Development and prospects of ‘grain-forage supply’ in modern animal husbandry

With the increase in China’s population and improvements in its residents’ living standards, the consumption of meat, eggs, and milk products continues to grow. This paper reviews the effects of changes in the dietary structure of people on the development of agricultural systems. The demand for livestock products has been directly transferred into demand for development of ‘grain-forage supply’ in modern animal husbandry. Consequently, grassland farming should be implemented because combining this with current systems is guaranteed to promote sustainable development of the agricultural economy. However, there are many problems associated with the process of transferring ‘cultivated agriculture’ into ‘grain-forage supply’. We suggest that increasing the proportion of high-quality forage is a basic approach to obtain a solution to these problems, and a grazing livestock system is the basis of development of a grassland animal industry. Moreover, building a system of animal husbandry information is important to the direction and guarantee of China’s sustainable agricultural development in the future. It is an important part of agricultural production that grass or forage crops are coupled with other crop production systems. Furthermore, a comprehensive soil-plant-animal product industrial chain should be established to meet the demand of people for livestock products and to promote ‘grain-forage supply’ development.