A worker feeds cattle at a breeding base in Du'an Yao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Photo:Xinhua)

The market share of China's homegrown Huaxi cattle has exceeded 20 percent, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday, citing data from the 6th National Breeding Bull Auction held in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Zhang Junmin, director of the Institute of Animal Science at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that after 43 years of unremitting efforts, the institute has developed China's first internationally competitive new beef cattle breed called Huaxi cattle, breaking the country's reliance on imported core breeding stock.

The auction aimed to showcase the development achievements of China's beef cattle breeding industry, promote exchanges, and provide a window into the current state of the industry and its future trend, according to Xinhua. 

The auction attracted participation from core beef cattle breeding farms, bull stations, and breeding cooperatives. A total of 73 high-quality breeding bulls were submitted for auction, with 62 successfully sold, generating a total auction value of about 16.72 million yuan ($2.33 million). Of these, 49 Huaxi cattle bulls were sold, contributing about 13.68 million yuan to the total revenue.

Along with the rapid development of China's economy, the country's beef consumption has steadily increased, and the beef cattle industry has made significant progress. In 2024, China's beef production reached 7.79 million tons, accounting for 8.1 percent of total meat production. Additionally, the proportion of scaled farms with annual beef cattle output exceeding 50 head has approached 50 percent nationwide.

At the auction, Zhang called on all sectors of the industry to fully leverage their strengths and advantages, strengthen collaborative innovation, improve institutional mechanisms for breeding, promotion, and application, stabilize production capacity, enhance support for breeding stock, and promote full-chain upgrading, to effectively advance the high-quality development of the beef cattle industry, according to Xinhua.

The Huaxi cattle breed is the result of more than four decades of research and offers rapid growth, high-quality meat, and strong adaptability, with performance metrics matching international advanced levels. A mature bull can weigh as much as 900 kilograms.

About 23,400 Huaxi cattle have been bred across 12 Chinese provincial-level regions, supported by an advanced breeding database and a network of breeding farms and bull stations, Xinhua reported in March, citing the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Global Times