Welcome to Acta Prataculturae Sinica ! Today is Share:

Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2015, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (9): 189-196.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2015177

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A review of herbage storage in pastoral areas of China

JIA Yu-Shan*, DU Shuai, WANG Zhi-Jun, YOU Si-Han, Ge-Gen-Tu   

  1. Inner Mongolia Agricultural University Ecology and Environment Science, Hohhot 010019, China
  • Received:2015-04-02 Online:2015-09-20 Published:2015-09-20

Abstract: With the steadily increasing demand for animal products and the associated development of pastoral animal husbandry, the options for herbage storage in pastoral areas of China have been receiving greater attention. There are logistical problems of matching herbage supply to animal demand in Chinese pastoral farming, arising from both inter-annual and seasonal variation in herbage production. Winter snow, summer drought and extreme weather events or other natural disasters are among the factors responsible. The variability in feed supply seriously restricts the development of animal husbandry enterprises and herbage storage is one available solution. In the longer term, the establishment of suitable mechanisms for herbage storage is a fundamental necessity for ongoing development of China’s pastoral agriculture, and is also a fundamental requirement for success of the “shopping basket program”. This paper reviews the current situation with respect to herbage storage in animal production systems in China. Strategies to resolve animal husbandry issues caused by temporal imbalances between pastoral forage production and animal demand, are discussed.