Cost-Benefit Analysis of Continuous and Rotational Grazing Systems——A Case Study in Maqu County, China

The rotational grazing systems (RGS) have been advocated as a superior grazing strategy by the Chinese government based on their significant ecological advantage compared to continuous grazing systems (CGS). In practice, however, due to the low-adoption rate of RGS the favorable effect is limited. This study analyzed the total production cost, gross production value, and net margin of CGS and RGS from the perspective of cost benefits. Data were collected from telephone and face-to-face questionnaire survey of 121 randomly sampled households in Maqu County in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The results indicate that although economic benefits were achieved by herder households in both CGS and RGS, the total production costs spent on each sheep unit in RGS were higher than in the overall that of the total households, and the gross production values produced by herder households from livestock products were lower than in the overall that of the total households due to the difference in production practices. This finding suggests that higher production costs may reduce herders’ adoption rate of RGS. Furthermore, the transfer from CGS to RGS also implies that herders may have to face the challenge the change in production practices related to native grass availability, forage seeding, supplementary feeding, livestock transfer, and grazing duration. The policy implications of these findings towards the implementation of rotational grazing systems are as follows: first, policy makers can consider bringing higher economic advantages to the adopters of rotational grazing systems via incentives; Second, policy measures should assist herders to be able to adapt more easily to the production practices in RGS.