Inside: Milk & Food
Less than 600 cows is small in China
Upscaling is going full throttle in China. In the meantime, the stage has been reached that a farm with 600 cows is seen as a small farm. Does this mean that China will eventually become self-sufficient or is there still a long way to go? And what opportunities are there for goat milk?
Read this article?
Become a subscriber and get instant access
Choose the subscription that suits you
In New Zealand, they were able to welcome a delegation from Alltech China at the beginning of March. The international feed company also has a division in Asia and in countries bordering the Pacific (Asia-Pacific). During the visit, a little more came out about Chinese dairy farming.
For example, the country appears to be far from being self-sufficient. In fact, Matthew Smith, vice president of Alltech Asia-Pacific, considers it highly unlikely that the country will ever become self-sufficient.
4
million
Not self-sufficient yet
Smith estimates that commercial livestock farming in China is about 4 million cows. 'Some close to the New Zealand herd. This means that the Chinese dairy sector is far from self-sufficient. Then we mainly look at the number of dairy cows, the number of dairy farms and the amount of roughage that is extracted', says Matthew Smith.
Upscaling has already ensured that a company with 600 dairy cows is considered small in China. The cows are kept indoors and fed with roughage and grain. 'Efforts have been made for years to introduce a system whereby cows go into pasture, but the weather in China does not allow this.' Smith said he had been working in China for several years. He indicates that scaling up there is the only way to be profitable or reasonably profitable.
Goat's milk even scarcer
Not only cow's milk is in demand in China, goat's milk is even scarcer and more popular. 'It is therefore an expensive product.' In New Zealand and Australia it is a niche that is growing rapidly. China itself does not yet have any dairy goat farms. Smith also wonders if the way dairy goats are reared in New Zealand could work in China, but without its own herd it is a promising market for exporting countries.
In 2016, China paid an estimated milk price of 47,27 euros per 100 kg of milk. It is estimated that more than half of the cows are still on very small farms, whose milk is intended for their own consumption. In 2015, the milk lake in China still amounted to 37,5 million tons of milk.