Forage expert helps China dairy producers

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Imagine a dairy farm with 140,000 cows and 90,000 acres of corn silage.
Dan Undersander has seen such a dairy in China, as he has traveled to help producers there find ways to maximize their forage use.
That particular dairy utilizes clusters of eight rotary parlors to milk the cows. «They are all Holsteins, with genetics imported from all over the world.»
To feed that many head, he said the farm had 27 choppers working their way through the corn silage and 200 trucks hauling it back to the farm.
In addition to their corn silage crop, that farm had 40,000 acres of alfalfa. It purchases grain to supplement the silage, he said.
The University of Wisconsin agronomist and forage expert has made eight trips to China in two years, traveling all over the huge country and visiting both ends of the Great Wall.
His travel was paid for by Chinese agricultural universities or by businesses there. «No taxpayer money or University of Wisconsin money was involved,» he noted.
Despite the huge farm he visited, Undersander finds that most of agriculture in China is «moving out of the 19th century into the 20th century.»
They are learning what would be considered basic to many U.S. farmers like how to make big square hay bales using preservatives and how to deal with wet corn silage. Their production per cow is an average of 12,000 pounds compared to about 20,000 pounds per cow per year in the United States, despite the imported genetics.
Undersander attributes much of that lower production to the way they feed their cows. That’s why companies there have paid to bring the forage expert to China.
He has worked with American machinery companies on how to teach Chinese farmers to use the equipment. There is a learning curve on mowing and conditioning alfalfa crops to get them just right for dairy cows.
«I’m trying to help them understand hay making.» There’s also a learning curve on the packing and storage of crops like haylage.
«They are looking for information and there isn’t a source within the country. They don’t have anything like our Extension service.»
One of the reasons Chinese farmers need Undersander’s help is that there is a rapid expansion in the growing and harvesting of alfalfa. Many growers there are leasing acreage and planting alfalfa to supply the large dairy herds.
Rents are cheap in many areas of Inner Mongolia but much of eastern China has land plagued with hard pan. «It needs deep ripping to get the roots to penetrate and in some areas they have saline soil.»
Chinese farmers have imported a lot of hay from the United States, he said and they are trying to grow some of their own feed — even though they will never be able to grow enough on their own to supply the huge and growing dairy segment.
«Only about 15 percent of China is arable ground compared to the United States with 70 percent. We have big advantages, including water.
«You’ve got to remember that the country has two huge deserts, including the Gobi Desert that take up a lot of land and can’t grow anything.»
That huge 140,000-cow dairy is one extreme of the dairy business in China. It is a former government-owned farm that had been privatized and expanded. There are many dairy farms in the range of 10,000-20,000 cows.
Undersander mentioned one dairy in central Inner Mongolia with 40,000 cows where the 55-year-old manager was retiring and his 35-year-old daughter was taking over management.
Some of these larger dairy facilities have been built in the last few years.
«Some of the operations are trying to get into the 21st century as quickly as possible. But in other areas agriculture is a ‘mixed bag’ with some very primitive farms and some small self-sustaining operations.
«I’ve spent my career trying to keep small farmers in business. That’s why we’ve done things like promote grazing and contract harvesting – to give farmers another income stream.
«We see getting bigger as an option.»

Manure, GMO issues

In some areas in China farmers and operators are doing a good job of handling the manure from these large operations, in other areas it wasn’t as impressive.
Most of the arable land in China is along the Pacific Coast from Siberia to Shanghai. Inner Mongolia is a province of China where there are significant dairy operations but Mongolia is its own country, he noted.
Undersander said some of the Chinese fields remain wet in springtime but they are suitable for alfalfa as long as varieties with good phytophthora root rot resistance are used.
One issue the country is still dealing with is genetically modified organisms or GMOs. Currently China is not approving any GMO imports — including corn, soybeans and alfalfa.
The restrictions on alfalfa are new, he noted and are hurting a market for hay that was very good for North American hay producers. «A number of dealers have had hay turned away.»
American companies are using one test, he explained, but China instituted a test for GMO material that is 1,000-times more sensitive. That has meant that corn pollen on alfalfa is causing it to test positive for GMO.
Undersander is hopeful that the U.S. government could approve a regular test that China would accept that could solve this problem and get the trade doors open again. «The pollen can come from a number of sources and China has no standard of acceptability. The level is zero.»
He said the problem may be solved if China changes its policy and approves some GMO crops. «If they do that the problem goes away.»
Chinese dairies would be pleased if they could once again get alfalfa hay from elsewhere. «They aren’t too enthusiastic about buying Chinese hay because there are no testing standards and it’s inconsistent.»
The country will need to develop standards as well as determining what forage tests to use. He noted that American labs are setting up operations there to help solve that part of the problem.

Dairy processors

While in China Undersander saw some dairy plants that were only a few years old. Most of the country’s processing plants have been built within the last 10 years and were built to process milk into fluid products and yogurt, although more are being built to produce cheese — for the growing pizza demand in China – and ice cream.
He saw a big cheese plant that handled several million pounds of milk per day and was largely automated, with only a few people working in the plant.
Though China has a huge population and labor is cheap, their big dairy farms and processing plants are largely automated, he said.
In Inner Mongolia, he visited a dairy plant that had a cooler that was seven or eight acres in size.
One thing that made an impression on him was that China has 200 cities with over a million people living in them. By contrast the United States has only six cities over a million people.
Undersander said that in some regions, rural people are abandoning their farms and rural homes and just moving to the cities to find more opportunity.
With 105,000 air miles under his belt this year alone, Undersander is planning more trips to China to help farmers there figure out the best practices for their operations. He looks forward to seeing the nation’s dairy industry continue to develop.
 
Source: Wis Farmer

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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