Modern animal husbandry provides strong support for overall development
Since the “12th Five-Year Plan”, the construction of modern animal husbandry in China has advanced steadily, taking solid steps in ensuring the effective supply of livestock products, ensuring the quality and safety of livestock products and maintaining grassland ecology, and providing strong support for “stabilizing growth, adjusting the structure, promoting reform and improving people's livelihoods”.
Livestock production has maintained steady growth, breeds have become increasingly diversified, the foundation of the livestock industry has been continuously consolidated, and the operating systems and mechanisms have been continuously reformed and developed, with notable results. Data show that in 2014, the total output value of animal husbandry exceeded 2.9 trillion yuan, per capita meat availability reached 64 kg, income directly from livestock and poultry breeding accounted for 1/6 of cash income from household agricultural operations, and there were 583 national-level leading enterprises in animal husbandry industrialization, accounting for 47%.
Changing the development model to enhance comprehensive production capacity
The national animal husbandry system adhered to the basic approach of “stabilizing pigs, safeguarding poultry, and promoting cattle and sheep”, strengthened market guidance, ensured policy implementation, defused industry risks, and comprehensively improved the comprehensive production capacity of livestock and poultry.
—— Standardized large-scale livestock and poultry farming has become the main force in ensuring the supply of livestock products. During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the central government invested a cumulative 14.9 billion yuan to support the upgrading of infrastructure at nearly 38,000 large-scale breeding farms and households. Since 2010, standardized demonstration creation activities for livestock and poultry breeding have been launched and implemented, and large-scale farming has become the main force in ensuring the effective market supply of livestock products. In 2014, the proportion of large-scale farming nationwide for pigs, laying hens and dairy cows reached 42%, 69% and 45% respectively.
—— Scientific and technological innovation in livestock and poultry seed industries has made notable breakthroughs. In recent years, genetic improvement plans for pigs, dairy cows, beef cattle, mutton sheep, laying hens and broilers have been successively issued and implemented, a improved breed breeding system has taken initial shape, and the capacity for improved breed selection and seed supply has been significantly enhanced. Since the “12th Five-Year Plan”, a total of 39 new livestock and poultry varieties and complete sets of lines have been bred nationwide, among which independently bred laying hen complete sets of lines have accounted for more than 40% of the national market share.
—— The pace of industrialized operation has accelerated. At present, there are 583 national-level leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization in animal husbandry, accounting for 47%. The momentum of integrated “production, processing and sales” in animal husbandry and the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries has accelerated, forming a large number of mutually beneficial and win-win production and operation models with shared interests in various forms such as “enterprise + farmers”, “enterprise + cooperatives” and “enterprise + bases”.
Special rectification raises the level of quality and safety
Animal husbandry departments at all levels fully implemented the central government's decisions and arrangements on the quality and safety of food and agricultural products, conscientiously fulfilled their regulatory duties for feed, raw milk and “lean meat powder”, persisted in using the “four strictest” measures to advance the rectification of prominent problems, and “placed equal emphasis on production and management” to improve long-term mechanisms, achieving notable results.
—— New regulations were implemented in depth, promoting an overall improvement in the quality of feed enterprises and continuously improving product quality. After the revised Regulations on the Administration of Feed and Feed Additives were promulgated and implemented, supporting departmental rules were issued in a timely manner, demonstration creation for the Feed Quality and Safety Management Standards was organized, and the feed quality and safety monitoring plan was improved.
Through the organic connection and synergistic effect of pre-event, in-event and post-event regulatory systems, the small, disorderly and poor conditions of feed enterprises have been noticeably improved. From 2010 to 2014, the pass rate of feed product sampling inspections increased from 93.9% to 96.2%, the number of feed production enterprises decreased from 10,843 to 7,617, and the number of feed enterprise groups with an annual output of more than 1 million tons increased from 17 to 31.
—— A new long-term regulatory mechanism was built, and the illegal problem of “lean meat powder” was effectively curbed. Since 2011, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with relevant departments, has built a long-term mechanism featuring upper-lower linkage, departmental linkage and regional linkage, and comprehensively strengthened “lean meat powder” supervision. In the past 4 years, nearly 3 million various production and operation entities were inspected on site each year, tens of millions of various samples were organized for sampling inspection, and more than 300 cases were transferred to public security organs cumulatively. In 2014, the pass rate of “lean meat powder” sampling inspections for livestock products was 99.8%, the best level in history.
—— Special rectification of raw milk was vigorously carried out, and the quality and safety level of raw milk was greatly improved. At present, 11,000 milk stations and 7,000 transport vehicles nationwide have all been brought under supervision, with 100% licensed operation. All milk stations are run by three types of lawful entities, and the mechanized milking rate has reached 90%, 39 percentage points higher than in 2008. At the same time, a raw milk purchasing station management system was organized, developed and put into online operation, bringing all licensed raw milk purchasing stations and transport vehicles nationwide into system filing management, and milk stations and transport vehicles have achieved informatized management. From 2009 to 2014, a cumulative 125,000 batches of raw milk samples were sampled and inspected, the pass rate for melamine testing in raw milk remained 100% for 6 consecutive years, and prohibited additives such as leather hydrolyzed protein were not detected.
⟦NL> Grassland ecological subsidy and reward policies promote continuous improvement of the ecological environment
Grassland departments at all levels firmly established the concept of “ecological priority, with equal consideration for ecology, production and living” for grasslands, continuously strengthened grassland ecological protection and construction, and promoted the scientific development of grassland animal husbandry.
In particular, starting in 2011, the policy of grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward mechanisms was fully launched and implemented in 8 major grassland pastoral provinces including Inner Mongolia, and in 2012 the scope of policy implementation was expanded to 5 provinces including Heilongjiang, covering 13 grassland pastoral provinces and regions nationwide and benefiting 657 counties (regimental farms, farms). This policy is a major policy implemented in China's grassland pastoral areas since the founding of New China with a large scale of investment, a wide coverage area and many beneficiary herders. This policy has powerfully promoted the restoration of the grassland ecological environment, the transformation of the development model of grassland animal husbandry and the sustained and stable increase in herders' incomes.
—— The grassland ecological environment is recovering at a faster pace. Monitoring shows that the overloading rate of livestock on key natural grasslands nationwide dropped from 30% in 2010 to 15.2% in 2014. 3.84 billion mu of grassland nationwide have been given rest and recuperation through grazing bans and enclosure for restoration and grass-livestock balance management, and the ecological environment has continued to improve. In 2014, the comprehensive vegetation coverage of grasslands nationwide reached 53.6%, 2.6 percentage points higher than in 2010; fresh grass output was 1.02 billion tons, an increase of 4.7% over 2010.
—— The transformation of the development model of grassland animal husbandry is accelerating. Pastoral provinces and regions have carried out artificial grass planting according to local conditions, vigorously developed shed-fed and semi-shed-fed pen raising, promoted moderately scaled standardized and intensive farming, and actively advanced the transformation of the development model of grassland animal husbandry. Since the “12th Five-Year Plan”, pastoral provinces and regions have newly built 120 million mu of artificial forage grassland and 85 million sq m of livestock sheds and pens, with a livestock improvement rate of more than 50% and a scale proportion of more than 30% for slaughtering 50 cattle and 100 sheep, making outstanding contributions to ensuring the market supply of beef and mutton.
—— Herders' incomes are growing at a faster pace. The grassland subsidy and reward policy provides 13.93 billion yuan in direct subsidies to herder households each year, and combined with the high-level operation of beef and mutton prices in recent years, herders' productive income has continued to increase. According to industry statistics, the per capita net income of herders in 268 pastoral and semi-pastoral counties reached 6,287.7 yuan in 2014, an increase of 1,793.3 yuan over 2010, with a growth rate of 39.9%.