Letters to the Editor
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lower transportation costs?
Imported G.M. soybeans are reportedly cheaper, have a higher oil content and lower transportation costs.
I find the lower transportation costs part of this statement very difficult to believe. Cheaper, OK. Higher oil content, no problem. But lower transportation costs? For one thing, I can't believe that GM soybeans are cheaper to transport on a per-mile basis - the weight of a truckload of GM beans can't be very much different than a truckload of non-GM beans. And the US-grown GM beans have to be shipped from, say, Iowa, to a seaport, then transferred to merchant shipping, sailed to Shanghai (or wherever in China), and then trucked to the processing plants. The Chinese beans only have to do the truck trip from their fields to the processing plants. How can that possibly be more expensive?
Given that yields can be dramatically higher per acre for GM beans, I'm not surprised that the OVERALL price for GM beans can still beat domestic Chinese non-GM bean prices. But I have trouble swallowing the claim that it's cheaper to TRANSPORT GM beans than non-GM.
Sean