Boom times for protein.

• Author: Brown, Lester R.
• Position: EYE ON ECOLOGY - Animal protein production using crop residues, aquaculture

MOUNTING PRESSURE on the Earth's land and water resources to produce livestock, poultry, and fish feed has led to the evolution of some promising new animal protein production models, one of which is used by India to produce milk. Since 1970, India's milk output has increased more than fourfold, jumping from 21,000,000 to 87,000,000 tons. In 1997, India overtook the U.S. as the world leader in dairy production.

The spark for this explosive growth came in 1965 when an enterprising young Indian named Verghese Kurien organized the National Dairy Development Board, an umbrella organization of dairy cooperatives. A co-op's principal purpose is to market the milk from tiny herds that typically average two to three cows each. It was these cooperatives that provided the link between the growing appetite for dairy products and the millions of village families who only have a few cows and a small marketable surplus.

In a country where protein shortages stunt the growth of so many children, expanding the daily milk supply from less than half a cup per person 25 years ago to more than a cup represents a major advance. What is new here is that India has built the world's largest dairy industry almost entirely on roughage--wheat straw, rice straw, corn stalks, and grass collected from the roadside. Cows often are stall-fed with crop residues or grass gathered daily and brought to them.

A second new protein production model, which also relies on ruminants, is one that has evolved in China, principally in the four eastern central provinces of Hebei, Shangdong, Henan, and Anhui--where double-cropping of winter wheat and corn is common. Once the winter wheat matures and ripens in early summer, it must be harvested quickly and the seedbed prepared to plant com. The straw that is removed from the land, as well as the cornstalks left alter the harvest in late fall, are fed to cattle. Although these crop residues often are used by the villagers as fuel for cooking, they are shifting to other sources of energy for that purpose, allowing them to keep the straw and cornstalks for feed. By supplementing this roughage with small amounts of nitrogen, typically in the form of urea, the microflora in the complex four-stomach digestive system of cattle can convert roughage efficiently into animal protein.

This practice enables these four provinces--dubbed the Beef Belt by Chinese officials--to produce much more meat than the vast grazing provinces in the northwest. The...