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Published online 15 October 2008 | Nature 455, 850-852 (2008) | doi:10.1038/455850a
News Feature
Agriculture: Is China ready for GM rice?
In an effort to avoid a food crisis as the population grows, China is putting its weight behind genetically modified strains of the country's staple food crop. Jane Qiu explores the reasons for the unprecedented push.
In a paddy field 30 kilometres south of Fuzhou, the capital of China's Fujian province, Wang Feng is surveying a massive green and yellow chessboard before him. Wang, a rice researcher at the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and his colleagues have been developing genetically modified (GM) rice strains to resist pest infestation, and have been testing in these plots for a decade.
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GM rice is no solution for China. Jane Qui raises the question ?Is China ready for GM rice?? (Nature 455, 850-852; 2008, http://www.nature.com.virtual.anu.edu.au/news/2008/081015/full/455850a.html). It is true that China has been at the forefront of researching GM crops, but China has been a very cautious adopter of this technology. Only one GM food crop, papaya, has been approved in the decade since biosafety regulations were implemented. Certainly, China pioneered the world?s first commercial GM crop, tobacco, but production was quickly abandoned due to a consumer backlash. Qui writes of ?the scale of the impending food shortage?. Yes, China imports food, yet, with 23% of the world?s population and only 8% of its farmland, China is nevertheless a net food exporter. The statistics for most food items record a steady, and in some cases a dramatic, increase over the past several decades, and, importantly, with the food production increase outpacing the population increase. Look-alike Mona Lisas in the Dafen, Shenzhen, marketplace are in no way ?substantially equivalent? to the Louvre?s Mona Lisa. The agro-doctrine of substantial equivalence has likewise failed to be embraced by food consumers. In the light of the recent melamine-enhancement of milk, consumers can be expected to be increasingly wary of techno-replicated food. China?s food exports are growing in importance as China pursues and achieves the added-value premiums available for certified organic produce and processed packaged food. China?s agricultural hectares under certified organic management is now second only to Australia, and far exceeds the certified organic hectares of USA, Germany or the UK, for example (http://orgprints.org/10949). GM is not tolerated in certified organic production. This premium market could be jeopardized by broadscale GM food production. GM appears to be a short term fix for a long term challenge, with risks that are matters of speculation and uncertainty, with added costs of segregating, labelling, defending, liability-insurance, and with negative price premiums, and consumer wariness. Time will tell if China steps towards the aspirations of consumers, who exhibit no taste for GM, or towards the patent aspirations of agro-corporations. John Paull, john.paull@anu.edu.au, http://orgprints.org/13563/