China has a lot of people to feed, 1.3 billion of them. Chinese farmers have more or less managed to make ends meet: production of rice, wheat and corn was around 530m tn in 2009.
At the same time, consumption was around 520m tn. Debates are now raging over how to feed a growing population. Policy-makers want to know if genetically modified (GM) crops are a temporary fix or a real solution to food security.
Forty-two per cent of China’s working population works in the agricultural sector. Overcoming the threat of drought and floods has led the push towards GM solutions. The mandate of agricultural research in China is to “produce enough food and good food”, says Huajun Tang, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). It is a huge task.
China holds stockpiles of GM seeds, which have been developed and trialled by an army of state-funded researchers. But until late last year, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton was the only GM crop licensed for large-scale commercial production, although tomatoes and GM poplars for paper pulp are also grown on a small scale.
In November 2009, the government agreed to license one type of Bt rice and a phytase maize. In China, maize is largely fed to pigs and this variety is better for pig nutrition and produces smaller amounts of phosphates in their excrement. More agronomic tests and scaling-up will follow, but the two crops could be commercially available within a couple of years.
The decision to allow GM crops has caused consternation within China. In early March at the National People’s Congress, a group of 120 academics petitioned the Agriculture Ministry to withdraw the certificates. “Even inside China we have different debates about the biosafety of technology,” says CAAS's Huajun. “In my view, if we could produce enough food through traditional farming and traditional technology, why do we have to use technology that we are not so certain of?”
Despite Huajun’s hesitancy, the government is one of the world’s biggest investors in biotechnology. There are 1,300 research institutions and 600 agricultural schools across China and a network of one million extension officers disseminates new varieties of seed to farmers. Privatisation of the seed industry in 2000 also provided more varieties and choice for farmers.
China is keen to rely on domestic resources rather than seeds with a foreign patent. “There’s a big debate about China’s control over its own food sovereignty,” explains Adrian Ely, a fellow at the University of Sussex who specialises in GM policies in China. “There is quite a lot of concern about foreign companies, through intellectual property domination and maintaining an unwelcome level of power and control over China’s food supply.”
Instead, the pro-GM camp argues that China can use its research to develop a knowledge-based economy and take on theß Syngentas and Monsantos. While state-owned research institutions may develop the seeds, their commercialisation will be licensed to semi-private companies.
A good example is Biocentury Transgene, a seed company controlled by Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group which was awarded a licence to produce Bt cotton developed by Chinese researchers. It now sells 80% of China’s Bt cotton and is expanding into Asia. China is setting up 10 agricultural demonstration centres in Africa. The Chinese could become the next big global lobbyists for GM. “If the US and China have taken the GM route and are investing in it, there’s little room for manoeuvre for the rest of the world,” says Ely.
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