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5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
1/11
China and the United States have found common cause in exerting influence at
the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Global food production could be
permanently changed.
The United States and China increasingly dominate the global system of food production and
trade. This shared role is leading to greater competition between the two countries, as well as
a deepening interdependence. With the appointment of an ambassador to the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations-based agency charged with defeating
hunger and improving nutrition and food security around the world, the Biden administration
now has an opportunity to reconsider and adjust US priorities and practices with China.
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
2/11
To understand how these two dominant forces in agriculture worldwide are interacting in a
swiftly changing landscape and how their relationship may influence future global food
production, it’s worth examining in detail the way FAO has dealt with the challenge of the fall
armyworm, an invasive pest that can reduce yields of crops such as corn, rice, and sorghum.
In 2016 the fall armyworm (a caterpillar, actually, which is the larval stage of the fall
armyworm moth) escaped its native home in the Americas and began spreading throughout
the world. Just two years after establishing itself in West Africa, the strong flier had crossed
Sub-Saharan Africa and made its way to India. By 2019 the fall armyworm was also in China,
which ranks as the second-largest corn producer in the world. As FAO began to respond to the
armyworm by offering management approaches to farmers in Africa and Asia, a new alignment
of interests between China and the United States became apparent.
The Biden administration now has an opportunity to reconsider and adjust US
priorities and practices with China.
The shift seems to have begun when, in September 2019, Qu Dongyu, the newly elected
Chinese director-general of the FAO, flew to Washington, DC, to meet with high-level officials
of the US State Department and other Trump administration officials. Director-General Qu
was seeking US support for his FAO agenda. The cordiality of his reception was remarkable,
especially considering the belligerent official rhetoric and global posturing that was
characteristic of the relationship between China and the United States then. Not long before,
President Trump had announced that the United States would withdraw altogether from
FAO’s sister UN organization, the World Health Organization, because of its alleged
subservience to China. And yet here the United States was, showing glowing support for
FAO’s new Chinese Director-General.
During that visit, Chinese and US officials negotiated what appears to be a gentleman’s
agreement that would allow the two countries to work together in FAO. That understanding
appears to have been built on a common economic interest of the two countries, namely the
continued expansion of commercial technologies in animal and crop health, including
pesticides and pest-resistant genetically modified (GM) crops, especially in Sub-Saharan
Africa and Asia—regions adversely affected by the fall armyworm but in which the application
of these technologies is still relatively low. In other words, areas that represent large
potential markets for agricultural technologies.
The mainly Western corporations producing these technologies, with robust support from the
US Agency for International Development, have long lobbied to move commercial agricultural
practices such as pesticides and GM crops into Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
3/11
developing world now alarmed by the arrival of the fall armyworm. At the same time, there
are clear signals that China intends to compete against the West, with hopes to dominate
those markets.
Shortly before his trip to the United States in September 2019, Qu Dongyu, the former vice-
minister of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, had been elected by a vote
of 108 out of 194 of FAO’s member countries. (FAO has a one-vote-per-country governance
structure, contrasting with some other international organizations such as the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund that base their governance structure on countries’
budget contributions.) China had successfully lobbied for its candidate, especially among
countries that had received Chinese investment and support in recent years.
During the campaign and election for FAO director-general
the campaign and election for FAO director-general
the campaign and election for FAO director-general
the campaign and election for FAO director-general
the campaign and election for FAO director-general, there were rumors of forgiven
debt and requirements that the country representatives photograph proof of their secret vote.
Although the United States did not support the Chinese candidate (or the consensus
European Union candidate, Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle of France, voting instead for a
wildcard candidate, Davit Kirvalidze of Georgia), neither did it mount viable opposition to
Qu’s candidacy. The Trump-appointed ambassador to FAO, Kip Tom, arrived for the vote in
Rome too late to lead a serious opposition.
The United States has long had great influence at FAO, in part based on its contribution of
20% of the FAO annual budget and large additional contributions to specific issue areas. But
in recent years the United States has grown increasingly at odds with other FAO member
countries in technical discussions about food systems. These disagreements have been
especially notable over the use of GM crops, as well as hormones and antibiotics in milk and
animal production—practices that are unwelcome in European countries—and agroecology
agroecology
agroecology
agroecology
agroecology
(the science of applying ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of
sustainable food systems), which FAO supports as an alternative to the large-scale
monoculture production promoted by global agro-industry. The discussions over GM crops
have been particularly acrimonious and have spilled over into discussions about the laws and
policies in countries across Africa and Asia.
The US relationship toward FAO became increasingly tense during the tenure of the previous
director-general, José Graziano da Silva of Brazil, a member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party and
mentee of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The United States had a series of complaints
about FAO’s programs, policy support, and projects under Graziano da Silva, and had to
content itself with maintaining influence only within certain spheres, notably in animal and
plant health, standard-setting in food safety and trade, and emergency relief.
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
4/11
In recent years the United States has grown increasingly at odds with other FAO
member countries in technical discussions about food systems. These
disagreements have been especially notable over the use of GM crops.
Meanwhile the booming Chinese economy and rapidly expanding middle class over the past 25
years have put severe strains on China’s food systems. To meet the growing expectations of
the middle class, especially for animal protein, China has become dependent on globally
sourced agricultural inputs, notably feed grains. Its imports of soybeans and corn for animal
feed have increased markedly.
In the past two years China has also suffered a crisis in its pig production system: a dramatic
outbreak of African swine fever resulted in the death of close to one-half of the country’s
estimated 300 million pigs, making it necessary to import huge volumes of meat to fill a large
domestic supply shortage. A large part of these imports of feed and animals has come from
the United States.
China has become the world’s largest importer of corn, and US corn exports to China are at
record levels. Unprecedented high demand from China is a leading factor in the high prices in
the United States, where corn prices rose from $3.20/bushel in August 2020 to $5.50/bushel in
February 2021. As of May 5, 2021, the price was $7.55/bushel.
To ensure present and future supply, China has been aggressively securing sources of feed and
animals from the Western food sector, as well as investing in companies and technologies that
are likely to play an important role in global food production in the future. In 2013 Shuanghui
International, a Chinese meat company, bought the US company Smithfield, the world’s
largest pork producer with 25% of the US market. Shuanghui paid a 30% premium of $4.7
billion for Smithfield, which was the largest Chinese acquisition of a US firm at the time.
China has also aggressively expanded its role in the global food supply by purchasing key
Western agricultural corporations and investing in domestic corporations that are developing
agricultural production technologies. In 2016 ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned enterprise,
agreed to pay $43 billion to purchase Syngenta, a Swiss leader in global crop and animal
health. Other Chinese agriculture technology companies have been rapidly developing new
products, especially in biotechnology. Many of these companies have state-of-the-art
laboratories and are creating innovative technologies that will soon reach commercial use.
The use of GM crops has a particularly interesting role in the US-China agreement at FAO.
While the use of this technology has expanded rapidly in some countries, including the United
States, it has been limited in China to nonfood crops (chiefly cotton) because of public
opposition to its use in food crops. Chinese companies have been rapidly developing GM food
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
5/11
crops (including a GM corn that a Chinese company has tested in Argentina), yet the
government has not approved their commercial use for food crops in China.
Enter the fall armyworm outbreak. Although yield loss to the pest’s infestation typically is
sporadic and often not that significant in healthy corn crops, the damage can be severe.
Throughout the United States and Brazil, Argentina, and a few other countries, farmers in
large commercial operations control the pest by using GM corn seed that incorporates genes
from a bacterium (Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short) that expresses toxins that kill fall
armyworm and other caterpillars. This Bt-corn has been commercially successful for large
operations that sell their corn for animal feed, especially where the farmers are supported by
crop insurance and government subsidies.
When the fall armyworm hit Africa, US corporations that had been trying to sell their GM
crops in Sub-Saharan Africa quickly mobilized, and with support from USAID, used the pest as
a pretext to push governments to allow the use of GM crops to both address the fall
armyworm and introduce GM crop technology into the region.
US corporate interests have long influenced USAID to promote agricultural biotechnology,
especially the use of GM crops. Since Bt-corn was first developed and commercialized by
Monsanto (now Bayer) and others in the mid-1990s, USAID has pushed hard for countries to
adopt policies allowing for the commercialization of GM crops. In response to fall armyworm,
US government support to countries consistently has had a strong component of promoting
national policies and laws allowing the use of GM crops. Sub-Saharan Africa, now the focus of
emerging responses to the fall armyworm, has become a flashpoint for this pressure as most
countries in the subregion do not permit the use of GM crops or are taking a slow and careful
approach to approving the technologies.
Until now, the FAO has not jumped on board the US-led campaign for GM corn as the answer
to fall armyworm, reasoning that because 98% of corn farmers in Africa are smallholders,
typically growing less than two acres of corn, they are unlikely to need GM seed. Corn
typically is not a commercial crop in Sub-Saharan Africa, although South Africa is an
exception. Farmers grow the crop largely for household consumption, and if they sell some
excess, it is typically to local markets or intermediaries that offer a low price. Smallholder
farmers have little access to crop insurance or government subsidies, and their economic
circumstances and risk aversion generally preclude the use of inputs (including fertilizer) for
their corn crops.
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
6/11
US corporations used the pest as a pretext to push governments to allow the use of
GM crops to both address the fall armyworm and introduce GM crop technology
into the region.
Rather than promoting GM corn, the FAO fall armyworm program worked productively with
smallholder farmers and associated organizations to help quantify the real amount (versus
perceived or promoted narratives) of crop loss and identify locally available, low-cost, and
effective management methods. Most of these methods are based on an understanding of the
local context, including agroecology of the fall armyworm in corn. Smallholder farmers
around the world have observed an array of natural enemies that help control fall armyworms,
including parasites, predators, and insect pathogens. They have also seen how some
companion plants emit chemical signals that keep fall armyworm moths away from the corn
plants. FAO promoted the collaboration of scientists with farmers to further elucidate the
ecological principles underpinning smallholder fall armyworm management and publish their
findings in scientific journals. Unfortunately, this smallholder farmer-centered,
agroecological approach to fall armyworm management ran diametrically opposed to the
interests that promote GM corn and that now are so forcefully influencing FAO’s policy
priorities.
The United States repeatedly expressed its frustration over FAO’s refusal to adopt a pro-GM
corn narrative for solving Sub-Saharan Africa’s fall armyworm problem. In a February 2020
speech (posted but no longer available on the USDA website) given at the USDA Agricultural
Outlook Forum in Arlington, Virginia, Tom criticized FAO’s Fall Armyworm Program and
bemoaned FAO’s broader support for agroecology, which he attributed in part to the influence
of European delegations and civil society organizations.
In that February speech, Tom—who is co-owner of Tom Farms in Leesburg, Indiana, a large
producer of GM corn seed for Bayer—also mentioned that the United States had met with
FAO’s new Director-General and was convinced that he supported the US agenda of
promoting GM crops and other technologies as the answer to Sub-Saharan Africa’s
agricultural woes. He summed up: “So, we look forward to working together with Director Qu
during his time at FAO.”
The arrival of fall armyworm in China could well be the tipping point in China’s decision
about the commercial use of GM corn, as signaled by several recent scientific publications by
Chinese researchers and the submission of the biotechnology to the Biosafety Committee in
China. In addition to the global agricultural biotechnology leader Syngenta, now under
Chinese ownership, other Chinese biotechnology companies are rapidly moving ahead in
developing GM products. The GM corn that China is testing is from Chinese companies, and
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
7/11
China is already testing their GM corn in other parts of the world. So while the United States
has worked hard to change the laws and policies of African countries to permit GM corn, and
vigorously promoted its use, the Chinese organizations joining the efforts most recently
might be the ones to benefit most from the new markets.
A shared interest in promoting GM crops has been one reason for the United States’ open
support of the FAO’s Chinese director-general. But this marriage of convenience has had its
casualties. Swiss national Hans Dreyer, director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection
Division, was ousted at the end of 2019, apparently as part of the US-China agreement. An
enormously respected scientist and leader at FAO, Dryer was dedicated to helping farmers
find solutions tailored specifically to their situations. He frequently was tasked with finding a
narrow path forward in the often-contentious discussions around the use of GM crops and
agroecology and was lauded for satisfying the FAO membership through such turmoil for
several years. Ethiopian national Berhe G. Tekola, director of the Animal Production and
Animal Health Division, was also terminated, though he was allowed to stay on for six months
longer, until July 2020. Educated in veterinary medicine in Cuba, Tekola had never been
viewed as an ally by the United States.
The arrival of fall armyworm in China could well be the tipping point in China’s
decision about the commercial use of GM corn.
Another expression of the shared US-China agenda to promote conventional pesticides and
GM crops was manifested in a 2020 agreement between FAO and CropLife, an international
trade association representing the chemical and GM crop protection industry. Through FAO’s
work on eliminating obsolete pesticides and implementing the International Code of Conduct
International Code of Conduct
International Code of Conduct
International Code of Conduct
International Code of Conduct
on Pesticide Management
on Pesticide Management
on Pesticide Management
on Pesticide Management
on Pesticide Management and the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (treaties
designed to reduce human health and environmental contamination risks), FAO and CropLife
have tangled with each other over pesticide use for decades. While the two parties have
sometimes been able to work together, the relationship has been tense, as the industry
constantly pushes its agenda of promoting pesticide sales and use, especially in developing
countries such as those now affected by the fall armyworm; FAO has pushed back to enforce
international treaties and agreements.
But under Director-General Qu, CropLife and FAO have developed a first-ever strategic
partnership, signed virtually on October 2, 2020, by Qu and CropLife International’s
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
8/11
President and CEO Giulia Di Tommaso. FAO’s announcement of the new agreement was
effusive, stating that the agreement “renews and strengthens our collaboration and
demonstrates the determination of the plant science sector to not only mobilize resources but
also to work constructively in a partnership where we share common goals.” The chair of
CropLife International, Liam Condon, welcomed the new partnership as “the start of a new
and exciting journey for both organizations.”
The FAO Director-General vigorously defended the new agreement after it came under
criticism from groups of scientists, researchers, civil societies, and Indigenous people’s
organizations. The agreement has also been criticized by former senior officials of FAO. The
critiques all centered around the language used in the announcement, which observers viewed
as portending a greater CropLife influence at FAO to push their commercial interests.
CropLife’s influence at FAO would be a departure from FAO’s role as a neutral forum for
discussions regarding the public good, sustainability, and global development goals, and as a
trusted implementer of international pesticide conventions such as the Rotterdam
Convention.
The United States and China make for strange bedfellows at FAO. The Biden administration
has an opportunity to carefully examine and recalibrate the current US-China agreement and
to redefine more broadly the US position within the organization. Tom resigned from his post
and returned to his farm in Indiana in January 2021. The Biden administration will now have
to decide not only who will replace him but also how the United States, more broadly, will
engage at FAO on essential issues. These issues include how to best address the challenges
posed by the fall armyworm and, more generally, how to promote US leadership of global
development under USAID. The new administration will have to grapple with the legacy of
powerful corporate interests in agricultural pesticides and GM crops at FAO and USAID, and
navigate a way forward to rebuild partnerships that sincerely focus on helping to achieve a
variety of agricultural, environmental, and economic goals.
(hruskaa1@msu.edu) worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations for over 15 years. Before he retired from the organization in 2019, he was principal technical
coordinator for FAO’s fall armyworm response. Currently he is director of Global IDEAS at Michigan State
University.
Respond to the ideas raised in this essay by writing to forum@issues.org. And read what
others are saying in our lively Forum section.
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
9/11
Hruska, Allan. “What the Global Battle Against the Fall Armyworm Reveals About How the US
and China See the Future of Global Food Production.” Issues in Science and Technology (May 6,
2021).
The essays here deliver fresh insights on the social, political, and scientific aspects of the
pandemic, which can help you more fully understand and respond to the complex and difficult
events that are now unfolding.
5/7/2021
Why China and the US Joined Forces to Fight the Fall Armyworm
https://issues.org/fall-armyworm-us-china-global-food-production-hruska/
10/11
Responding to the forms of plants and organic life, artist David Hicks thinks of
agricultural cycles as allegories for the human condition.
Using citrus waste to grow highly absorbent bacterial cellulose that can be made into a
diaper can be a green alternative to non-biodegradable diapers