandry will face seven major challenges.

First, the supply and demand of animal products has entered a tight balance stage. Wang Zongli analyzed that at present, many factors, such as the growth of China's total population, the increase in the proportion of urban population, the improvement of income level and the expansion of industrial use, have contributed to the rigid growth of the demand for agricultural products. However, the resource constraints such as livestock and poultry feed, land use and water resources are becoming more and more urgent. The demand for feed grain growth in the development of animal husbandry exceeds the average growth rate of national grain output. It is an obvious fact that the raw materials of protein feed are obviously insufficient. In 2013 alone, China imported 63.41 million tons of soybeans, with an import dependence of nearly 80 percent. In addition, the difficulty of animal husbandry production growth will be further increased, and the pressure to ensure the effective supply of animal products in the market will become greater and greater.

Second, the production of animal products has entered a high-cost stage. Driven by the increase in labor costs, raw material prices and other factors, the costs of feed raw materials, labor, water and electricity are on the rise.

Third, the situation of prevention and control of animal diseases is still grim. Wang Zongli pointed out: in terms of the prevention and control of animal diseases, there are still some problems in China, such as frequent occurrence of epidemic diseases, frequent occurrence of major epidemic diseases, imperfect epidemic prevention institutions, and weak epidemic prevention strength. It not only affects consumption, but also affects breeding confidence.

Fourth, the hidden danger of the quality and safety of animal products has existed for a long time. In Wang Zongli's view, the quality and safety of animal products is related to the life and health of the masses, safety is no small matter, and the responsibility is as great as heaven. This is not only some media exaggeration, malicious hype, but also reflects some problems in the industry. For example, the quality of employees is uneven, many people engaged in livestock and poultry breeding are mainly labor force with low level of education, poor identification ability of fake and inferior feed and veterinary drugs, and weak ability to implement the system. Employees have a weak sense of law-abiding and integrity, and a small number of people still knowingly commit crimes driven by interests and use the substances prohibited by the state. The level of large-scale standardization needs to be further improved. Take pig farming as an example, about 54 million pigs of pig farmers in China are provided by small and medium-sized farmers with an annual output of less than 500. (70,000 and 3.5% in the United States, respectively)

Fifth, the construction of modern livestock and poultry breeding system lags behind. China's major livestock and poultry breeds such as pigs, dairy cows and poultry mostly rely on foreign imports, and the ability of independent breeding needs to be improved. For example, a sow in developed countries can provide about 1800 kilograms of pork a year, while China has only 1016 kilograms. Wang Zongli pointed out that in the future, we should take the market as the orientation, take enterprises as the main body, and form a livestock and poultry breeding mechanism with the combination of production, learning and research as soon as possible.

Sixth, the problem of environmental pollution has become increasingly prominent. There are three main problems in the treatment of environmental pollution of livestock and poultry breeding in China: first, the total amount of livestock breeding does not match with the environmental capacity; second, the combination of agriculture and animal husbandry is not close; third, the technical model of comprehensive treatment and utilization of waste lags behind. A group of earlier statistics show that COD emissions from livestock and poultry manure reached 12.683 million tons in 2007, accounting for 41.9% of the country's total COD emissions. During the 12th five-year Plan period, agricultural sources were included in the assessment and management system of total emission reduction, and chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen emissions were included in the binding assessment indicators of total emission reduction. The regulations on the Prevention and Control of pollution in large-scale breeding of Livestock and Poultry has been formally implemented, which also puts forward higher requirements for the prevention and control of pollution in animal husbandry. It can be seen that it is urgent to control the environmental pollution of livestock and poultry breeding.

Seventh, the supporting capacity of science and technology is still insufficient. According to statistics, the current contribution rate of scientific and technological progress of animal husbandry in China is 55%, which is 20 percentage points lower than that of developed countries. In the report, Wang Zongli used "three more, three less and one disjoint" to summarize the current scientific and technological form of animal husbandry in our country. The so-called "more than three" means that there are more technologies for increasing output, more imported technologies (varieties), and more general scientific and technological achievements; three less, that is, fewer technologies for improving quality, ecology and environmental protection, fewer technologies for independent intellectual property rights, and fewer major breakthroughs; a disconnection, that is, there is a disconnection between animal husbandry science and technology research and popularization.