Meadow preservation policy and livestock farming in inner Mongolia, China: A study on grazing banned in villages of the Erdos district
2007
Kusano, E.(Tokyo Univ. of Agriculture and Technology, Fuchu (Japan)) | Chaoketu
Inner Mongolia, with its vast grasslands, is one of the major production areas for sheep and goats in China. Soil ruin, however, has been a problem. Therefore, since the year 2000, policy actions such as grazing bans have been implemented to reduce overgrazing in this region. At the same time, the decrease in pasturing has had a negative economic effect on livestock farmers. The purpose of this study is to analyze strategies to unite meadow maintenance with farmers' economic needs by examining the effects of grazing bans on grasslands and on farmers' economics. It has been confirmed that the strongly promoted grazing bans are not strictly observed in poor farm villages, and that the bans restrict their income growth. The relation between meadow protection and farmers' income is an obvious trade-off in the short-term. Moreover, a management conversion to sedentary livestock farming or high-value-added dairy farming might be difficult. It is important that changes in the classic production system be a gradual progressive improvement of the system in each region, rather than a sudden and complete change such as the uniform introduction of sedentary livestock and the prohibition of grazing by the government. Therefore, it may be necessary to reexamine the uniform grazing prohibition and to ease meadow use for certain periods of time. In addition, it has been made clear that it is possible for farmers to increase their income by leasing their meadows, if their breeding numbers are low with low domestic animal profitability, to farmers with high domestic animal profitability under pasturing limitations. This would also be effective for easing the inequality in income that arises when farmers overgraze their livestock.
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