An Exploratory Assessment of the Economic Impact of Forage Options for Beef Production on Smallholder Farms in the Red Soils Region of China

The rapidly growing beef cattle herd of the Peoples Republic of China is largely carried as small numbers of animals on smallholder farms. These enterprises have traditionally focussed on cereal and vegetable crops. Limited plantings of specialised forages combined with a poor knowledge of ruminant nutrition by sm allholder farmers represent a serious challenge to establishing genuinely sustainable beef enterprises for this sector. Government policy to promote beef cattle production on smallholder farms is now focussing on the use of new forages and improved feeding practices. The paper draws on some economic insights from an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project that is exploring options for integrating the planting and feeding of improved forages within existing smallholder farming systems in the Red Soils Region of south-central China. An economic model and a synthetic case example of a smallholder farm enterprise are used to briefly explore the economic potential of such options. The impact of changing values for two critical profit drivers (selling price and liveweight gain) are considered along with some implications for cattle feeding systems on smallholder farms in the Red Soils Region.