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China’s struggle to balance public concern over the safety of genetically modified (GM) crops with a swelling demand for affordable food crops has left a disconnect: In China’s case, shrinking fields of domestic soybean – by law non-GM—and massive imports of cheaper soybeans that are the very GM crop consumers profess to shun. China is now the world’s largest soybean importer – bringing in more than 80 percent of the soybeans consumed, mostly from Brazil and the United States. Those imported crops are GM crops.
Jing Sun, a research associate in MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), and his colleagues found farmers switching to more profitable crops, with soybean fields shrinking and becoming more fragmented. But Sun also discovered surprising pockets of resilience and identified strengths in soybean cultivation that may point a way to give Chinese soybean consumers what they say they want.
Sun and colleagues scrutinized satellite data of the China’s leading soybean-growing region. There they found farmers converting fields from soybean to corn, but not without environmental consequence. Unlike soybeans, corn cannot use nitrogen in the soil, so requires more fertilizers that can cause pollution.
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The authors say China’s current dependence on foreign imports to fill its burgeoning soybean demand – and its decrease in domestic production—comes with potential costs around the globe, including the possibility of Amazon rainforest deforestation as Brazil ramps up soybean production to meet demand.
Read full, original post: Harvesting clues to GMO dilemmas from China’s soybean fields
