Don't want cattle and sheep to "steal food", but worry about them "starving"? Pasture can solve the problem!

Forage germplasm resources are important national strategic resources and an important material basis for agricultural scientific and technological innovation and the sustainable development of grassland and animal husbandry. They are of great significance for ensuring food security, building ecological civilization, and supporting agricultural supply-side structural reform and sustainable development.

The Central Document No. 1 of 2023 clearly emphasizes the need to establish a big food concept and accelerate the construction of a diversified food supply system that coordinates grain, economy and feed, combines agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and develops plants, animals and microorganisms. The big food concept is to ensure the safety of the quantity of food supplied on the one hand, and the quality and safety of food supplied on the other hand, that is, to eat enough, eat well and eat healthily. With the comprehensive victory of my country in the fight against poverty in 2021, the problem of whether urban and rural residents are full has been fundamentally solved. However, the lack and imbalance of micronutrients is still a prominent problem that hinders the improvement of the quality of life of urban and rural residents. To scientifically understand the big food concept, we should pay attention to the important role of forage in saving grain and increasing efficiency.

Bundles of grass can be seen everywhere on the grassland

The development of grass industry can help save grain and increase efficiency to a certain extent. my country has a vast territory and a large population, but natural resources such as land are very limited. It is very important to coordinate the relationship between growing grain and growing grass. Planting grass on the same arable land to feed cattle, sheep and other herbivorous livestock can produce more cattle and sheep products and improve production efficiency. However, if corn or grain is used to feed livestock, the production efficiency is far less than that of high-quality forage. Therefore, in the future, agricultural production should be transformed from traditional arable land agriculture to a direction of taking both grain and grass into consideration. Planting forage grass is also planting grain. Relevant scientific research also shows that with the same water and soil resources, if high-quality forage grass is produced, the energy equivalent to that of grain can be harvested, and the protein is 2 to 4 times that of grain. Therefore, it is necessary to truly establish the concept of "planting grass is equal to planting grain" and introduce practical and effective grass-livestock conversion technology, model and industrialization system. By vigorously developing nutrient body forage production, it can not only support the development of animal husbandry, but also greatly reduce the amount of crop straw resources, achieve low-carbon green circulation, and support the country to achieve the "dual carbon" goal.

Herders drive tractors to harvest grass

It is difficult to grow grass, and it is even more difficult to grow good grass. Even if there is land to grow grass, the goal cannot be achieved without good grass seeds. Since my country's forage breeding work started late and developed slowly, there are few forage varieties and their traits are not outstanding. At the same time, we still lack some grass seeds with strong ecological competitiveness, especially native grass seeds. Therefore, in the work of forage breeding, a special project of "forage molecular design breeding" should be established as soon as possible. Through technological innovation, we should fully develop and utilize forage resources, develop a new system for efficient forage breeding based on the concept of molecular design, and integrate various plant breeding acceleration technologies such as plant factory intelligent precision breeding acceleration technology and high-throughput phenotypic acquisition technology, so as to accelerate the cultivation of new high-yield and high-quality forage varieties.

In the future, it will be of great practical significance to establish a strategic perspective on food security, fully realize the role of forage in saving grain, increasing efficiency and alleviating food security, optimize the land use allocation of food security elements, and build a new development pattern that gives equal importance to grain and forage, in order to ensure national food security and achieve win-win development of grain and forage integration.

Review expert: Yang Rurong, associate researcher at the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences

China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Xinhuanet

Co-production