Electricity Empowers Alfalfa Industry: Ar Horqin Banner Builds National High-Quality Forage Base

In the hinterland of the Horqin Grassland in northern China, alfalfa, known as the “king of forage”, is thriving. Aru Horqin Banner in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, boasts nearly 700,000 mu of high-quality forage, with an annual output of about 650,000 tons of commercial grass, accounting for nearly one-fifth of China’s total high-quality forage output, according to Inner Mongolia Daily.

Known as “China’s Grass Capital” by the China Animal Agriculture Association, Aru Horqin Banner was once a severely desertified grassland with a vegetation coverage rate of less than 10%. Since 2008, it has embarked on a decade-long green journey, transforming the once sandy land into a vast oasis. Today, the banner has become the largest concentrated contiguous high-quality forage production base in China, but the traditional planting model is facing challenges such as labor shortage, rising costs and increasing pressure of pest control.

The development of low-altitude economy and smart agriculture, represented by UAV applications, has become an urgent need for industrial transformation and upgrading. “We used to rely on manual irrigation and pest control, which was inefficient and costly,” said Chang Shenglong, technical director of Aru Horqin Banner Tianyuan Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd. “Now, with electric-powered precision sprinkler irrigation equipment, we can save more than 60% of water and reduce labor costs by half.”

To ensure the stable development of the forage industry, State Grid Aru Horqin Banner Power Supply Company has continuously increased investment in power grid construction in recent years. According to the company’s official disclosure, it has built and renovated 30 kilometers of 66-kilovolt lines and 188 kilometers of 10-kilovolt lines in the forage core area, renovated 61 distribution transformers with a total capacity of 0.94 million kVA, and significantly improved the carrying capacity of the regional power grid.

In March this year, the local power supply department launched a special campaign to ensure power supply for spring sowing of forage. Focusing on the characteristics of circular operation of sprinkler irrigation equipment with the center as the fulcrum, it adopted the operation mode of “no power outage as much as possible and combined power supply”, and sent 28 spring ploughing power protection teams to carry out refined inspections of farm irrigation lines and distribution transformers by means of UAV inspection and infrared temperature measurement.

Up to now, more than 20 well-known enterprises at home and abroad, including Shounong Purui Mu, Aoya Group and Yili Group, have settled in Aru Horqin Banner. The high-quality forage here is not only supplied to leading domestic dairy enterprises such as Mengniu and Yili, but also exported to Mongolia and other countries along the “Belt and Road”, according to China Grass Industry Association.

The development of the forage industry has brought tangible benefits to local herdsmen. At present, 3,500 households in the banner have increased their annual per capita income by 4,600 yuan through forage planting and cooperative operation, and more than 2,000 herdsmen have become industrial workers with an annual per capita income of 40,000 yuan. Li Lingyu, deputy county magistrate of Aru Horqin Banner, said: “Stable and reliable electric power support has laid a solid foundation for the high-quality development of the forage industry, helping us to build a green development path from desert to oasis.”