GM crop use may endanger China's food security
- Source: Global Times
- [21:40 March 17 2010]
- Comments
GT: Will GM plants increase farmers' income?
Zhou: GM plants can only cut costs through large-scale planting. Individual farmers in developing countries can't bear the burden of growing investment costs. Research on Argentina, South Korea and India shows that as most farmers can't afford industrialized planting, they went bankrupt.
Quite a few agricultural experts believe that pest-resistant GM rice can reduce the use of pesticides, and thus cut food production cost. But the facts might not bear this out. Take pest-resistant GM cotton. During the first three years, from 2001 to 2004, when it was promoted in Jiangsu Province, it did decrease the use of pesticides and increased production.
But just three years later, it began to yield poor quality cotton, and as the GM cotton was only resistant to one kind of pest, other pests posted a more serious threat than before, so pesticide use went up.
What farmers gained from the first three years couldn't make up for the increasing costs in the following years.
Genetic engineering actually standardizes food production, like assembly lines in factories. As only one type or a limited range of GM foods will be planted, this might decrease food diversity.
GM food can't cut agricultural production costs, because the promotion of GM food usually requires more investment in seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural machinery.
GT: According to the environmental NGO, Greenpeace, China's GM rice involves 10 foreign patents. How will this affect China's food security?
Zhou: China will have to pay high charges if it does want to use these patents commercially. But there are other points concerning food security.
Take Brazil and Argentina. They introduced modern agricultural technologies, transgenic seeds and fertilizers from the US, resulting in irreversible dependence on US agriculture.
Argentina cut down a large part of its forests to plant GM soybeans. Large-scale industrial soybean production led to excessive use of herbicides, and many farmers went bankrupt because they couldn't afford large-scale production.
China has so many small farmers. How can we manage their lives if industrialized agriculture drives them out of their farmland?
GT: How will China's food trade be affected?
Zhou: Scandals around China's food safety have tainted the country's prestige. China's food trade will be affected as some countries, especially European countries, have strict limitations on importing GM food. I think the cost to persuade these countries to accept Chinese food will be much higher.
