Government supports technology | The government is urged to promote public acceptance of GMO technology
BEIJING, China (Reuters) — China will need to plant genetically modified corn if it is to cope with the growing challenge of food security, says a leading biotech scientist.
The comment comes as the country continues to reject imports of GM corn from the United States.
China’s rapid urbanization and rising wealth have triggered a rapid growth in demand for food and feed, and food security remains one of the government’s top concerns despite annual increases in crop yields.
However, China has so far refused to allow planting of major GM food crops because of public concern around the safety of the technology.
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The country has invested billions in research over the past 20 years and granted safety certificates for its first GM corn and rice varieties in 2009.
However, it has still not authorized their commercial production, with papaya the only GM food allowed to be grown in the country.
Demand for corn is set to outstrip domestic supply, making adoption of GMO technology more pressing, said Huang Dafang, professor at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ Biotechnology Research Institute and a former member of the agriculture ministry’s biosafety committee.
“Corn is currently the genetically modified crop we most urgently need to develop,” he said.
Huang said corn imports are inevitable for China in the long run, but added that they should not be allowed to reach the level currently seen with soybeans, of which 80 percent are imported.
“We need to speed up development (of GM corn) and we look forward to faster development,” he said.
China is already the world’s third largest corn buyer, importing more than three million tonnes in 2013. However, its imports were expected to be higher before Beijing rejected more than 600,000 tonnes of corn from the U.S. that contained Syngenta’s GM MIR 162 strain.
Huang stressed that Beijing’s support for GM technology had not changed. If anything, the leadership was showing more clear-cut support for GMOs, he added.
“Because the government believes that technology is needed to resolve the food security problem and promote sustainable development of agriculture, they are making their position known, and this is leading to a change in the direction of public opinion,” he said.
The next step is for the government to pushing forward commercialization, he added.
“Promoting commercialization, I believe, is currently more important than anything else because if you just talk about research and don’t promote commercialization, you cannot go further with research, and you also can’t make the public really believe that this is necessary.”
