Excerpted from an interesting 2007 paper by several authors from the University of Sydney, Charles Sturt University and James Cook University in Australia
China had only 71.68 million cattle (including buffalo) in 1980. This total reached 141.58 million in 2005. The number of slaughtered animals reached 52.88 million in 2005, up from 3.0 million in 1980. Carcass weights increased at a rate of 2.14% per year from 83.3 kg in 1980 to 134.64 kg in 2005, but this is still very low compared with the world average and that of developed countries, which were 153 kg and 252 kg, respectively. The figure above shows the Chinese cattle beef production situation from 1980-2005. It illustrates the dramatic increase in stock numbers, slaughtered numbers and yield of beef cattle.
In China, cattle used to be employed as draft animals. As a result of increased use of machinery in agriculture and increased demand for beef, farmers have begun to raise cattle for meat. China’s beef industry has developed impressively after the government monopoly was abolished and replaced by a more competitive market system in 1985. Combined with other policies such as the “Straw for Ruminants Program”, which was implemented in 1992, farmers have received higher incentives to raise cattle.
There are basically two systems based on pastoral areas and agricultural areas. Pastoral areas used to be the main areas for feeding cattle for meat (also for other multi-purposes, like milk and draft). Whereas in agricultural areas cattle were basically kept for draft and seldom for meat production. This situation has changed since 1980 for three main reasons. First, with the increasing livestock numbers, the competition for grass is becoming critical in pastoral areas. This has induced a shift in location towards agricultural areas. Second, in some remote pastoral areas the cattle industry is constrained by a lack of infrastructure (including transport and marketing). Moreover, in agricultural areas cattle can easily gain access to feed stuffs.
The majority of the cattle producers are household farmers who raise one or two cattle in their backyards. They will still be predominant in the near future with a move to specialized production over time. However, in recent years, there are more and more specialized households and feedlots involved in cattle production. In 2005, China had only 260 farms with a herd size of over 1,000 which accounted for only 6% of the total specialized farms. Moreover, there are 355,467 farms which had a herd size of 11-50 head of cattle and accounted for 86% of total scaled-production farms.
Breeds
Generally, Chinese yellow cattle breeds are not specialized breeds for meat or milk production, but are used as draft animals. To improve domestic breeds, China introduced foreign cattle breeds from 1910. Seven major breeds (Simmental, Shorthorn, Hereford, Charolais and Sindy Red cattle, and Murah and Nili-Ravi buffalo) have been imported from countries like Canada, England, Switzerland, France and Australia. Artificial insemination and embryo transfer technology were adopted to improve the performance of cattle mainly through increasing carcass weights.
You can get the entire paper by clicking HERE.