Source: Xinhua
04-22-2009 10:11
Special Report: Tech MaxCHONGQING, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Rigid domestic demand for grain crops has forced China to turn its back on corn and rapeseed, the traditional raw materials used by the West for bioenergy production, and focus on crops whose annual output stands much higher, said an agricultural legislator Monday.
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| Rigid domestic demand for grain crops has forced China to turn its back on corn and rapeseed, the traditional raw materials used by the West for bioenergy production. |
At a rural economic forum closed here on Monday, Vice Chairman Yin Chengjie of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, said the premise of China's bioenergy development strategy was "not to jeopardize food safety."
"The United States and the European Union have been grain-crop exporters for a long time. With the acceleration of their bioenergy production, however, they not only reduced exports but even imported more corn and rapeseed. That helped tilt the supply-demand balance and jack up the grain prices on international markets," said Yin.
"China must, and has the conditions to, explore a different road in biofuel production," he said.
For China, the bottleneck was not in processing technology but the country's limited farmland resources and grain crop shortage. Growing population and the accelerating produce-processing industries would also raise grain crop consumption, said Yin.
