Development Of Sustainable Animal Husbandry In Inner Mongolia

Pastoral areas of Inner Mongolia is one of China's five major pastoral areas, while grassland animal husbandry is the main source of herdsmen's income in Inner Mongolia. However, in recent years, a number of factors which are driven by short-term interest led to severe degradation of grassland ecosystems, and in turn the degradation of grassland led the poor negative impact on the human production and life. How to effectively use grassland resources, restore ecology, increase herdsmen income and enhance their cultural quality and market awareness is the key to sustainable development of grassland animal husbandry.Therefore, this article is based on sustainable theory to analyze these crucial issues of sustainable development of animal husbandry in Inner Mongolia.After definiting some basic concepts and analyzing about basic theory of sustainable development and sustainable development of animal husbandry, this paper carries out research work.Firstly, this paper analyzes the current situation of basis of production resources of animal husbandry. Grassland resources, one of the basis of production resources, are ruined by natural factors and human factors, and the degradation of grassland leads frequently to natural disasters, such as a decline in grassland primary productivity, serious soil erosion, grassland rodent pests, so the basis for sustainable animal husbandry production becomes more vulnerable. According to the laws and measures about grassland protection and the result of the recent implementation, long-term mechanism to protect grassland should be established. The growth in population provides rich labor resources in Inner Mongolia, but the conflict between low labor quality and the limitation of resources and population growth has become an obstacle factor to sustainable animal husbandry.Secondly, an empirical analysis of Inner Mongolia's sustainable development of animal husbandry has been conducted in this paper. Evaluation index system and evaluation model of animal husbandry's sustainable development which based on the theory of sustainable development's assessment has been built to assess the sustainable development of animal husbandry in Inner Mongolia. The evaluation index system has three layers: the first layer is the target level; the second layer which is constitute of animal husbandry sub-system, economic sub-system, social sub-system and pastoral environment sub-system is the standard level; the third layer is the index level, which is constitute of 24 indicators of 4 groups. The result of the evaluation shows that although the level of animal husbandry's sustainable husbandry in Inner Mongolia was generally increasing during 1998-2007, the level of each sub-system's was inconsistent, especially the ecological subsystem. The coordination's situation of sustainable development of animal husbandry has been improved, but it hasn't become to good condition.Thirdly, the other depth empirical analysis about sustainable development of animal husbandry which is based on herdsman level has been conducted. Using the basis data obtained from field research, a mathematical programming model has been built to analyze the relationship between herdsman income, the scale of animal husbandry of herdsman and use or conservation of grassland resources. According to the result of the model calculation, some appropriate conclusions can be summaried as follows : 1) Surveyed herdsman, especially small scale and polyculture herdsman, exists overgrazing phenomenon; 2) The average income of dairy farmers is the highest.Under the direction of market interest, the herdsman implements the movement to optimize the internal structure of animal husbandry, but the change of the movement difficult because of many obstacles; 3) It is helpful to improve the income of herder households by further strengthening the measures of grassland protection.Finally, this paper achieves the relevant conclusions by prevision analysis and put forward to some suggestions on promoting sustainable development of animal husbandry in Inner Mongolia. These suggestions include:1) strengthening protection, management and utilization of the grassland, maintaining stability of the grassland ecosystem;2) developing ecological animal husbandry; 3) Establishing the cooperative economy organizations of herdsman; 4) Setting up and improving the production facilities and service system of animal husbandry.