444 Modern Agricultural Reforms
Major measures in construction of an eco-county
- Regulation of agricultural structure
An important step for regulation of agricultural structure is to diversify agricul-
tural production. Traditionally, Yucheng was a pure cereal crop area with a few
animal husbandry practices. The straw of food crops was used as fuel or burned
without utilization. Combining cereal farming with animal husbandry is a key
measure for the regulation of the production structure. Cattle are the main domes-
tic animals in the agricultural system. The approach for development of animal
husbandry can be briefly summarized as ‘Breeding by a single household, fattening
by co-operative farms, and providing a service to society’. Currently, more than 90
households have cattle as a part of their agricultural management system. There are
45 accelerated fattening farms for cattle belonging to individual families. In every
township a cattle breeding association has been established. A beef breeding cattle
farm has been set up in the county. A beef processing factory with capacity of
50,000 butchered cattle was built in 1995. The number of big domestic animals
has reached 350,000, or an average of 3.5 per farmer’s family.
Along with the development of animal husbandry, silage techniques for wheat
straw and green corn stems have been popularized as feed, which is good to eat,
more digestible and more nutritious for cattle. The coarse protein content of fresh
corn stems, which are rich in vitamins and minerals, is 1.6 per cent, 1.5 times
more than that of wheat straw. According to random surveys, 18.7 per cent of farm
Figure 18.6 Distribution of 51 ecoagriculture counties in China