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China Has Never Canceled This Many Shipments of US Wheat
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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The problem is the GMO seeds. You need an alternative that provides a similar or even superior yield, otherwise the production level will fall and you still run into food shortage problem.
The key benefits of genetically modified seeds is that they grow extremely well and require much less treatments like fertilizers, and as such is very cost effective. This is how flooding a country with GMO seeds can easily displace the other domestic strains, since farmers that have adopted the GMO products will easily out-compete farmers that don’t, even if you take governmental regulations into account that favor domestic strains, especially when you have over a billion people to feed.
The only region that I know of that has banned GMO crops and produce soybeans from domestic strains is Heilongjiang. Yield is obviously lower but it retains a certain level of agricultural sovereignty.
China has also been doing its own R&D into rice, soybeans etc. (while avoiding existing patents claimed by foreign corporations) and there have been some results, but to commercialize them on a large scale will take time.
GMO crops are very good environmentally though, I wonder what it would take for china to just steal the secret sauce and produce it locally, and wouldnt be surprised if they have a stash already
Those seeds are also the "property" of Monsanto. If I understand it all correctly, farmers have to buy new seeds every year. Theoretically, if China nationalized its entire agricultural economy and subsidized the or industrialized the process of harvesting enough seeds for the next year, like really took extreme measures to ensure agricultural sovereignty then maybe in some number of years and likely economic tragedies if not famines, they could stabilize production. But if they start harvesting seeds, Monsanto will consider it a violation of their patent rights, stop selling China seeds and the industry will get crushed by the competitive forces of capitalism. Basically there's no way to change without incurring expenses that would tank the industry and even if the state stepped in to take drastic corrective measures they likely wouldn't be able to stave off dire consequences.