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Public's views on transgenic technology
Apr 1 ~ Apr 30
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Herbicide usage among peasants
Late Jul ~ Early Aug
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Statistical survey of herbicide market
Public's views on transgenic technology
Transgenic technology has been showing brilliant talents in the novel fields like new energy and medicines and has propelled the economy in both primary and secondary industries. However, controversial transgenic technology has not been mature enough, especially the underlying issue relative to ethics and security, which stirred debate among the public, Thus, the main purpose of this survey is to understand publics’ attitudes toward transgenic technology.
Read MoreBackground
With the vast development of human society as well as the continuous increase of global population, a serious imbalance between humans’ demands and natural supply gradually occurs. Fortunately, the rapid progress of humans’ science and technology has bridged this contradiction to a certain degree. Transgenic technology is a novel method raised since 21st century, the improvement of which possesses a significant potential to both current issues worldwide and development of human beings in a long run. Nowadays, transgenic technology has already generated high economic value in traditional industries including primary industries and secondary industries. As for the novel fields like new energy and medicines, transgenic technology has also exhibited its brilliant talents. However transgenic technology is a two-edged sword, parts of which are still not mature enough, especially the underlying issue with regard to ethics and security associated with it has already led to a large amount of discussions. Thus, the main purpose of this survey is to understand publics’ attitudes toward transgenic technology.
Purpose
As a part of Human Practice, this report of survey will be primarily subject to learn publics’ attitudes toward transgenic technology and understand their doubts over this novel technology.
Respondent and general condition
Respondent: Most undergraduates, some students’ parents and random people in the public
General condition: Respondents’ ages are mostly distributed from 18 to 30, and the data distribution follows the model of Gaussian distribution, while its axis of symmetry is around X=20(years old). Additionally, respondents with a Bachelor or higher degree have taken up a large proportion of the sum.
Method
The survey was based on a questionnaire which has been given out randomly to the public through the Internet. 321 questionnaires have been collected. As the coverage is rather wide, the amount of data is large, the result is reliable to a high degree.
Survey time
From 2017 April 1st to 2017 April 30th
Contents of questionnaires
There are 16 questions included in this questionnaire. Contents of it are mainly consisted of publics’ understanding on transgenic technology, risks and harm of it, as well as the future and application of it.
Results
1. Views toward transgenic technology among different ages
What's your attitude toward transgenic research project？
Do you think whether transgenic technology will be promising in future？
Have you ever used transgenic products?
A glance at these results of surveys illustrates that youngsters learn more about transgenic technology to certain degree, meanwhile they have exhibited an expectation to the promising prospect in the development of transgenic technology. However this is not a case for the senior people especially for the elderly. Large amount of them hold skeptical views to the transgenic products and object to researches with regard to transgenic technology. At the same time, the fact that the penetration of approved transgenic products is rather low is indicated.
2. Views toward transgenic technology among different majors and educational levels
Do you know about transgenic technology?
It can be apparently concluded from the graphs and diagrams above that nearly half of the students with a bachelor or higher degree who major in Biology know very well about transgenic technology while over 90 percent of biology-major students are familiar with this technology. In comparison, as non-Biology major students learn little about transgenic technology, around half of them has just heard of the term of “transgenic technology” and actually knows genuinely a little about the essence. It obviously reflects the truth that publics’ acknowledgement of transgenic technology has still been hindered at the surface currently in China, thus the public can sometimes be easily misled and panics can be easily raised by rumors as well.
What do you think about transgenic products？
As the diagram shown, as for those non-biology major respondents, the lower educational degrees they obtained, the larger the proportion of people who consider transgenic products to do more harm than good is. While transgenic products are more highly-recognized by students with a bachelor degree or a higher one, and they may give out a more reasonable comment.
What's your attitude to transgenic research project？
As the diagram and bar chart directly shown, over two thirds of the people who major in Biology with a Bachelor or higher degree, while about one third of them hold a neutral view, only a tiny percent of 5 object to researches concerning transgenic program. On the other hand, the circumstances are completely different. When it comes to non-Biology major students, the supporting rate is nearly 30 percent, while most of them still stay neutral and the lower educational degree they got, the bigger proportion of those who are hold a opposite idea will be taken up.
Do you think transgenic technology will be very promising in future？
As the results indicated, more than 55% of Biology major respondents stay in positive over this new technology. In contrast, nearly half of the respondents who are non-Biology major maintain neutral. Besides, about 36 percent of those with a relatively low educational level don’t speak highly of the development transgenic technology in the long run.
Do you know that there are intrinsic transgenic phenomena in the nature？
As results vividly exhibited, about one third of respondents who are non-Biology major have no idea about natural transgenic phenomenon, which is not related to respondents’ educational levels. Besides, little do they learn about neither three of them. Among respondents whose majors are Biology, and over 80 percent of them have learnt about natural transgenic system mediated by Agrobacterium, thus the proportion of those who know little about natural transgenic phenomenon is rather low.
3. Others
What possible risks do you think the transgenic products could have？
Results collected from respondents vividly reveal that the part which the public worry most about is the potentially unpredictable and uncontrollable irreversible risk transgenic products might harbor. While the fear of the possibility that these products might do harm to biodiversity takes the second place. In comparison, the worry of the probability that they might enter the market randomly occupied the smallest percentage.
Conclusion
In general, young people are paying more attentions to the current situation, and provide more supports to it. Respondents with a degree of Bachelor or higher are more familiar about transgenic technology than those with a lower degree, meanwhile attitudes toward this novel technology are becoming more objective, and more people hold a positive mind of this novel technology.
As for those undergraduates and students who are Biology major, they are much more familiar with the technology than those were not. Additionally, they were optimistic of its development and offered much support. Besides, almost 90% of respondents consider it to be necessary to set relevant laws to standardize researches with regard to transgenic technology.
Reture OverviewSuvery on pesticide usage among peasants.
Our project is about developing a kind of novel bio-pesticides dedicated to benefiting peasants. Therefore, It is indispensable for us to know the current pesticides usage and the real needs among them, so that we could design project better to meet their demands and seek for the opportunity to bring it to the market.
Read MoreMotivation
Our project is about developing a kind of novel bio-pesticides dedicated to benefiting peasants. Therefore, indispensable for us to know the current pesticides usage and the real needs among them.
Through survey, we have knew that glysphosate is one of the most common-used herbicide in China. Although it has been banned in many countries for the resistance problem and the potential toxicity to human and nature. we still hoped to get the real user experience of these kinds of chemical herbicide for further thinking what we can do to improve farmers’ farming condition. so that we could design project better to meet their demands and seek for the opportunity to bring it to the market.
Respondents
Respondents: All of respondents are local farmers.
General conditions: Most farmers have been living in northwestern region of China for many generations and most of them are senior citizens. They make their livings through farming.
Method
Because of the condition that most farmers’ literacy was not so good, we collected the information and data through the questions we asked them. The respondents were randomly selected, and this survey is based on those questions included in the questionnaire.
Survey time
From late July to early August
Contents of survey
There are 12 questions included in this questionnaire, and they are mainly consisted of questions relating to the current situation of farmers’ pesticide usage, the advantage and disadvantage of their usage.
Results
1. Your sex is __?
2. How long have you taken up a career as a farmer?
Most answers to this question were more than 20 years, and some were between 10 to 20 years. Thus, from this question, we could acknowledge that most of farmers were really experienced farmers, and they have taken up planting for long. As those farmers lacked professional training, most farmers do farming based on the experience from their parents or relatives.
3. The area of the agriculture land in your home is __ acre.
Most answers were between 2 to 5 acres, while only few answers were from 7 to 8 acres. The average lands farmers owned are not so big, while some of them still possessed a large amount of farming lands. Considering the population density in the certain area, the yearly needs of herbicides were really big.
4. What kind of crops do you spray pesticide on and apply fertilizers to?
Most of the fertilizers were applied to wheat, corns and fruit trees. Large amount of herbicides were sprayed on wheat, corns and potatoes. The pesticides were primarily sprayed on wheat and corns.
The herbicide and pesticide at this region were mainly sprayed on two kinds of crops – wheat and corns. Thus, we must select the target genes which could not be found in corns and wheat, if we want to apply our bio-herbicides to this region.
5. What kinds of fertilizers do you usually use?
Most farmers chose to use nitrogen fertilizers and self-produced fertilizer, while some of them chose to use phosphate fertilizers, potash fertilizers and mixed fertilizers. Most farmers tend to use self-produced fertilizers because of their low cost.
6. What is your most commonly-used herbicide?
An overwhelming amount of respondents selected glysphosate as their answers. Combined with the current situation of herbicide market, we could know that glysphosate still accounted for the major portion of the market.
7. Where do you get these chemical fertilizers and pesticides?
Most farmers bought these chemical fertilizers and pesticides from agricultural cooperatives in the village. In agricultural cooperatives, farmers could buy a various kinds of tools, chemicals or seeds, in other words, there were no actually a certain shop or stores especially for the sales of herbicides.
8. How much is your annual cost on herbicides?
The answer to this question depended on different situations. The average amount of money they spend on this is not so much, because of the low price of glysphosate. If the weather is rather dry, it doesn’t need a large amount of herbicides to kill weeds. But whenever the weather is really rainy, farmers always needs many herbicides because weeds can prosperously grow after heavy rain. Before farmers decide to plant something new on the farming lands, they will spray herbicides for one time in advance.
9. How do you get the instruction on how to use herbicides and fertilizers?
Most farmers chose to listen to the description from those salespeople, because the packages or forms of herbicides and fertilizers were rather different. Only some of them used them according to the enclosed instructions. Integrated with answers from question2, farmers still relied on experiences and other peoples’ advice and experiences because of their low literacy to a certain extent.
10. Will the fertility be influenced by the application of herbicides or fertilizers?
The answers to this question were predominantly no. Because of the limited farming lands every family possessed, they could only plant on the same lands continuously. Thus, the natural fertility of this land had already been lost. Only by using fertilizers can they solve the dilemma of lacking fertility.
11. Are there any apparent changes after the application of herbicides or fertilizers?
The crops on which the herbicides were sprayed on grew better than before. All farmers in the village spray fertilizers on their own plants, which actually force pests to eat those plants without being sprayed by pesticides. Therefore, those plants without being sprayed can’t grow as well as other plants.
12. Is there any harm brought by the application of herbicides or fertilizers?
According to what they said, the skin and respiratory tract were really hurt after the application of herbicides, especially of glyphosate.
Conclusion
According to the data and information we had obtained from local farmers living in northwestern region of China, we could reach several conclusions. First the crops planted in this region were only limited in certain species, so when we were designing our part and choosing target gene, we must expel the essential gene of wheat, corns and other local crops. Second, the path from which they local farmers obtained herbicides is really fixed, because of their habit of using these herbicides and their customs. It is really hard to change their habit of using this kind of herbicide, unless our bio-herbicide is much cheaper than glysphosate. Third, up to now, those farmers haven’t felt any great discomfort brought the usage of glysphosate. From their point of views, glyphosate brought more good than harm.
As far as we are concerned, since the genuine harm brought by glyphosate have already been revealed, more propaganda of glyphosate advantages and disadvantages need to be spread. The industrial structure needs to be transformed to a certain degree to fit green industries which is harmless to human and nature instead of those industries which release toxic chemicals.
As for us, we are still looking for the methods to decrease the cost of bio-herbicide and making efforts to let public know the genuine situation of pesticides in order to improve the farming condition for farmers.
Reture OverviewStatistical survey of herbicide market
We collected data from National Bureau to finish statistics and analysis. Results shows recently, owing to the supervision of pesticides and increased public awareness towards environment protection, supply and demand of traditional pesticides both reduced. This gave us confidence to continue on our bio-pesticide, and we believe it would be dominant in the market one day.
Read MoreThe limitation of the global pesticide market
1. The international trend
The study released from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) showed that glyphosate could hurt eyes and it is toxic to aquatic organisms. In addition, it would impact the environment in a long term. However, according to the data was released by IARC, glyphosate was registered in more than 130 countries in 2010 and it was one of herbicides with the usage amount in the world.
2. Reduction of generic pesticides
In the past, generic pesticide is a serious domestic problem. But in recent years, with the increasing awareness of protecting intellectual property rights in new pesticide products, the supervision of pesticides has severely cracked down on infringement and production of generic drugs, therefore, domestic pesticide enterprises have been unable to produce profits through selling of generic drugs., cheap but harmful generic drugs can’t be bought in the market..
Recently, the newly-legislated, regulations on pesticide, strongly supported the innovation of pesticides, meanwhile, the higher requirement for pesticide innovation was proposed.
3. Environmental factors
Influenced by environmental supervision, the pesticide market has to face the shortage of original medicines, rising costs of preparations and many other plight. In March, 2016, the Ministry of environmental protection issued the 2017 air pollution prevention working program in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei Province and surrounding areas, which brought a series of problems to the pesticide market. Many manufacturers have begun to limit production or even to stop production.
Current pesticide market situation
According to the survey, in the April 2017, China's herbicide production decreased to 11%. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in April 2017, Chinese chemical pesticide production is 333131 tons, and the total yield of herbicides was 141129 tons, accounting for 42.36% of the total yield of chemical pesticides. The yield of herbicides decreased 10.87% compared with the yield in April 2016. From January to April 2017, Chinese chemical pesticide production is 1226239 tons, which decreased 3.77% compared with the production in April 2016 and herbicides production is 141129 tons, which decreased 14.02% compared with the first season in 2016.
| Chemical pesticides | Herbicides | |
|---|---|---|
| Yield in April/ton | 333131 | 141129 |
| Compared with April 2016 | -2.05% | -10.87% |
| Yield in first season/ton | 1226239 | 553321 |
| Compared with first season in 2016 | -3.77% | -14.02% |
