Improving land productivity and sustainability by developing lucerne and livestock production in Huanxian county,Gansu province,China
Huanxian county is one of the counties in China severely affected by poverty.About 93％ of the 0.33 million population lives in the rural areas.The county lies in the western part of the Loess Plateau which has a reputation for having the worst soil and water erosion on the earth.It covers the area of 106°21‐107°45E ～ 36°01‐37°09N.The altitude is 1130‐2089 m above sea level and the mean annual rainfall is 359.3 mm, of which about 60％ falls during the period of July to September, with drought in spring being a frequent occurrence ( Hou et al., 2002 ).The main crops grown in the region are : wheat ( T riticum aestivum), potato ( Solanum tuberosum ) and buckwheat ( Fagopyrum M ill ).The main livestock include sheep, goats and donkeys.The major farming system is cereal monoculture with livestock grazing rangeland and being fed cereal straw and little forage during the winter and spring periods.There is no close link between cropping and rangeland livestock production, although rangeland covers 67.7％ of the total land area in the county.The annual degradation of rangeland occurs at about the rate of 53km2.With the technical support from ACIAR projects and other projects the county has set up an objective of establishing and developing integrated crop‐pasture‐livestock production systems to achieve the sustainable development of agriculture.One of the ambitious targets is increasing the area under lucerne ( Medicago sativ a) by 2 million mu (130,000 ha), which will feed about 2 million sheep by 2010.
soil erosion Lucerne livestock Loess Plateau China
Fuzhong Zhang Guifeng Hou Tingyu Duan Shenghua Chang
Grassland Station of H uanxian county 745700,Gansu province,China College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology,Lanzhou University,Lanzhou 730020,China.
国际会议
呼和浩特
英文
2008-06-29（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）