Like Australia, parts of China are experiencing a drier season, leaving grazing land desperate for rain, rest and recovery.

 

With an aim of regenerating China’s vast native grasslands, Professor Kemp believes the strategies his group is developing could help rehabilitate grasslands worldwide. This includes Australia, where widening deserts produce more dust storms each year.

 

Grassland covers 25 per cent of the world’s area, in many cases separating forests from deserts. China’s western grasslands, grazed by farmers for millennia, have not received the rest from grazing animals necessary during times of drought due to increasing agricultural demands placed on it by farmers. Similarly, Australian pastures are being overstocked during dry periods and this is detrimental to the land’s fertility.

 

“For farmers in most drought affected regions in Australia, they cannot go back and change their management systems, but when the drought breaks some new strategies will be needed”, Professor Kemps says.

 

“In the present climate farmers were assuming there would have been drought breaking rain by now and some bought more stock. Conditions have worsened and both stock and the grasslands are suffering.”

 

China has the same area of grassland as Australia – about 400 million hectares – but Chinese grasslands have been grazed by domestic livestock for over 5 000 years. Adding to the pressure is an ever increasing population that needs food and fibre.

 

With stock numbers doubling over the past 20 years, farmers and governments have responded to the increasing food and fibre needs of a growing population and the farmers’ desire to increase income. This dramatic change in grazing pressure is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the declining environmental indicators and rising number of dust-storms.”

 

David Kemp was invited to collaborate with a group of international Australian and Chinese researchers working in China’s poorest province, investigating its environment and local farmers. The work is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

 

ACIAR Research Program Manager for Livestock Production Systems, Dr Bill Winter believes Professor Kemp’s research is extremely relevant to Australia’s grassland management.

 

“Initially the approach we took in China was built upon Professor Kemp’s Australian grasslands work,” Dr Winter says. “His approach was transferable, in that pasture management needed to be addressed from a holistic, farming systems context. In China that meant expanding the work to include issues beyond the farm gate, particularly issues around land management at the National, Provincial and District levels, plus the markets within which the farmers operate.”

 

The research is vital to the future productivity of the country but has also been propelled by the fact that Beijing is preparing to host the 2008 Olympics.

 

“Beijing had eleven dust storms in April 2006,” Professor Kemp explains, “and this dumped 400,000 tonnes of dust in and around the city, so you can understand their concern for the upcoming Olympics,” he says.

 

Despite the current image of China as a fast growing prosperous country, 800 million people still live below the international poverty line, earning less than US$2 a day. Professor Kemp and his associates say rehabilitating grasslands and improving incomes will involve fundamental changes to local farming practises.

 

Professor Kemp says the emphasis has to shift from quantity to quality. “The incentive must be to grow bigger and better animals and reduce stocking rates to a third or less.

 

“Our recommendations include reducing stock numbers in preparation for dry seasons,” Professor Kemp says, “but this will only work if the government works with farmers to change policies.”

 

Other objectives include developing recommendations to smallholders for better farm livestock systems, giving policy advice to national and local government for overcoming problems with grasslands in Western China, and making future grassland research a priority in China.

 

With the Green Olympics fast approaching, Professor David Kemp and his team of researchers will be under constant pressure to alleviate issues surrounding Western China’s grasslands.

 

The project now also includes the effects of grassland management on greenhouse gas emissions, which has expanded the considerations of the project.

“This holistic approach needs models that link livestock production and government policy with marketing, drawing on research from many disciplines and countries. We hope to develop options that can be used by farmers, educators and policy makers in China and Australia,” says Dr Winter.

 

As an Australian in China, Professor Kemp looks to the future with the knowledge that this project will benefit both countries in the long term.

 

“It’s Australia’s moral obligation when working in a developing country, to assist with the productivity of the country,” Professor Kemp states. “I hope this research makes a difference to Western China’s grasslands and to Australia’s possible future battle with its dry climate.”