Biotech Will Help China Reclaim Land, Grow Food

Diversion of food crops to biofuels has finally caught the attention of policy makers in China.

Even as the country seeks to use 10 million tons of bio- ethanol and 2 million tons of bio-diesel annually by 2020 to cut its reliance on petroleum, planners are also aware that they have 1.3 billion mouths to feed.
So the new strategy, unveiled in a July plan issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and re-iterated this week by Chen Deming, a vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission in Beijing, is for most of the biofuel to come from non-grain sources, such as sweet sorghum, sugarcane and cassava.

Officially, China has four factories making 1 million tons of ethanol a year, mostly from corn. In reality, there are hundreds of small, unregulated units converting grain into fuel, in the process making it costlier for farmers to feed pigs.

Pork prices have soared this year, causing Chinese inflation to accelerate to its quickest pace in a decade in July. Consumer prices probably rose at a faster pace in August than the 5.6 percent rate recorded in July, says Bi Jingquan, Chen’s colleague at the top planning agency.

It makes sense for China to limit competition between food and fuel for the same scarce resources: arable land and water.

However, this alone won’t be enough in meeting China’s longer-term challenge of ensuring food security.

Rising incomes are spurring higher protein consumption.

More than two-fifths of the 55 percent increase in the world’s meat consumption between 1997 and 2020 is expected to occur in China, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

China will have to find ways to boost utilization of its farm resources, and technology will play a crucial role.

Bloomberg