Arcadia GM rice project working to reward farmers in China Photo: Astin le Clercq

The US biotechnology company, Arcadia Biosciences (Davis, California), is working to reward farmers in China who grow its genetically modified rice with carbon credits, which can then be sold for cash.

The company is working with the Chinese government, using money from green customers who offset their flights and companies going carbon-neutral to fund the project. The credits gained by farmers would be eligible for use on the global carbon trading market, as established under the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Global agriculture currently produces 17% of greenhouse gases, double the amount of transport emissions, and nitrogen fertiliser accounts for around one-third of agriculture’s output.

Arcadia’s president and chief executive Eric Rey highlighted the benefits of the project. “A technology that allows farmers to participate in carbon credit markets will give agriculture a clear incentive to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It's a way for farmers, and us, to make money, while doing something positive to help the environment," he says.

Global rice production is currently estimated to emit a total of around 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and Arcadia’s technology has the potential to reduce these emissions by up to 50%. It is predicted that this reduction in emissions from rice would be worth around $1,500 million per year, with estimated emissions credits for farmers of around $750 million.

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Another benefit of the scheme lies in reducing nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas up to 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. At present, less than half the nitrogen applied is absorbed by crops, with the rest leaking into soil, water or being released into the air as nitrous oxide. Arcadia’s technology incorporates a gene that improves nitrogen uptake, resulting in less fertiliser being needed to produce a given yield. As a result, less nitrogen fertiliser would be required, thus allowing farmers to produce yields with lower nitrous oxide emissions.

Arcadia has predicted that by replacing global rice supplies with their GM version, 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide could also be saved each year. Arcadia is also working to incorporate the reduced-nitrogen technology into other key crops, including GM wheat, maize, oilseed rape, sugar beet and cotton, which could also be grown in exchange for carbon credits. "This could be used in all major crops, including barley and sugar cane” Rey notes.

Arcadia has future plans to expand the scheme to other countries, believing the approach could work in essentially all countries. Rey also believes the project holds important international benefits: “Considering the growth in global population and the need to increase food production to feed them, this technology could be an important tool to minimise the impact of agriculture on global warming,” he says.

The project also calls into evaluation global anxieties associated with genetic modification. Although widely grown in the US and Canada, GM crops remain controversial, largely due to health fears and perceived benefits solely for biotech companies and farmers, with Rey noting that the potential of the scheme to help tackle climate change requires a re-assessment of this opposition.

Clare Oxborrow, GM campaigner for Friends of the Earth, expressed caution at the project. "We have never taken an absolutist position on GM crops but it's too early to say if we would accept something like this given all the concerns about safety and environmental impact of GM,” she says. “We would need to have a proper debate, but at the moment we simply don't know enough about the impact of this technology or whether it would deliver."

Before growing the GM rice, Arcadia must gain regulatory approval and measure emissions from conventional rice, required by the UN before the GM scheme will be permitted into the Clean Development Mechanism, which rewards clean technology with carbon credits. It will also need to gain approval from the Chinese government to allow farmers to sell the GM rice for food.

China has already commercialised GM cotton and minor food crops including chillies, sweet peppers and tomatoes, but staple foods such as, maize soybeans and rice have not yet been approved. None of the crops currently being researched have been commercialised, although licences have been sold for their use, including to Monsanto for oilseed rape.

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