FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF NORTHERN CHINA BEEF INDUSTRY AND GRAZING LANDS

China, with one of the largest grassland and pastoral areas of the wor ld, is placing major effort on sustainable modernization of its rangel and livestock industry, One widely discussed structural change involve s development of a cattle feedlot industry with grazing lands oriented to a cow/calf system, However, economic analyses of alternatives have not been carried out, The objective in this article is to evaluate th e economic feasibility and benefits to sustainability from shifting fr om fattening cattle on rangelands in Inner Mongolia to fattening in fe edlots in the Beijing area, The method is economic budgeting of costs and returns for both systems combined with comparison of protein and e nergy requirements for each of them, It is concluded that grazing land producers would obtain more net income from selling weaned calves rat her than fattened animals, Furthermore, although 14,230 Meal of metabo lizable energy and 738 kg of crude protein are required per 4-year old male sold at slaughter weight by grazing land fattening, a feedlot fa ttened male would require only 5,670 Meal of energy and 371 kg of prot ein, Additional evaluations of improved cow/calf systems indicate that considerable advances can be made by improving the efficiency of Chin a's cattle industry.