Abstract:Poverty alleviation or mitigation through science and technology is one of the strategies implemented in China. Grassbased Livestock Husbandry aims to develop sustainable and profitable ruminant farming systems and is an attractive and effective countermeasure for poverty alleviation in grasslands of China. Our survey indicated that 152 counties in the grassland region are in poverty, representing 56.7% of the total 268 counties. Hence, grasslands are the regions where the "hard core" poverty populations reside. As a pilot initiative, Chinese Academy of Sciences has launched projects in the grasslands in the north and the moutain meadows in the south to couple forage cultivation and processing with husbandry of elite local livestock breeds by improving the efficiency of converters of feed to products, and the projects have substantially helped local people increase their household incomes. Nationwidely, the grassland occupies more than 40% of the total national land area, hence the sustainable development of grass-based livestock farming systems could play a central role and have great potential in poverty alleviation.