According to the productive characteristics，the animal husbandry of Ningxia can be divided into four types：animal husbandry of the suburbs，agricultural areas，agricultural-pastoral region and pastoral region.On the outskirts cows，swine and poultry are raised mainly by intensive methods（swine are only raised in Han families）for the purpose of providing city and town residents with meat and eggs.Over 80per cent of all the livestock products are offered for sale.The agricultural areas mainly refers to 333，000hectares of the irrigated Hetao Plain of the Great Bend of the Yellow River in the northern part of Ningxia，where sheep，cows，swine and chickens are separately reared on a small scale in families chiefly for self-sufficiency.The agricultural-pastoral region is the alluvial district at the foot of the Helan Mountains，the newly-exploited ares to be irrigated with water pumped up from the Yellow River and the loess hills in the southern part of Ningxia，where mutton-wool sheep and semifine-wool sheep are raised.The pastoral region includes some upland steppes of Ordos Plateau in the eastern part of Ningxia，where beef cattle，sheep，Zhongwei Goats and semifine-wool sheep are pastured，providing over 50per cent of the total livestock products of Ningxia.
In the past forty years many problems have been brought forward in graziery owing to the following reasons：
1.Livestock population has greatly increased with the rapid growth of people’s population.Since Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was founded in 1958，the population has increased by 209.84per cent，from 1，935，163to 4，060，709.The livestock population has increased by 197.51per cent，from 40，444，000to 79，882，000.In accordance with the real carrying capacity 59，800sheep units are overstocked，thus resulting in the long overgrazing of natural grassland.
2.In the long history of China，Chinese have had the habit of living on grain.With the population growth the grassland had to be exploited to enlarge crop-planting area，thus causing the area of grassland to decrease gradually and grassland to be overgrazed.On the other hand，grassland has been degraded，become desert and serious in soil erosion（shown in Table 2）because of drought，mice’s harm（mainly referring to Citellus dauricus，Ochotona daurica.Myospalax fontanieri，Meriones unguicalatus，Mmeridianus）and man-made destruction （cutting firewood and digging out medicinal herbs）.