Moms all have the same concerns for their families, and many of them center around providing healthy meals. All women want to be assured that the food they put on their tables is safe, but there are few places where this is a bigger concern than in China. With several food recalls and scares recently, Chinese moms have good reason to want more information about where their food is coming from.

To help provide this information straight from the source, four American farm moms traveled to China to meet with moms, bloggers and journalists to talk about crops enhanced by biotechnology, or GMOs. With misinformation about biotech crops running rampant all over the globe, participants from both sides of the ocean met this mission with enthusiasm, and their messages can apply to people all over the globe.

ChinaTownHall3too“We told them about our families and farm life – how we lived, worked, played near and ate from our farm fields with confidence,” explains Nancy Kavazanjian, soybean farmer from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. “They shared their concerns over food safety, food security and the environment. Together, we discussed the myths and misconceptions about GMO foods circulating in China … and there are some doozies!”

A few of the myths that Nancy and her fellow farmers were happy to dispel include:

  • Does the United States send its GMO crops for export and save non-GMO crops for itself?
    “No,” says Kavazanjian. “It’s actually the opposite on my farm, where non-GM soybeans go to a specific, overseas buyer, while our GMO beans get processed domestically into vegetable oil and livestock feed.”
  • Is the seed from GMO crops sterile?
    Again, no, and to prove this point, the farm women showed photos of corn from the previous year’s crop growing in a soybean field.
  • Is it true that other crops won’t grow in a field where GMO crops grew?
    Also not true. The farmers used more photo evidence to back up their answers, showing cover crops and corn growing after soybeans.

Connecting Chinese women, who represent an important customer of U.S. soy, with women like them who grow U.S. crops is a key part of the U.S. Soybean Export Council’s outreach in China.

“It was easy to see that just like us, these Chinese women want to raise strong, healthy, happy families and are as concerned as we are about protecting our planet, sustaining our neighborhoods and leaving the world a better place,” adds Kavazanjian. “We definitely connected with them and they with us, and we’re looking forward to future conversations with moms overseas.”