Cattle industry a bull market for Jiangxi county

"Because of the county's hilly terrain, most of the land in Huichang is fragmented, which might be bad news for large-scale cultivation of rice, but on the other hand, forming an advantage to the plantation of grass, which acts as a major part of cattle forage," he said.

For this reason, in the county's history, almost every peasant household raised cattle, with the cattle population in Zhoutian town alone reaching 10,000 heads at its peak, although the town only had a few hundreds of peasant households, Wang said.

"Meanwhile, Huichang was also a center for live cattle trading, with many drovers being active here, buying the animal from local farmers and selling to customers in adjacent provinces such as Guangdong and Fujian provinces, where the quality of Huichang cattle won widespread recognition," Wang said.

Over the past few years, with local government's resolution to integrating existing resources, tapping potentials and seeking high-quality development for traditional industries, the transformation from traditional cattle farming and breeding to large-scale, standardized beef cattle industry has been put on agenda and has made steady progress.

With local authorities' help, a complete industry chain supported mainly by beef cattle breeding, trading and slaughtering, as well as beef processing and sales has been basically formed in Huichang.

Attracted by Huichang's location, resources and local government's supportive policies, Liu, the base owner who used to operate a foreign trade business in Shanghai, started investments in beef cattle breeding in Zhoutian last year.