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IT’S not what campaigners against genetically modified crops want to hear.
Not only are GM plants taking over China’s rice paddies and cotton fields, but
millions of poor farmers are benefiting as a result, according to a survey of
the country’s GM crop programme, the largest outside the US.

China’s government-employed biotechnologists have targeted many crops largely
ignored by big Western companies. And, unhindered by eco warriors, they are
moving swiftly from the lab to the field.

Scott Rozelle of the University of California at Davis and Jikun Huang from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing surveyed biotech labs and talked to
farmers. They found that the country has already introduced more than 120 genes
into about 50 plant species. But while Western companies mostly engineer crops
to resist herbicides, Rozelle says that more than 90 per cent of Chinese field
trials target insect and disease resistance, reducing the need for expensive and
dangerous pesticides.

China has released rice varieties resistant to three major pests and done
field trials on GM wheat. Other GM crops on sale include pest and
disease-resistant cotton, tomatoes and sweet peppers. In the pipeline are GM
potatoes, rape, peanuts, cabbage, melons, maize, chillies, papaya and
tobacco.

But Bt cotton, which carries a gene for a toxin that kills insects, is the
big success story. China’s own version has been on sale since 1997. Around 2
million Chinese cotton farmers now grow Bt cotton, in fields covering 7000
square kilometres. Farmers’ production costs have dropped by 28 per cent and the
average income has gone up by more than $150 per year. Use of toxic
pesticides such as organophosphates has plummeted by 80 per cent and pesticide
poisonings have gone down (see Table).

“There is a clear contrast with Western biotechnology,” says Rozelle. In the
West, “the system is run by officials who at least are partly concerned about
food security”.

“We are concerned about genetic farm products, but there are so many other
environmental issues in China for people to worry about,” says Liang Congjie,
president of Friends of Nature in Beijing. But Adrian Bebb of Friends of the
Earth UK said the study ignored the environment. “It will only be a matter of
time before insects develop resistance,” he says. “The Chinese are just
replacing one form of unsustainable farming with another.”

China could soon be exporting GM seeds and products to other developing
countries, Rizelle says. But it plans to impose tough regulations on GM imports.