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Changing the traditional feeding system to achieve sustainable development of animal production in inner Mongolian pastoral area
by Professor Lu De-Xun, Inner Mongolian Academy of Agricultural and Animal Sciences

On the basis of briefly analyzing the process of pasture degradation in Inner Mongolia, this paper proposed that changing the traditional feeding system was a strategic measure to control the tendency of pasture degradation and finally to achieve sustainable development of animal production in Inner Mongolian pastoral region. The author also indicated that improvement of the grassland ecological environment was a tremendous systems engineering which involved re-vegetation, establishment of artificial grazing land and semi-artificial grazing land, changing grazing system as well as control of stocking density etc. The most important part is how to deal with the interaction of grassland utilization and environment protection.

This paper reviewed the great achievement obtained in changing the traditional feeding system in Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China and introduced some progresses of techniques innovation in this field, including systems-integration of feeding techniques for cashmere goats and mutton sheep, evaluation of forage quality and optimized supplementary feeding.