China is taking significant steps toward embracing genetically modified (GM) crops in a bid to strengthen its food security and cut reliance on imports. While the transition is slow and carefully managed, the wider adoption of GM soybeans and maize is already reshaping the local feed market and could have a major impact on global trade flows.
One step in that direction is the wider adoption of genetically modified (GM) varieties of soybeans and maize. These not only promise to cut the costs for local feed mills but also alter global trade flows. While adoption is slow, the transition to GM crops entails big changes for the feed market.
At the end of 2024, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs awarded safety certificates for 5 gene-edited crop varieties and 12 types of GM crops, marking a new chapter in a campaign to widen the acceptance of GM technologies aimed at enhancing national food security. In recent years, China, the world’s largest importer of soybeans and corn, has been slowly but steadily approving the use of gene-edited varieties and GM crops, and silently expanding the area of planting.“Some GM maize and soybean varieties have now been approved for commercial planting, but only in certain areas – and it’s not public information exactly how extensive those plots are, but based on what is known, it’s likely to be around 10% of China’s maize and soybean growing area this year,” commented Even Pay, agriculture analyst at Trivium China, who has been closely following the Chinese GM transition for the last few years.
Record grain output in 2025
The efforts already seem to be paying off. China is projected to have a higher grain output in 2025, reaching 709 million tonnes, exceeding the record set in 2024, according to a report by the Chinese Agriculture Outlook Committee. Soybean production is also expected to grow, with a projected output of 21.17 million tonnes, a 2.5% increase year-on-year. To a certain extent, expanding the planting of GM crops can contribute to the increase in production.“In earlier trials, some of the GM varieties boosted yield 5-10% per mμ, but data from last year and industry rumours suggest results haven’t been that great at commercial scale,” Pay noted.
A bid to lower the feed costs
With wider GM adoption, China is struggling to make its livestock industry more competitive on a global scale, commented Ian Lahiffe, a Beijing-based Ag and Foodtech consultant and general manager at Jing Management Agritech.“Chinese feed costs have traditionally been twice those of Brazil or the US, and therefore these countries and others have been major suppliers of meats to the Chinese consumer market. Grain and soybean prices have remained stubbornly higher due to structural issues, such as average farm size and logistics,” Lahiffe said.The Chinese government has loosened restrictions on the use of GMOs to drive down costs for local feed producers, he said, adding that this is part of efforts to reduce feed costs. In addition, the policy pursued by the Chinese authorities has also encouraged investment in alternative proteins and alternative feed sources, with the intent of substituting imports.
Food security in China
The recent Chinese push to improve food security is part of a long-term strategy that is not directly linked to the ongoing geopolitical and trade disputes. “The top leadership in China are highly aware of food security risks – this is not a recent development, but a long-term feature of China’s relatively limited arable land and water, relatively large population, and long history of both natural and man-made famine,” Pay said.“ Current political leaders, including Xi himself, all have lived through memories of extreme hunger in their youth, and occasionally discuss this explicitly when emphasising that officials can’t relax their posture on food security,” Pay added.
Public concerns around safety of GM crops
Chinese society has a complex and often contradictory relationship with GM crops. Despite growing government support, widespread public acceptance of GM foods remains low. “Policymakers spent a couple of decades delaying the rollout of Western-developed GM crops for domestic planting by indicating it was necessary to take a great deal of care to ensure they were safe. That left the public with a lasting impression that they might not be entirely safe,” Pay explained.Because China also has GM labelling rules that require products with GM content to be clearly marked, consumers will continue to be able to vote with their yuan and will probably prefer non-GM foods in the medium term, Pay added.
Acceptance of GM crops in feed industry
Public concerns are less important for the feed industry, where the use of GM components is already perceived as a relatively common practice.“Consumer preferences may not matter for these initial crops, because the biggest source of import demand for maize and soy is livestock feeds, and domestic GM soy can simply replace part of this,” Pay added.
10% less for animal feed
Despite an expected decline in feed costs, the broader adoption of GM technologies is not expected to become a game-changer for the Chinese livestock industry, as it will be unable to catch up with the US in terms of costs for the time being.“Overall, I don’t expect the GM transition to have a hugely significant impact, perhaps at most reduce the cost of animal feed by 10% and having a similar impact on the price of meat, eggs and milk, but overall, the cost of local animal protein-based foods will still be less competitive than imports,” Lahiffe said.
China’s soybean imports
Rabobank analysts said that it is difficult to make any predictions about the impact of this policy, given that the Chinese government has not announced a definitive timeline for the full-scale commercialisation of GM crops and the implementation and its broader implications remain contingent on how the government chooses to proceed. So far, the embrace of GM technologies has not had any tangible impact on soybean imports.In 2024, China imported approximately 105 million mt of soybeans, a record high. The picture is slightly different from last year, as China imported 13.77 million mt of maize, a 49% decrease compared to the previous year. A surge in domestic production was one of the factors that drove imports down.
Efforts to boost domestic crop yields
China’s domestic rollout of GM maize and soy is part of several wider efforts to boost domestic yields of key staple crops to reduce import demand, Pay said, expressing confidence that it will ultimately make China less reliant on feedstuff imports.“It’s just one piece of the puzzle. But taken together, the entire effort is likely to reduce China’s demand for these crops and reshape their global market over time,” Pay added. “There’s no question that China’s demand for feed imports will fall over the next decade or so.”
