China’s Agriculture enters a 20-Year Golden Transforming Developing Period

[BEIJING] – Safety and efficiency. These must be the two key words for Chinese agricultural development in the next 20 years. The industry needs to support government policies with strict control systems, adopt antibiotic-free animal production and natural nutrition technologies to increase efficiency while reducing environmental impact. These are the sustainable solutions of our time. Moving away from today’s insufficient grain supply will soon be reality. Local and international experts summarized the discussions on the closing session of the Alltech China 20 Year Celebratory Summit.

“China’s agriculture enters a 20-year golden transforming/developing period, however there are many areas where significant changes must be made,” said Prof. WenGe Fu from the China Agricultural University MBA Education Center to the audience. Fu shared the six key ‘Economy Principles of Stable Progress’ from the 2014 Central Economic Conference. These included 1) Ensuring grain safety; 2) Optimizing industrial structure; 3) Minimizing debt risk; 4). Enhancing interregional cooperation development; 5) Improving people’s living standards and 6) Continuous openness to the outside world. Fu also highlighted the importance of the new policies which the Chinese Government implemented to support a safe and sustainable development of the industry – the ‘Agrarian Reform’, the Reform of People Registration System and the Reform of Interest Rates.

“The time of easy is over and only those who quickly adopt the latest technologies to increase efficiently will survive and will have a bright future,” Dr. Mark Lyons, vice president corporate affairs at Alltech summarized his vision. Lyons believes that it will be critical for China to switch low cost to low waste production systems.

Lyons agrees that the next twenty years will be very exciting for the Chinese food and feed industry. China being by far the world’s the largest swine producer with 50 million sows. Thanks to the increased production efficiency, there will be 10 million less sows needed in 2034. This comes with the achievement of an average of 35-40 piglet per sow per year and a feed conversion ratio (FCR) of under 1.5. With this, market demands will be satisfied.

In 2034, antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) will not be part of the animal diet. Besides efficacy issues they have a significant risk to human health will not be part of the animal diet. Following what has been instigated in 37 countries, the China Food and Drug Administration (FDA), equivalent to US’s FDA, will work on the ban of AGPs.

“What are the entrepreneurs, thought leaders, innovators, cutting edge players doing today?” challenged Dr. Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech. Successful Chinese companies are those that will formulate diets for performance, not for cost per ton, and will always look at what the consumer demands.

“China’s goal is to become a modern, global agriculture by 2034. Alltech has been supporting the Middle Kingdom with natural, sustainable, cutting-edge technologies in the last twenty years and we are committed to continue working close with the industry to make this happen even earlier than that,” said Lyons, concluding the 3-day Alltech China 20 Year Celebratory Summit.

The closing day of the Summit provided a platform to launch two key Research Alliances. Alltech signed an agreement with the Ocean University of China (OUC) for running joint research programs. This provides mutual benefit to gain competitiveness in the Chinese aquaculture nutrition and feed sciences areas. The second Research Alliance program was signed with the Ministry of Agriculture Feed Industry Centre (MAFIC). This will involve formalized scientific research programs in the field of animal nutrition.