Crops & Food
We eat to live. Humans use approximately 11% of Earth’s land for the cultivation of crops for food, but also for clothing, medicine and biofuels. Globally, major crops include sugarcane, pumpkin, maize (corn), wheat, rice, cassava, soybeans, hay, potatoes and cotton.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Food, genetic engineering and public opinion: Do popular concerns matter?
Confounding many scientists, the public remains skeptical of GM foods yet embraces biotech medicines. Why the difference? What can we ...
Reviewing food labels: What do they really tell us?
The debate over the safety of genetically modified foods came into the spotlight when Chipotle, the popular Mexican food chain, ...
Would a Sygenta merger improve Monsanto’s image?
Monsanto’s unsolicited courtship of Swiss rival Syngenta AG has the potential to do many things for the agriculture giant. But could ...
Mother plants pass on ‘memories’ of weather, helping seeds know when to sprout
Mother knows best—even if Mom is a plant. A common flowering plant, Arabidopsis, hands down “memories” of recent temperatures to ...
Organic Consumers Association berates media for attacking Chipotle’s GMO free move
Since when do the mainstream news media, in a country that worships at the altar of capitalism and the free ...
USA Today editorial: Doubting safety of GMOs is a “kooky notion”
Americans love conspiracy theories: The 1969 moon landing actually occurred on a Hollywood set. Fluoride in drinking water was a ...
Gary Hirshberg’s Stonyfield faces hypocrisy backlash over misleading labels
Glass house alert: Stonyfield's yogurts are filled with unknown and unlabeled chemicals. Shouldn't you "just label it", Gary? ...
Shoppers question validity of organic labels
Organic products are all over grocery store shelves and menus, but consumers don’t have much faith in the “o” word, ...
Monsanto launches PR efforts to combat critics of Sygenta takeover, glyphosate and GMOs
As seed and chemical maker Monsanto Co. woos Swiss agrochemicals firm Syngenta, Monsanto also is trying to win over consumers ...
In midst of church disagreement on global warming, will GMOs be included in papal call to action on climate?
Any day now Pope Francis, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, will be issuing a rare papal Encyclical ...
Bulgarian GMO researcher verbally attacked by activists
Question time following Irish scientist Padraic Flood’s presentation entitled “Why we need GMOs” saw raised voices as he came under ...
Organic food processor SunOpta to have first USDA-verified non-GMO label
A little-known but publicly traded organic food processing company, SunOpta, has persuaded the federal government that its system for detecting ...
Middle ground: Organic vs. conventional farming isn’t helping anyone
I'm pleased to see more people making the connections between our food choices, our health, and our impact on the ...
Wildflowers bordering crop fields may be reservoirs of neonicotinoids
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. A team from Sussex ...
USDA develops GMO-free label on behalf of unidentified company
The Agriculture Department has developed the first government certification and labeling for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients ...
Activists in Argentina threaten life of biotech scientist Jose Miguel Mulet
Dear readers. As you know by the last post I am doing a tour to promote "Eat Without Fear" by ...
Monsanto slammed for Syngenta takeover proposal
Once an industrial-chemical titan, GMO seed giant Monsanto has rebranded itself as a "sustainable agriculture company." That rhetoric may have ...
GMO label may not dissuade buyers but rather encourage sales
Opponents of genetically modified food claim that their demand for labeling is only intended to provide choice for consumers. In ...
GMO-free: Corporate irresponsibility trend
Pass any Chipotle these days — and it is my gastronomic preference to pass rather than enter — and you ...
Exposure to two neonicotinoids may reduce egg laying by queen honey bees
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Overwhelming evidence now suggests ...
Hungary poised to become first EU nation to block GMOs under new regulation
“Hungary could be the first to introduce the new European Union regulations allowing countries to ban the cultivation of GMO ...
Transgenic solution to virus-threatened African cassava faces anti-GMO protests
The cassava, a key African staple especially valued because of its drought tolerance, is threatened by numerous viruses. Conventional agriculture ...
Honeybee deaths increase over past year
More than two out of five American honeybee colonies died in the past year, and surprisingly the worst die-off was ...
Politics of Indian farmer suicides
If the National Crime Records Bureau of India (NCRB) data is to be taken seriously, on an average over 15,000 ...
Removing antibiotics from food makes a difference, removing GMOs doesn’t
A lot of food companies are jumping on the transparency bandwagon. Panera, Chipotle, and Pepsi are labeling foods and removing ...
India changes tune and permits GM crop trials but states still block research
Five years ago, India was a hostile place for researchers testing genetically modified (GM) crops. Its government barred the commercial ...
Decades of research lead to new soybean diversity, rust-resistant soybean
It took decades of painstaking work, but research geneticist Ram Singh managed to cross a popular soybean variety ("Dwight" Glycine ...
