06.03.2022
This Organic Milk Farm Was Set Up In One Of China’s Largest Deserts
Ulan Buh is one of China’s largest deserts, stretching over 14,000km2 in Inner Mongolia. Starting in 2009, dairy company ShengMu has transformed this landscape into a farm for 80,000 cows. The dairy industry in the desert was developed by a local company, Bayannur Shengmu High-tech Ecological Forage Co., Ltd., following the successful greening of the desert, which was brought about through the implementation of a series of shelterbelt afforestation programs. With an upfront investment of 260 million yuan, the company started from scratch in the middle of a desert in 2009. Afterwards, it started growing grass, raising cows and processing milk in line with organic standards. So far, the company has created 220,000 mu (about 14,6667 hectares) of organic grasslands in the desert, and has established 23 pastures that meet the European Union’s organic standards, according to Yang Ruiguang, an executive of the company. Inspired by the dairy industry’s success, local people started to grow corn in addition to other crops and have directly sold their harvests to relevant dairy enterprises. Organic farming is carried out in strict accordance with the national organic food planting regulations for rotation and fallow, without the use of pesticides, fertilizers, pesticides, and antibiotics, providing high-quality organic feed for organic pastures. Organic feed is used to feed cows, and cow dung is also used as fertilizer on the land. The combination of planting and breeding creates a benign organic industrial chain that is in harmony with nature. Credit: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
Poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care and of life's most basic necessities- safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world's population but control about 80 percent of the world's wealth.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
