The way out of China's Food Security lies in Ecological Agriculture

I. the basic national conditions of China's grain production

In recent years, after the author made on-the-spot visits to Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Guangdong, Hainan and other places, I am very worried about the current problem of food security in our country. even worried. Of the 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in mainland China, 50% are short of food. Among them, the self-sufficiency rate of Hainan, Qinghai, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing and so on is only 12% Mel 56%. Only a few provinces such as Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Henan are really rich in grain, with a self-sufficiency rate of 150% Mi 375%. While Gansu, Ningxia, Jiang Su, Hunan, Sichuan and so on are just enough (the self-sufficiency rate is 102% per cent), there is almost no grain to adjust. We must attach great importance to the food crisis, which may lead to social unrest if it is not handled properly.

At present, there are the following practical problems in grain production and consumption in China:

First, there are many people and little land, and there is a serious shortage of cultivated land resources. The area of arable land in China ranks fourth in the world, second only to the United States, Russia and India, but our country has too many people, with an average of only 1.4 mu of arable land, less than 50% of the per capita arable land in the world. The per capita arable land in Canada is 18 times that of ours, and that of India is 20 times that of ours. The per capita land area of China ranks 110th among more than 190 countries in the world, and the area of cultivated land ranks after 126th. At present, the per capita cultivated land in 664 cities and counties in China is below the warning line of 0.8 mu per capita determined by the United Nations. The area of cultivated land in the country has dropped to 1.8 billion mu, and the contradiction between large population and little land is becoming more and more prominent with the rapid development of social economy.

Second, farmers gradually lose their enthusiasm for growing grain. The cost of farming for farmers is high, while the price of grain is low. Take the planting of wheat and corn in rural areas of Shandong as an example, the costs of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, machine ploughing, watering, harvesting and seeds are 580 yuan per mu, while those of wheat and corn in middle-yield fields in Shandong are about 800-900 jin / mu (excluding labor costs). In case of drought, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, plastic film prices, the income is only 500-600 yuan. Shandong has only one harvest in two seasons, which is far less than going out to work for a month to earn more, while Yuan Longping estimates that the net income of farmers growing rice in Hunan is only four or five yuan! In the 1970s, the annual output of wheat and corn in Shandong exceeded 1000 jin / mu, with an income of RMB 200 yuan. At that time, if calculated in terms of the purchasing power of gold, it would be worth 27000 yuan today!

The third is the decline of soil power. Because they don't make money from farming, farmers don't take good care of the land. The traditional way of intensive farming has been mercilessly abandoned and turned to rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural film and herbicides, resulting in a serious decline in soil fertility. Pesticides are widely used in farmland, orchards and vegetable gardens, and farmland is full of killing opportunities, killing more and more pests and fewer and fewer beneficial insects and birds. Due to the decline of soil fertility, the per unit yield of grain in China has hardly increased significantly in the past eight years, but the application of chemical fertilizer has increased by 40%. The production efficiency of chemical fertilizer per kilogram is decreasing at the rate of 1 kg less grain. This trend shows that China's cultivated land is not lack of chemical fertilizers, but lack of organic fertilizers and soil biodiversity.

Fourth, the cultivated land is abandoned, and the planting area cannot be guaranteed. As grain is cheap, even if the output increases, it will not bring real benefits to farmers. Smart farmers in the south of the Yangtze River have abandoned their land, enough to eat for themselves, and are in no mood to produce food for city dwellers. The phenomenon of abandonment in Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Sichuan is becoming more and more serious. In addition, all over the country engaged in real estate development and industrial development, repeatedly hit the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land. Local governments occupy fertile land in the name of "occupation-compensation balance", but almost all the farmland is of poor quality, which greatly reduces the effective grain sowing area.

Fifth, grain imports have a great impact on China's agricultural production. On the one hand, farmers' enthusiasm for farming has declined, grain production capacity is congenitally insufficient, on the other hand, a large number of imports of grain and oil crops. In 2014, China imported 72.5 million tons of grain, including soybeans, barley and sorghum, from the United States, Brazil and other countries. In fact, our food security bottom line was broken as early as 2011, when China imported 52.5 million tons of GM soybeans, 5 million tons of GM corn, 1.2 million tons of wheat, 1.51 million tons of soybean oil and 6.6 million tons of palm oil. Imported grain, together with imported oil crops and equivalent grain, reached 139 million tons, accounting for 19.2 per cent of China's consumption that year, far exceeding the 10 per cent safety warning line. The large amount of grain imports does not coincide with the official "11th consecutive increase" of grain.

Sixth, the construction of agricultural infrastructure is seriously lagging behind, living on the old foundation of the Mao Zedong era. Take irrigation and water conservancy facilities as an example, most of the backbone projects of irrigation and water conservancy in China were built in the 1950s and 1970s. Up to now, the phenomenon of aging and damage of water conservancy facilities is very serious, and there is a lack of maintenance and construction. Some irrigation and water conservancy facilities have been unable to play their due functions of drought resistance, flood discharge and irrigation. According to a survey conducted by the water conservancy department, the matching rate of large and medium-sized irrigation areas across the country is only 70%, the intact rate of backbone projects is only 50%, the dangerous section of backbone channels is 30%, and the intact rate of buildings such as sluice and culvert bridges above Douqu is only 50.1%. The intact rate of large and medium-sized drainage and irrigation pumping stations is less than 60%. As a result, the effective irrigation area of cultivated land is reduced by 3 million mu every year.

Seventh, a large amount of food is wasted. With the improvement of people's living standards, coupled with the serious decoupling of food and non-staple food prices from their value, coupled with the fact that agriculture has long valued quantity over quality, the quality of agricultural products has been declining, and cheap food is gradually associated with rubbish. It doesn't hurt if it's wasted. Through the systematic analysis of the protein and fat of the remaining meals in 2700 tables of different sizes in large, medium and small cities from 2007 to 2008, it is roughly estimated that the only food protein and fat wasted in China from 2006 to 2008 is 8 million tons and 3 million tons respectively. According to the comprehensive calculation of protein, fat, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins wasted by food and beverage, Chinese consumers have at least poured out about 200 million people a year's food rations in restaurants of large scale. China has gradually entered a large country of food and beverage consumption, especially in holidays, family and friend gatherings and official receptions. According to the expert budget, if you add in the waste of collective canteens, food waste of individuals and families, and waste in food storage and transportation, it is estimated that the total amount of food wasted across the country can feed 2.5 billion to 300 million people every year. In this sense, a large amount of imported grain has become real rubbish on the dinner table, which is really shocking.

II. Risks of genetically modified agriculture

With the deterioration of agricultural production capacity, it is doubtful that grain production has been "continuously increasing" for many years. The law of grain production is "one bumper, one less than two flat", and a bumper grain harvest for many years in a row is not in line with the agricultural law. Another strange thing is that the intensity of imported grain in our country is strengthened with the increase of grain output. Imports of wheat, corn and soybeans alone rose from 27.49 million tons in 2004 to 71.4 million tons in 2014, an increase of 159 percent, not including imported oilseeds. At the same time, China's total grain output (including grains, legumes and potatoes) increased from 469.46 million tons in 2004 to 607.09 million tons in 2014, an increase of only 29%. It can be seen that the grain import is increasing year by year, and the intensity is gradually increasing, which supports the grain "11 consecutive growth" to a certain extent.

China's current agriculture is basically a plate of loose sand, eating the old capital of the past. The food crisis is like the tip of the iceberg, slowly coming. How should China deal with this crisis? Many experts and enterprises are calling for GM, and only a small number of people suggest ecological agriculture as the author does. Which road is the bright road for China's food security? The author believes that under the current technological conditions, the hasty application of transgenic technology to agriculture will bring great danger to China's food safety, ecosystem and food strategy. This needs to attract our great attention.

one。 Genetically modified genes and Food Safety

Transgenic technology is a high technology, as a reserve of scientific research strength, we should vigorously support its research. However, if it is to be applied to human life-threatening food production, we must be very careful. Over the past 20 years, the controversy about the safety of genetically modified foods has never stopped. Although many experts claim that GM food is safe and safe to eat, they are not sure what the consequences of long-term consumption of GM food will be. In fact, because of the relativity of human cognition, it takes a long time to see the effect of using certain techniques in food. Before that, any commitment or guarantee for its safety was extremely irresponsible. For example, Sudan red was first hailed as a new human invention, but now it is a crime to add Sudan red to food, and the well-known melamine has just gone to society as the second prize for scientific and technological progress. it was not until the lives and health of thousands of children were fatally affected that the chemical name "Sudan red" was recognized. Despite the rapid development of human science and technology, human control over genes is far from freewheeling. It will take a long time to test whether the easy integration of different homologous genes will have serious consequences. It is not easy to draw conclusions from the results of several animal experiments. So far, Monsanto has never put forward any direct evidence that GM foods are harmless for human consumption. We know that the research and development of new drugs still requires four phases of clinical human trials, but genetically modified foods are easily passed because of the light "international regulations that foods do not have to be tested in human beings" or "substantially equivalent". This is really unconvincing.

On the issue of food safety of genetically modified food, a specific dispute is whether genetically modified Bt protein is harmful to human body. According to Chinese transgenic experts, the evaluation of the safety of genetically modified crops in China is very strict, even to a harsh degree. So what on earth is this "harsh" evaluation? It's just a 7-day "acute toxicity test" of Bt protein. Bt protein was directly given to mice by intragastric administration of 5 grams of Bt protein per kilogram. The results showed that there was no poisoning in mice. As a result, they concluded that Huahui 1, which obtained the safety certificate, had an ≤ content of 2.5ug / g in rice, and that a person weighing 60kg would need to eat 120t rice to reach the tested dose of 5g / kg (the ratio of anti-insect protein to body weight). In other words, according to the results of this experiment, it should be safe for an adult to eat 'Huahui 1' genetically modified rice for 657 years if it is calculated to eat 500 grams of rice a day. However, the above rice safety experiments are all in a hypothetical state. The intragastric administration of Bt protein in mice is a completely different concept from an adult or even a child who eats rice containing Bt protein every day. Using mouse weight to mechanically push human weight, and judging from this that an adult eating 657-year-old genetically modified rice will not have a complete problem, it is also very arbitrary. In fact, scientific studies have shown that Bt protein, which is toxic to insect cells, can lead to apoptosis of human cells such as HL-60. This fully proves that Bt protein is potentially toxic to humans. Therefore, the safety of genetically modified food must be reassessed, otherwise it will lead to serious consequences.

two。 Transgenic and ecosystem health

Ecosystem refers to the relatively stable dynamic equilibrium formed by the mutual influence and restriction between biology and environment in a certain space of nature. The ecosystem is an organic whole, and the destruction of any link will endanger the whole system. The application of transgenic technology to agriculture will bring disaster to the ecosystem.

First of all, the impact on biodiversity. On the one hand, genetically modified organisms do harm to non-target organisms. Insect-resistant and disease-resistant transgenic plants released into the environment will not only be toxic to pests and bacteria, but also have a direct or indirect impact on many beneficial organisms in the environment, resulting in the death of some beneficial organisms. Recently, it has been found that butterflies, bees and other species have a downward trend due to the cultivation of genetically modified crops. What is more serious, when planting GM crops with insect resistance and disease resistance, people will use herbicides and pesticides more without scruples, thus killing all species other than GM crops, resulting in species imbalance in the farmland ecosystem. On the other hand, the use of genetically modified crops to resist grass and insects can easily lead to the variation of target weeds and target pests, resulting in more difficult to remove "super weeds" and "super pests". In this way, more pesticides need to be sprayed, causing more harm to farmland and the natural ecological environment.

Secondly, the effect on soil fertility. Soil fertility is an important factor affecting agricultural production efficiency. Among the many factors affecting soil fertility, soil microorganisms occupy an important position, which is the concrete embodiment of soil activity. Soil microorganisms play an important role in the formation and degradation of organic matter, the mineralization and fixation of nutrients, the improvement of soil structure, the regulation of plant pathology and so on. After planting Bt transgenic crops, the number and activity of some functional microorganisms in soil decreased. Compared with traditional cotton, the similarity of bacterial diversity in soil rhizosphere of transgenic Bt cotton was only 74%-77% at seedling stage, and only 58%-60% at bud stage and flowering stage. In the soil where Bt transgenic cotton was planted in India, the number of actinomycetes decreased by 17%, and the number of other beneficial microorganisms decreased by 14%. In the soil where transgenic insect-resistant cotton was planted in China for 10 years, the number of nitrogen-fixing bacteria decreased significantly, compared with 17% in the control and 11% in genetically modified cotton, which decreased by about 35%. In addition, planting genetically modified crops also affects the soil animal community, resulting in changes in the structure and function of soil animals, all of which have a significant impact on soil fertilizer.

Finally, the impact on the water environment. In September 2010, American scientists published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that many rivers around the Midwestern corn belt were contaminated with genetically modified corn toxin protein. In the United States, more than 85% of corn is dewormed or herbicide resistant by genetically modified corn. Genetically modified corn can drive out corn borer and produce an insecticidal Cry (12A) b toxic protein. In rivers within 500m of the cornfield, researchers detected the toxic protein in plant debris; 86 per cent of the 217 rivers sampled contained corn leaves, husks, straw or grain cobs; 13 per cent contained detectable Cry (12A) b proteins.

Another biggest use of genetically modified crops is weed control. Countries like the United States have abandoned intensive farming and use herbicides to control weeds. The biggest problem with herbicide-resistant crops is glyphosate residues. Is such food safe? On September 21, 2012, the University of Kane in France conducted a two-year trial on 200 experimental mice and found that glyphosate-resistant corn NK603 was prone to tumor and visceral damage. At the 14th month of the trial, none of the mice in the control group were found to have cancer, while 10 to 30 per cent of the mice in the group fed a diet containing NK603 and glyphosate developed tumors. In the 24th month of the trial, 50 to 80 per cent of the mice fed with NK603 and glyphosate herbicides developed tumors, with an average of as many as three tumors per mouse.

The effect of transgene on health has long attracted the attention of medical institutions. As early as 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine officially announced that genetically modified foods are seriously harmful to human health. "some animal experiments have shown that eating genetically modified foods has a risk of serious damage to health, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, regulation of insulin and changes in major viscera and gastrointestinal systems," the institute said in a research report.