November 22, 2023
Modernising and ambitious: The rise of China's dairy farming
In 2022, China's yield per dairy cow reached 9.2 tonnes, twice that of 2008.
The yield per dairy cow on large-scale Chinese farms even exceeded the average level of the European Union. How was this achieved?
Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, China opened up its dairy market to products from outside the country.
Last year, it imported 3.27 million tonnes of dairy products. When converted to liquid milk, dairy imports accounted for nearly a third of Chinese dairy consumption. In 2008, dairy import volume was only 387,000 tonnes, meaning imports surged almost 10 times over 15 years.
The opening up of the dairy industry forced the progress of Chinese dairy farming. Data shows that in 2022, the proportion of large-scale farms with more than 100 cows in China reached 73%, 53.5 percentage points higher than that in 2008. The expansion was accompanied by the growth of three major indicators of milk production.
The first indication is the internationalisation of Chinese dairy cattle breeds. China's dairy cattle mainly include Holstein, Simmental, milk buffalo, Brown Swiss and the domestic Sanhe cattle (among which more than 75% are Holsteins). The country imports more than 200,000 dairy cows from New Zealand, Australia, Uruguay and Chile every year, and these are used to establish new farms or replenish existing ones. Therefore, the quality of Chinese dairy cows is on par with international standards.
Another important factor is favourable environmental conditions. Holstein cows, which grow and produce well in high-latitude environments, perform positively in the northern region of China. The country has more than six million Holstein cows in 2022.
The third factor concerns nutrition and farm management. To achieve high yield and sustain milk production, a standard for controlling operations to ensure nutrition is mandatory. For instance, Chinese dairy farms use near-infrared equipment to test the quality of roughage raw materials commonly used by dairy cows for seven major nutrient components. This is supplemented with software to help prepare nutritional meals for cows. Such an approach decreases the waste of raw ingredients and ensures the nutrition of cows, hence improving milk production and farm performance.
With the prices of feed ingredients staying high and those of milk being low in China, Chinese dairy producers have to continue to improve farm management and nutrition levels to stay afloat in a competitive market.
- Shi Tao, eFeedLink