Beef Cattle Farmer Fu Bing: Nurturing World-Class Good Milk at China Good Pasture

The night before Chinese New Year’s Eve, the rich atmosphere of the Spring Festival filled every corner of Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. The head of Jiu Fuyuan Animal Husbandry, Fu Bing, zipped up his down jacket, rushed into the cattle barn, checked the fodder, and touched the cows’ backs—confirming that these “family members” would be able to celebrate the New Year properly.

The “New Year’s Eve dinner” for dairy cows was stocked based on advice from Yili’s on-site technical personnel, using the most advanced equipment and evenly cutting it into small finger-length pieces. “This helps the cows eat more smoothly—for example, it’s like how we eat shelled sunflower seeds: the texture is great and the flavor is fragrant!” Fu Bing laughed as he said, “Actually, dairy cows on the farm are celebrating New Year every day! When I come over, I’m mainly here to wish the cows a happy New Year!”

This “sea-returned” young man, who studied electronic information at Fukuoka University in Japan, became the “head of the household” of this modern farm with more than 1,000 dairy cows. With the new year comes a new look. He hopes that in the year ahead, the dream seed he sowed during his studies abroad—“fighting for dignity for Chinese milk”—will grow into stronger branches and produce even more beautiful leaves.

( Fu Bing jokingly talks with the calf)

Welcoming a New Life, Beginning a New Chapter

Fu Bing’s bond with dairy cows began with an awkward yet unforgettable “initiation.”

In the 1980s, his family responded to the policy call and started raising dairy cows. After that, they went through different stages—dairy stations, residential compounds, farms, and so on.

When he was 18, he went with his mother to a dairy station. Out of curiosity, he squeezed himself between his family’s two cows, wanting to see how dairy cows were milked, but he ended up with a faceful of urine. “That smell—I can’t forget it for the rest of my life.”

At the time, his parents had never raised dairy cows. They were basically “milk-cow rookies.” They relied entirely on experience passed down from their ancestors. With five or six cows, a hay-cutting knife, they fed chopped grass that was everywhere to be found. Whether the milk was more or less depended on fate and the weather.

His mother was a thoughtful person with sharp strategic vision—someone who loved to think and kept mulling things over. She went down the road of scientific cow-raising early. The whole family was determined in raising cows, so Fu Bing had no choice but to step up. In 2012, he earned his master’s degree, returned to his motherland, found his first job in Beijing, and every time he went back home, he had to bring dairy cows’ frozen semen.

On a winter night with heavy snowfall, one dairy cow had a difficult birth. Fu Bing was temporarily pulled in to “pull the cow’s leg.”

That dairy cow was the new life produced from the frozen semen he had brought back from the capital. The moment Fu Bing locked eyes with the calf that was opening its eyes for the first time—his hands covered in amniotic fluid—made him understand the meaning of “life.”

In that moment, he suddenly realized that raising cows was fascinating. It was a journey of accompanying another living creature as it grew. Raising cows also had value: it could provide high-quality nutrition for humankind. He came to the realization that for Chinese people to drink good milk, you must raise good cows—and raising good cows can’t rely on sheer physical strength alone; it has to rely on science.

He understood. He began, together with his mother, to take charge of the farm.

( Fu Bing observing the health of a dairy cow’s limbs and hooves)

“Operating a World-Class Dairy Farm in China” Becomes a Reality

Actually, even before he “entered the industry,” Fu Bing had always kept a dream in his heart: he hoped that on China’s land, world-class dairy farms would emerge.

While studying in Japan, he had visited Meiji Dairy. He still remembers the “pride you can’t hide” that Japanese cattle breeders showed when talking about their own products.

“Why can’t we do it like that?” Fu Bing recalled thinking at the time. Compared with theirs, his family’s farm had strengths of its own, but there were indeed gaps in many details. “People live by food; it’s too important to eat nutrient-rich, healthy, and safe food! I’ve been dreaming about the day when Chinese dairy farms can lift their heads with pride.”

Dreams are always beautiful, but turning them into reality requires taking a long road. For many people, even their entire lifetime may not be enough to get what they want. In Fu Bing’s view, the luckiest thing for him was meeting the technical service personnel of Yili’s dairy cow research institute, who spared no effort to help him transition from a “sea-returned coder” into someone who truly understood the work. “There are simply too many things to learn about the science and skills of raising cows. Without a good mentor, it’s hard to do well!”

He clearly remembers that during the farm’s expansion and renovation, Yili’s technical experts stayed at the farm for an entire week. After the new farm was built, everyone drove the dairy cows in large numbers to the newly refreshed farm.

At that point, small differences in ideas among everyone began to appear.

Based on cost considerations, Fu Bing believed that the fodder the cows hadn’t finished eating that day was still fresh and could be used again the next day. The other side didn’t think the same way.

They even made a bet. The result proved that switching to fresh fodder improved both output and quality. Choosing “not to waste” that looked like “saving money” was actually “picking up sesame seeds and losing the watermelon.”

Another event in 2023 made Fu Bing even more satisfied and convinced. At the time, the herd didn’t want to eat. He tried every method he could but couldn’t solve the problem, so he had no choice but to ask Yili for help. The moment the technical personnel arrived on site, they accurately diagnosed that “stable maggots” were causing all the issues—and every problem was resolved.

Every exchange taught Fu Bing more. Without noticing it, he also became a “cattle-raising expert.” His past sayings gradually disappeared, replaced by technical terms used in cattle raising.

In 2025, when he saw on his phone the statement that “in about twenty years, China’s dairy industry has crossed over a gap of more than a hundred years between it and dairy-developed countries; and for core indicators overall levels such as protein, fat, somatic cells, and total bacterial counts, China’s milk is already better than the EU standards; Chinese milk has become world-class quality,” he was overwhelmed with mixed feelings—because the wish he had made while studying in Japan finally became reality.

“As a Chinese dairy cow raiser, I feel proud,” Fu Bing said. “Raising cows is very hard, but being able to let Chinese people drink good milk makes me feel that any effort is worth it.”

( Fu Bing with the “automatic feed-pushing robot”)

Pledge Your Youth to China’s Dairy Industry

The longer you work at it, the deeper your love becomes. Whenever something came up or even when there was nothing to do, Fu Bing loved to go to the farm—especially enjoying watching the master fix the cows’ hooves.

“Whenever I feel anxious, I go watch the hoof-fixing work,” Fu Bing explained. “If you can’t fix the cows’ hooves properly, it’s like a person getting ingrown toenails. When the feet are comfortable, the cow is willing to move—then milk production naturally improves.”

His attention to details came from his understanding of “craftsmanship spirit” during his time studying abroad. Today, he has transformed that spirit into modern management processes: to eliminate risks from the source, the farm has specifically built a silage planting base, where he selects the seeds himself and grows the crops himself.

This “stubborn insistence on doing it right” made him a winner. Total bacterial count is an important indicator for measuring the quality level of dairy cow breeding. The lower the value, the better. But it’s destined to never be zero. Generation after generation, cattle breeders around the world keep improving and making breakthroughs, driving the number lower and lower. The EU standard for total bacterial count is 100k CFU/mL, and in Fu Bing’s farm, in recent years it has been far below 10k CFU/mL.

On the day of the Beginning of Spring, the farm welcomed a “spring baby”—one of the excellent offspring he carefully raised.

“Whether a dairy cow is good or not depends mainly on the parents. It means there’s a sense of ‘effort in front of talent is not that important,’” he explained. Through the “Chinese cow chips” developed by Yili, they can select good Chinese dairy cows, and then breed better next generations—“one generation stronger than the next,” ultimately enabling the continuous evolution of the herd.

“The herd structure is the farm’s hard strength. Originally, the dairy cow breeds really had a significant gap compared with overseas ones. But now we’ve caught up, and the gap is getting smaller and smaller. Soon, we’ll surpass them,” Fu Bing knew that along the long journey ahead, improving the herd’s “combat strength” was crucial. “To a large extent, it decides what kind of ‘world-class’ quality a dairy farm truly has.”

He expects that in the Year of the Horse, he can maintain strategic focus, do this work well for the long term—be a good person, raise good cows, and produce good milk—“and dedicate his youth to China’s dairy industry.”

(Editor: Wang Can)

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