Editor’s note for February 16, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
My thoughts today:
Will there be enough food to eat? This question has worried Chinese individuals, families, and governments for centuries, although the contemporary word for the issue is “food security.”
In recent decades, the government, ordinary people, and some conspiracy theorists on the internet have fretted that genetically modified (GM) crops, which promise to boost agricultural production, may pose a threat to food security by making China dependent on foreign intellectual property, or because GM foods may pose a biohazard.
But in the past few years, there have been signs that the government thinks GM crops might actually be key to China’s future food security.
In our Red Paper at the beginning of 2021, we predicted that China would that year “legalize and begin to certify genetically modified crops, and invest heavily in the development of homegrown GMO seeds.”
It did not happen in 2021. But our top story today is about government plans to promote GM corn this year, so perhaps our forecast was correct, just a couple of years early.
Our Word of the Day is: Genetically modified crops: (转基因作物 zhuǎnjīyīn zuòwù)
