Transformation of grazing system: the urgent task for China

Grazing is the basic measure of land management both at home and abroad, and the grazing land covers more than half of the global terrestrial sphere. As a subsystem of grassland ecosystem, grazing is composed by three elements of human settlement, grassland and livestock, Its core is the soundness and stability of the tripartite system. Grazing may historically be divided into three stages: the primary nomadic period, the transformation grazing period and the morden grazing period. With developing of technology and culture as well as industrial civilization, the grazing management system has constantly take in the technology and culture elements from that civilization and finally completed the transformation, Finally the basic rotational grazing model of human settlement, grasslad and livestock unit established. The rotational grazing is a kind of open agricultural technical system assumed in many submodels so may adapt to various agricultural system and meeting the requirements both of ecology and production as well, so it is significant progress of grassland grazing management. This paper, using the case of the United States, discussed the grazing transformation process which lasted for almost three hundred years. On the other hand, limited by the traditional agrarian culture, China has so many misunderstandings of grazing management system and hardly aware of the morden transformation of grazing, resulted in a serious loss for such a long time. At the present, grazing transformation is one of the most urgent task for China.