December 26, 2006

China's dairy expansion creates more feed grain demand

China's dairy sector is expanding, creating more feed grain demand.

A dairy seminar was sponsored by the US Grains Council at the Sino-US Dairy Management Training Centre for dairy technicians from the Beijing area where Dr Walter Chen, a USGC dairy nutrition consultant, discussed the use of high quality forage, feed bunk management and transition cow rations in maximising milk production.

High feed costs and a lack of experience in high-production management have limited production and incentives to increase the use of high quality feed ingredients.

Commercial dairy production will have an enormous impact on China's feed grain supply and demand situation through direct consumption of feed grains and the use of whole-plant corn silage rather than corn stover as the base forage, noted Todd Meyer, USGC senior director in China.

Following the seminar, Dr Chen and USGC staff in China visited dairy farms in China's Liaoning, Shandong and Anhui provinces to build upon previous council programmes to improve feed management, corn silage use, farm design and general animal husbandry.

Since 2000, dairy herds have tripled to 240,000 head in the Liaoning province, one of China's top corn producing regions.

The USGC has been working to expand the livestock sector in China to boost domestic corn consumption, thereby reducing the amount of Chinese corn on the international export market.