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To market, to market: Chinese government pushes for the commercialization of GM crops
By Wu Chong
While Europe and the U.S. have balked at the commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops, China has for the past ten years been pursuing an ambitious program of GM research and development.
Nearly 70 percent of China's commercially-grown cotton is genetically modified. Five other GM crops are now on the Chinese market. And under a new program backed by China's State Council, it's possible that the country's biggest food staple-- rice-- may soon join that list.
Spurred by food security concerns and rising food demand in a country of 1.3 billion, the State Council gave its approval this July to a 20 billion yuan (US $3 billion) program to promote the commercialization of GM crops and livestock.
"GM technology can not only improve food production, but it can also lower the cost and increase the income of farmers. It is a very hopeful technology," said Hu Ruifa, a senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP).
According to Chinese leaders, the new project is of "strategic significance," in China's drive to make its agricultural sector more efficient. Even today, most agricultural output comes from small-holdings farmers, who use centuries-old methods of farming, but invest heavily in pesticides and other fertilizers to increase crop yield.
Director of the CCAP, Huang Jikun, said the first few years of the initiative will focus on creating new GM species. After that, the project will also aim at promoting biological security and GM marketing.
"All the GM crops and livestock to be listed in this project are bound to be commercialized finally," he said.
In addition, private enterprise will play a greater role, with corporations (excluding foreign enterprises, which are not allowed to invest in China's GM crop market) funding nearly half of program costs.
"This funding system differentiates the project from previous GM research programs, which were totally funded by the government and research institutes. It is to encourage the involvement of companies and pave the way for the commercialization of GM food," Hu said.
No final budget has been publicized for the program, which is set to span 13 years until 2020. State media have reported it at 20 billion yuan (U.S. $3 billion), while experts like Xue Dayuan, a professor of environmental resource protection at the Central University for Nationalities, have pegged it at closer to 24 billion yuan (U.S. $3.5 billion).
However, the Ministry of Agriculture declined to comment on the project, saying the details are still under discussion.
China has already approved six GM crops for commercial production, including papaya, sweet peppers and cotton. Of those, only pest-resistant cotton has been widely planted. By 2006, the Chinese government had permitted 211 field trials of 20 GM crops, according to the magazine Science.
In the past two decades, however, one-third of GM research and development funds have gone to GM rice. In 2004 alone, the government spent more than 500 million yuan (US $73 million) on the crop, and three types of GM rice have been waiting for permission to enter the market since then.
GM rice expert Zhu Zhen, of the Bureau of Life Science and Biotechnology, said the primary target of the new initiative is pest-resistant GM rice, rather than high-yield GM rice.
"If we can keep a crop from pests and disease, we are actually increasing production," he said.
Such has been the case with pest-resistant GM cotton, which has been on the Chinese market for 11 years. It has done so well that scientists are now looking at ways to directly increase crop yield, according to the "father" of GM cotton, Guo Sandui.
"We are trying to mix what we have with hybrid cotton to boost the production. We have seen some very good results in our field trials. I am confident that we can increase cotton production by another 25 percent in the near future," he said.
"I am very confident that the commercialization of GM rice is only a matter of time," Guo added.
Lu Baorong, a Fudan University professor serving on the National Agricultural GM Biological Security Committee, said the new project will also focus on developing "second generation" GM crops, which boast higher protein content and higher nutritional values.
"The logic is that by eating a small amount of such highly-nutritious food, people can also have their needs for more food satisfied," he said.
Although most scientists have thrown their support behind the project, some environmentalists have expressed concern. Greenpeace in particular has come out against the commercialization of GM crops in China, saying the country is poor in assessing and securing biological safety standards.
According to Xue, of the Central University for Nationalities, some 20 percent of the entire project budget will be used for the safety inspection of new species and infrastructure construction.
And according to Hu, most Chinese consumers are supportive of GM crops.
"Our survey shows that more than half of the Chinese people accept GM food," he said. "The figure is higher than that of European countries and behind only the United States."
Chinese consumers are paying more attention in part because of a recent jump in food prices-- up nearly 20 percent for the first half of 2008 compared to the same period last year.
GM research in China has taken on greater significance against a backdrop of continuously decreasing arable land and water resources, problems threatening food supplies around the world.
In conjunction with the new project, the State Council also passed a mid- and long-term grain security plan, which set a goal of 95 percent self-sufficiency in grains by 2020.
According to that plan, China's goal is to produce more than 500 million tons of grain annually by 2010, and increase production to more than 540 million tons a year by 2020.
China's domestic demand for grain this year has already reached 518 million tons and is expected to continue to rise.
Wu Chong is a freelance journalist who has written for China Daily and SciDev.net. She is also an editor for Global Environmental Review, a Chinese electronic magazine about environmental news.
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