Ag News: Chinese Farmers Online
**Many Chinese farmers are shopping online for vital supplies as the spring planting season begins and the coronavirus disrupts traditional supply chains, providing a huge boost to e-commerce platforms.
According to agweb.com, fertilizers, chemicals, seeds and machinery are traditionally distributed to China's farmers via a network of traders and local distributors, but the virus jammed supply chains through factory closures, residential quarantines and roadblocks.
Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo saw a near 1,000% jump in sales of farming products including seeds, fertilizer and sprinklers in February versus last year.
**A new study of consumer attitudes toward GENE EDITING shows the ag community and food retailers have a long way to go in getting public acceptance for the technology.
Agrimarketing.com reports, more than 50% of consumers surveyed had no idea what the term meant but associate it with GMOs.
Despite negative word associations, consumers were more likely to buy gene-edited products if they understood the specific environmental and animal health benefits.
**Wild relatives of crop plants could help crops grow successfully with less fertilizer, according to new research.
A professor at the University of California, Riverside, says wild plants can interact more successfully with soil microbes than their domesticated relatives that were bred for high yields.
The study indicates breeding some of those traits back into domesticated crop plants could improve plant growth.
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