China's feed demand has already reached 2.5 times its grain demand for human consumption

In recent years, China's per capita grain ration dropped from 207.1 kg in 1986 to 148 kg in 2010, a decrease of 28.5%, but at the same time, per capita consumption of meat, eggs, milk and other foods has been climbing steadily.

For more than 30 years, Ren Jizhou, a grassland science expert in China and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has been making various efforts for the development of "grassland agriculture." He is worried about the situation of "emphasizing cropland over grassland, favoring grain as the key link, and neglecting the development of the grass industry." He said it is now time to adjust the agricultural structure, and we can no longer hesitate. "If something goes seriously wrong with agriculture, no one can save us!"

Feed shortage: a hidden worry for the supply of meat, eggs and milk

"Since the beginning of the 1980s, China's food structure has undergone a historic turning point. At present and for a fairly long period to come, the grain ration demand of our people will be about 200 million tons, and the demand for livestock feed will be about 500 million tons." Ren Jizhou pointed out that our current understanding of food security is to protect cropland and to have enough cropland to grow grain. This approach of striving to increase grain output is too narrow. "Feed demand is 2.5 times grain ration demand. How can traditional cropland agriculture bear this heavy burden?"

In 2012, China imported 5.2 million tons of feed corn, 57.5 million tons of soybeans, and 442,000 tons of alfalfa and licorice. What worries Ren Jizhou even more is that because corn is priced higher than wheat and supply is not smooth, most feed companies in China have now switched to using wheat instead of corn in compound feed. What kind of waste will this cause? With the same land and water resources, if forage grass (including feed crops) is produced, the harvestable energy can be 3 to 5 times more than that of grain, and the protein can be 4 to 8 times more than that of grain. China's grain ration and feed will then be more than self-sufficient.

Ren Jizhou analyzed that from the perspective of development trends, China's current consumption of meat, eggs, milk and other foods is only equivalent to Japan's level in the 1960s and South Korea's level in the 1980s. As this consumption grows, China's feed gap will become larger and larger. This gap needs to be filled by forage grass, including feed crops, rather than by grain.

"This is a serious mismatch between the food production system and the food consumption system in the agro-ecosystem." Ren Jizhou pointed out that the problems caused by this systemic contradiction cannot be solved by piecemeal technical measures. Agricultural structural adjustment must be carried out.

Using "returning cropland to grassland" to ensure protein output

As early as the early 1980s, Ren Jizhou proposed the viewpoint of developing grassland agriculture, but this clearly conflicted with the long-standing mainstream idea in China of "taking grain as the key link." Because it was not recognized by decision-making departments, grassland agriculture was never promoted across China.

For many years, because agriculture lacked the thinking of overall development, in farming areas a series of problems appeared, including severe depletion of land resources, soil erosion, water source pollution, soil pollution, food pollution, and rural poverty; in grassland areas, from vegetation to soil, from livestock to wild animals, from herders' lives to the pastoral society, there appeared a systemic decline unprecedented in history.

Ren Jizhou said that valuing grain production is the same in ancient and modern times and in China and abroad. However, grain production must be incorporated into the framework of the normal operation of the agricultural system, rather than being isolated from the agricultural system, and even less should it be placed above the agricultural system. "Food security is different from food safety, and cropland agriculture is not a reliable guarantee of food security." He called for no longer relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase grain output, but instead transforming "cropland agriculture" into "grassland agriculture." While protecting the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cropland, we should also take the path of "returning cropland to grassland" and fully bring into play the role of grasslands other than cropland and grasslands among forests. Reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and reduce pollution.

He believes that in some areas, "returning cropland to grassland" has better ecological benefits and faster returns than "returning cropland to forest." Therefore, forage grass and herbivorous livestock must be introduced into the agricultural system, agricultural land both cultivated and non-cultivated must be planned as a whole, and natural grassland, cropland and forestry must all be fully mobilized to implement combinations of grass with grain, grass with forest, grass with vegetables, grass with fruit, grass with cotton, and so on. Through techniques such as grass-field rotation, the production potential of all types of agricultural land can be fully brought into play while maintaining ecological health.

He optimistically gave an example: if grassland agriculture is developed in China, its protein output will exceed the protein contained in imported soybean meal, and this item alone would be equivalent to saving 300 million mu of cropland; if the cropland left completely or partially abandoned because of the outflow of rural labor is also brought into use, it could increase the existing cropland area by at least about 10%.

How to balance grain and grass

Of China's 9.6 million sq km of land, grassland is about 4 million sq km, accounting for 41% of the national land area and more than 3 times the area of cropland. "In China's agricultural development, if we do not pay attention to developing the grass industry, it is obviously a waste of resources." Based on this, in July 2013, Ren Jizhou, together with 8 academicians, submitted to relevant departments a "Proposal on China's Structural Transformation from 'Cropland Agriculture' to 'Balancing Grain and Grass'," which received great attention from national leaders.

Afterward, relevant decision-making departments took active action to develop the grass industry, dividing China's grassland and cropland into several major regions and subregions, proposing specific measures for planting grass and raising livestock in each region, and vigorously promoting grassland animal husbandry.

"But the construction of modern grassland agriculture of the grain-grass balancing type is a systematic project that touches on agricultural structural reform. I hope that in each major region or subregion, county-level 'grassland agriculture demonstration experimental zones' can be established to carry out structural reform of traditional cropland agriculture, so as to implement the spirit of the Party Central Committee's 'structural adjustment.'" Ren Jizhou said.

Before the 2014 Spring Festival, General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected the grass industry in Inner Mongolia and fully affirmed the strategic position of China's grass industry in agricultural structural adjustment and ecological civilization construction.

However, regarding the situation in which some competent departments and some local governments "favor grain as the key link and neglect the development of the grass industry," Ren Jizhou still feels worried. "This is an idea formed over a long period of time, and it is hard to change immediately. The direct harmful consequence is that domestic grasslands have suffered the greatest damage, and its severity has never even appeared in history. The grassland area has shrunk, its quality has deteriorated, and the entire ecosystem has also been seriously affected."

As one of the founders of modern grassland science in China, Ren Jizhou, nearly 90 years old, is also the first academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in the field of grass industry research. During the conversation, he recalled that before he went to work in Lanzhou in 1950, Wang Dong, the founder of China's grassland science, personally wrote a couplet and presented it to him: "Establish the heart for heaven and earth, establish the destiny for the people; live with cattle and sheep, roam with deer and pigs." Over the past 30-plus years, he has watched the grasslands decline day by day but has been powerless to do anything, and he feels deeply pained.

"Save the nation from fire and water, bind the country to safety and danger." Ren Jizhou said he has always kept his mentor's encouragement deep in his heart and has not dared forget it for a moment. He hopes that through appeals made together with himself, more grassland science and technology personnel, agricultural science and technology figures, and more people of insight, the cause of modern grassland agriculture can be further advanced.