A Detailed Explanation of the 7 Major Challenges Facing the Development of Animal Husbandry

At the recently held Third Session of the Sixth Council of the China Animal Agriculture Association, Wang Zongli, Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Husbandry of the Ministry of Agriculture, delivered a report on the review and outlook of China's animal husbandry development in 2014. Wang Zongli pointed out that China's animal husbandry is currently at a critical stage of transformation and upgrading, and that in the future China's animal husbandry development will face 7 major challenges.

First, the supply and demand of livestock products has entered a stage of tight balance. Wang Zongli analyzed that at present, multiple factors such as the growth of China's total population, the rising proportion of urban population, the increase in income levels and the expansion of industrial uses have all contributed to a rigid growth trend in demand for agricultural products. Yet resource constraints such as feed for livestock and poultry, land and water resources are becoming increasingly urgent. The demand of animal husbandry development for the growth rate of feed grain exceeds the average growth rate of national grain output. It is an obvious fact that protein feed raw materials are clearly insufficient; in 2013 alone, China imported as much as 63.41 million tons of soybeans, with an import dependence of nearly 80%. In addition, the difficulty of increasing animal husbandry production has further intensified, and the pressure to ensure an effective market supply of livestock products will only grow.

Second, the production of livestock products has entered a stage of high costs. Driven by factors such as rising labor costs and higher raw material prices, expenses for feed raw materials, labor, water and electricity are on an upward trend.

Third, the situation for animal disease prevention and control remains severe. Wang Zongli pointed out that in terms of animal disease prevention and control, China still has problems such as frequent outbreaks of disease, with major epidemics occurring from time to time; inadequate disease prevention institutions; and weak prevention capacity. These affect both consumption and the confidence of farmers.

Fourth, hidden quality and safety hazards in livestock products persist over the long term. In Wang Zongli's view, the quality and safety of livestock products concerns people's lives and health; safety is no small matter, and responsibility is as great as heaven. This is partly due to some media exaggerating and maliciously hyping issues, but it also reflects some problems within the industry. For example, the quality of practitioners is uneven; many of those engaged in livestock and poultry farming are mainly laborers with lower levels of education, with poor ability to identify fake and inferior feed and veterinary drugs, and weak capacity to implement regulations. The awareness of law-abiding behavior and integrity among practitioners is weak; a small number of people, driven by profit, still knowingly violate the law by producing, selling and using substances explicitly prohibited by the state. The level of scale and standardization still needs further improvement. Taking pig farming as an example, China has about 54 million pig farmers, and 61% of pigs are supplied by small and medium-sized farms with an annual slaughter of fewer than 500 head. (The corresponding figures for the United States are 70,000 and 3.5%.)

Fifth, the construction of the modern livestock and poultry seed industry system lags behind. Most of the improved breeds of major livestock and poultry such as pigs, dairy cows and poultry in China depend on imports from abroad, and the capacity for independent breeding urgently needs to be improved. For example, in developed countries, one sow can provide about 1,800 kg of pork per year, while in China it is only 1,016 kg. Wang Zongli proposed that in the future, with the market as the orientation and enterprises as the main body, a livestock and poultry breeding mechanism combining industry, academia and research should be formed as soon as possible.

Sixth, environmental pollution problems are becoming increasingly prominent. There are mainly three problems in the treatment of environmental pollution from livestock and poultry farming in China: first, the total farming volume does not match the environmental capacity; second, the integration of farming and agriculture is not close; third, the technical models for comprehensive treatment and utilization of waste lag behind. A set of earlier statistics showed that in 2007, COD emissions from livestock and poultry manure reached 12.683 million tons, accounting for 41.9% of the national total COD emissions. During the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, the state incorporated agricultural sources into the total emission reduction assessment and management system, and included chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen emissions in the binding assessment indicators for total emission reduction. The formal implementation of the Regulations on the Prevention and Control of Pollution from Large-Scale Livestock and Poultry Farming also set higher requirements for pollution prevention and control in animal husbandry. It can be seen that the treatment of environmental pollution from livestock and poultry farming brooks no delay.

Seventh, the capacity for scientific and technological support remains insufficient. According to statistics, the current contribution rate of scientific and technological progress in China's animal husbandry is 55%, 20 percentage points lower than that of developed countries. In the report, Wang Zongli used "three more, three less and one disconnect" to summarize the current scientific and technological form of China's animal husbandry. The so-called three more means more technologies for increasing output, more introduced foreign technologies (breeds), and more general scientific and technological achievements; the three less means fewer technologies for improving quality, ecology and environmental protection, fewer technologies with independent intellectual property rights, and fewer major breakthroughs; and the one disconnect means that there is a disconnect between animal husbandry scientific and technological research and its extension.