Behind the "Silage Wheat" Incident: Excessive Ration, Insufficient Feed Crops

　　Recently, the "silage wheat" incident has attracted the attention of the Internet.

According to an interview with a reporter from China Business News, there are certain misunderstandings and exaggerations in online information. Behind the incident is the contradiction between the overproduction of domestic rations and the shortage of feed crops.

The optimal solution gradually

　　In North China, silage is a scientific way to feed ruminants such as cattle and sheep.

Because the whole plant is harvested and is not limited by the maturity of the grain, the wheat used for silage can choose varieties with more flexible growth periods, and at the same time increase the water and fertilizer, increase the planting density, and try to increase the plant height. This is for the utilization of light and heat resources in the field. More fully than harvesting grain wheat.

In addition, harvesting the whole green plant, compared with harvesting the grain and then collecting the straw, also significantly improves the recovery rate of crop nutrients.

Because the sugar and nutrients in the stalk will be lost during the process of grain maturity, and the loss and waste in the process of harvesting the grain and harvesting the straw are also much higher than that of the whole wheat silage.

　　Some people may think that the breeding industry should directly plant high-yield green fodder crops instead of harvesting rations as silage.

Here I will talk about the crop cooking system in North China. The local harvests winter wheat and summer corn in June every year, and harvests summer corn and winter wheat in October.

Because winter wheat can overwinter, and then combined with a summer crop, it can achieve two crops a year, while the yield of other overwintering wheat is not as good as winter wheat; if annual green fodder is sown in spring, it will directly lose the harvest of one crop; It is low yield and low income.

　　It can be said that whether winter wheat is harvested from the grain or used as silage, it is the optimal solution that has been gradually explored in North China with the expansion of cattle and sheep herds in recent years, which not only makes full use of heat conditions, but also meets the needs of the breeding industry.

　　From the perspective of farms (households), due to limited funds and the need for turnover, it is unlikely to prepare the whole year's silage corn in October each year.

Unlike Northeast China and Inner Mongolia, North China has no grazing conditions in summer and is far away from pasture producing areas, and silage corn will not be available until September.

Therefore, cattle and sheep need to be fed green fodder throughout the summer.

Major

changes

　　Silage wheat in North China has long been a routine and reasonable market operation, and it is not an abnormal phenomenon that only appeared this year.

The society is highly concerned about feeding silage winter wheat young crops to cattle and sheep, but in fact it is worried about the problem of changing rations to feed.

In fact, with the improvement of people's living standards, the consumption structure of agricultural products in my country has already undergone major changes. It is a significant trend that traditional ration crops, especially wheat, have turned to feed.

　　Besides, the young wheat crops actually consumed by cattle and sheep are only a very small part of the traditional ration crops for feeding.

Because the consumption of beef and mutton is much lower than that of pork, poultry, eggs, milk and aquatic products, and cattle and sheep are mainly green fodder, supplemented by natural grazing and artificially planted forage.

What really competes with people for food is the large number of pigs and poultry that only eat feed, and the feed they feed is processed from finished wheat seeds and other crops that are stored in pellets.

　　In recent years, there has been a major contradiction in the supply and demand of agricultural products in my country, which is the growing supply gap of feed grains, and the contradiction between the overcapacity of edible grains.

　　From the perspective of national stockpiles, when corn stocks are cleared in 2020, wheat and rice seeds, whether they are newly produced that year or those whose stocks are overdue, will begin to be used for feed, and the scale of the whole year will reach 50 million. tons to 100 million tons.

In contrast, the amount of young wheat that is used for feeding can be said to be very small in the conversion of the entire ration to feeding.

　　Looking at it again, from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2021, nearly 50 million tons of non-overdue wheat in stock was auctioned to flour, feed, and breeding enterprises, and more than 20 million tons of overdue rice was auctioned to feed breeding enterprises. Higher than the price of wheat, the wheat seeds produced in that year were used to make feed, and the scale was far more than 10 million tons.

If these seeds are folded into young wheat crops, it is equivalent to converting all the young wheat crops in North China into feed.

　　From this point of view, the phenomenon of "silage wheat" reported on the Internet does not actually bring about the risk of "destroying food security".

Why not adjust the planting structure?

　　Then, since there is a surplus of edible grains and a shortage of feed grains, why not adjust the planting structure and use more corn and less wheat and rice?

　　In fact, this is related to the basic conditions of my country's agriculture and cooking.

　　In my country, most of the wheat is winter wheat, and spring wheat is only concentrated in high latitudes and inland areas.

Due to the need to connect with summer corn, the main winter wheat producing areas cannot be changed to other field crops, because they cannot survive the winter; if they are sown in spring, they cannot mature before the sowing period of summer corn.

Therefore, it can be said that although wheat in my country is the staple food in the north, its status in agricultural production is actually a gift for planting summer corn, limited to winter wheat and cannot be replaced.

　　There is a similar situation in rice. Although the rice fields in the northeast have the conditions and possibility to change to spring corn in the next step, for the vast two-crop and three-crop crops a year in the south, medium or late rice is planted, and a season of low-quality rice is included. Early indica rice is also standard, and some early indica rice is also used as silage for feeding cattle and sheep.

In fact, in the growth cycle of early indica rice, it is not realistic to switch back and forth between paddy fields and dry fields, not to mention that other forage crops cannot mature.

　　Therefore, my country's traditional ration crops can be said to be the additional output after the increase in cooking, and it is not possible to convert them into forage crops such as corn in batches.

That is to say, it is unavoidable, reasonable and beneficial to feed these extra harvested rations that exceed the dietary requirements.

　　However, the use of rations for feeding will indeed change the situation of oversupply of rations, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the price of rations.

However, in order to control the price of rations, it is forbidden to use rations for feed, resulting in surplus of rice and flour and lack of feed, which is also not conducive to ensuring the quality of life of the people.

If the price of rations does not rise, the price of feed will rise, and the price of meat, eggs, milk and aquatic products will follow, which is like two sides of a coin.

Therefore, it is still necessary to allow the market to allocate resources in order to achieve the best results.