The city of Baotou, Inner Mongolia autonomout region has announced plans to spend 19 billion yuan($2.9 billion) on key animal and plant projects to modernize and develop the sector, reports Baotou Daily on Feb 18, noting that it will mainly go to five modern husbandry zones and three food processing zones for food production, processing and distribution, farm leisure activities, ecological protection, quality supervision, and support.

The spending on food production will mainly go to milk, meat, vegetables and tuberous crops, with 110 million yuan allocated for the dairy industry, 300 million yuan for meat, 550 million yuan for vegetables, and 200 million yuan for tuberous crops this year.

The city wants to start 11 projects worth 200 million yuan this year on farm leisure activities and urban leisure farming to modernize traditional husbandry and its development.

The city also wants to improve its food processing and expand its industry chain to generate added-value profits by spending 1 billion yuan in 2016, with 440 million yuan for food distribution, and promote the China-Mongolia husbandry border-trade district at Mandula Port, and develop husbandry trade sites, logistics, exhibitions, and e-commerce links.

There is also expected to be a great effort in grasslands ecological protection with 350 million yuan allocated. In the area of science and technology, the city will allocate 75 million yuan this year to cooperate with research institutes and universities on an industry-university research demonstration base and increase food quality supervision, set up a husbandary development fund and offer subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery.

Modern irrigation technology in use at a Baotou farm. [Photo/baotounews.com.cn]