China's grass industry annual output value exceeds 300 billion yuan, with 280 million mu of planted grass

Xinhua News Agency, Hohhot, July 28 (Reporters Jia Lijun and Wurihan) According to Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Kangzhen, in 2013 the total fresh grass output of China's natural grasslands nationwide reached 1.06 billion tons, both hitting the best level in nearly five years. The national grass industry's annual output value has exceeded 300 billion yuan.

Yu Kangzhen said recently at the “Third China Grass Industry Conference” held in Inner Mongolia that in recent years China's grassland protection and construction efforts have been continuously intensified, support policies and measures have been gradually improved, the grass industry's production and processing capacity has been continuously enhanced, and the pace of science and technology promotion has accelerated. According to monitoring, in 2013 the comprehensive vegetation coverage of China's grasslands reached 54.2%.

According to the recently released “Report on the Development of China's Grass Industry”, China has formed a national support system for the development of the grass industry, encouraging and supporting the development of the grass industry in terms of policy, funding, technology and other aspects. Starting in 2011, the state has allocated 13.4 billion yuan each year to comprehensively establish a grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward mechanism in 8 major grassland pastoral areas: Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia and Yunnan. Since 2000, the state has invested a cumulative 4.4 billion yuan in establishing 367,000 hectares of artificial grassland in the Beijing-Tianjin sandstorm source control project, and invested 13.57 billion yuan to implement the grazing withdrawal and grassland restoration project.

At present, the national area of planted grass reaches 280 million mu, with a theoretical annual grass output of 45 million tons; three types of forage planting and processing industries have been formed: self-production and self-use type, ecological function type, and commercial production type; there are already more than 300 grass product processing enterprises registered and counted nationwide. Experts say that in the future, on the basis of making full use of the grasslands that account for 41% of the national land area, China should vigorously develop grassland agriculture, and it is expected that by 2020, with the supplement of the grass industry, China is expected to enter a new era of stable grain self-sufficiency with surplus grain and feed for export.