Grassland agriculture is a new frontier for building ecological civilization

China is in the midst of a grand transition from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, and ecological and environmental problems have become one of the prominent issues constraining economic development and affecting social harmony and stability. The 2015 No. 1 Central Document proposed promoting the coordinated development of a three-way planting structure of grain, cash crops and forage grass, a decision that pointed out the path for the sustainable development of China's agriculture in the future. The grassland agriculture system is a modern agricultural system that satisfies the food structure of modern people, balances both ecology and production, and can develop sustainably. Developing grassland agriculture is a new frontier for building ecological civilization in China and is of great significance for safeguarding China's ecological security and promoting the sustainable development of agriculture.

First, China's grass industry has entered a new period of historic opportunity. Grassland has multiple functions, including regulating climate, conserving water sources, preserving soil and water, preventing wind erosion and fixing sand, improving the ecological environment, enhancing the quality of human settlements, and promoting harmonious urban-rural development. Research shows that when vegetation coverage increases to more than 50%, surface wind erosion and water erosion are markedly reduced. Vigorously developing planted grass in farming areas and the northern farming-pastoral ecotone, especially planting perennial forage grasses such as alfalfa and wild rye, can not only produce large amounts of high-quality forage but also, by increasing ground cover in winter and spring, significantly reduce wind speed, lessen wind erosion and improve the ecological environment.

Second, developing grassland agriculture is conducive to protecting grassland ecology. As China's population grows and dietary structure improves, demand for livestock products, especially beef and mutton, continues to increase, and given China's current natural resource conditions, relying entirely on natural grasslands and rural straw resources can hardly meet this demand. According to estimates, planting 1 mu of high-quality, high-yield planted forage land is equivalent to the grass yield of 10-30 mu of natural grassland. If 10% of China's suitable high-quality land were used to establish intensive planted grassland, more than 300 million tons of forage could be produced each year, equivalent to 1/4 of the biological yield of China's 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, that is, equivalent to adding 450 million mu of “cultivated land.” By building planted grassland, not only can the problem of insufficient forage be solved, but the grazing pressure on natural grasslands will also be greatly eased.

Third, for a long time, China's agriculture has followed a binary planting structure of grain and cash crops, and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has caused farmland soil degradation and compaction. Developing grassland agriculture, promoting the introduction of grass into fields and grass-crop rotation, and bringing forage grasses, especially leguminous forage grasses, into the crop rotation system can effectively improve the soil, increase soil fertility and reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer. Feeding forage to livestock can also truly achieve land-nourishing-land, accelerating the recuperation of cultivated land and the ecological restoration of soil. For alfalfa fields planted for 1 year, 2 years and 3 years, the net increase in soil nitrogen is 83 kg, 115 kg and 124 kg per hectare respectively, and alfalfa planted for 5 years can yield high outputs of subsequent crops for 3-5 years.

Grassland agriculture encompasses outputs from multiple production levels and is an optimized ecological circular agricultural production method. Through combining planting and raising, extending the industrial chain, and developing a circular economy, the grass industry and agriculture are coupled across systems to form a multi-level modern comprehensive agricultural system. Therefore, grassland agriculture, as an advanced production method that conforms to ecological laws, will surely make important contributions to China's ecological civilization construction.

(The author is a professor at China Agricultural University and secretary-general of the Chinese Grassland Society)