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.
Climate change could ‘significantly’ cut nutrient content in crops over next 30 years
One of the biggest challenges to reducing hunger and undernutrition around the world is to produce foods that provide not ...
Suspected Fusarium wilt infection in Colombia threatens global banana supply, but fungus-resistant GMO fruit on the horizon
In a long-feared development, an extremely damaging disease of bananas has apparently reached Latin America. Late last week, the Colombian ...
90% of Europeans fear biotech crops? New survey busts the popular anti-GMO myth
A special Eurobarometer survey report on food safety was published [in June]. It shows once again that the regularly promoted ...
Dessert of the future? This $20 a pint ice cream made with GMO yeast sells out in hours
Agri-tech start-up Perfect Day released a line of real ice cream made with lab-grown dairy that costs $20 a pint ...
‘Industrial-scale’ beekeeping doesn’t boost disease prevalence in honeybee colonies, study shows
It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific ...
Viewpoint: Why CRISPR-edited crops should be allowed in organic agriculture
A University of California, Berkeley professor stands at the front of the room, delivering her invited talk about the potential ...
New test accurately estimates bee exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides, study claims
Bee populations are declining, and neonicotinoid pesticides continue to be investigated — and in some cases banned — because of ...
Viewpoint: We need GMO, CRISPR-edited crops to help feed 10 billion people
If we want to feed 10 billion people by 2050, in a world beset by rising temperatures and scarcer water ...
The rise, fall and resurrection of Russian seed bank pioneer Nikolai Vavilov
Would all this be cast aside, he wondered, his reputation disgraced? Or would the good work be rediscovered, like the ...
As technology ‘wipes out’ traditional work, biotech investment could revitalize rural America
Cow-free burgers are now all the rage — after Beyond Meats’ recent IPO, shares rose 163% on the first day ...
No Bee Armageddon: US honeybee colony numbers stable for 25 years. Thank capitalism?
Warnings of an impending "bee apocalypse" became widespread in 2006, after some commercial beekeepers reported the mass disappearance of worker ...
Podcast: Land use for animal agriculture has declined 140 million hectares since 2000. Can we keep this ‘livestock revolution’ alive?
We're often told raising animals for food takes a devastating toll on the environment, consuming ever more natural resources, hastening ...
Sustainable and nutritious unrefined whole cane sugar? Skip the organic scam and eat sucrose from GMO sugar beets
A drive toward The Everglades down US 98 between Yeehaw Junction and Belle Glade, FL takes you around the east ...
1/3 of the world’s soil is degraded. But technology can bring our farmland ‘back to life’
In Iowa they call it “black gold” – a fertile blanket covering the landlocked Midwestern state. Thousands of years of ...
(Practically) no one is anti-science, and how that can help us talk about GMOs
Keith Kloor, science blogger at Discover, has sparked an intriguing debate about the use of the term "anti-science" to describe ...
CRISPR immunizes potato against plant viruses, cutting production costs of globally important food crop
Society and the legislative authorities are often cynical about the presence of [transgenes] in GMOs. However, more advanced plant breeding ...
How market forces, self-regulation and GMO crops are making fish farming more sustainable
More sustainable aquaculture and better-managed fisheries are increasingly actionable for consumers ...
Price of lab-grown burger could drop from $280,000 to $10 by 2021
Lab-grown meat, first introduced to the world six years ago in the form of a $280,000 hamburger, could hit supermarket ...
Manipulating plant mitochondrial DNA could boost crop diversity, promote food security
Researchers in Japan have edited plant mitochondrial DNA for the first time, which could lead to a more secure food ...
‘Second generation’ GMO plants could turn marginal soils into productive farmland
Roughly one-third of the world’s arable land suffers from lack of accessible iron, rendering it inhospitable to staple crops like ...
Zambia increases GMO imports after assessment shows ‘products safe for consumption’
Zambia's regulator of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on [July 8] announced that it has allowed some companies to import products ...
Explaining the debate over GMOs—and what is or isn’t ‘natural’— through the genetics of chickens
Chickens (and their eggs) provide a surprisingly down-to-earth illustration of the profound implications of the modern genetic revolution ...
While managed honeybees get all the attention, some native pollinators ‘dwindle toward extinction’
Those honeybees you’ve been fretting over are getting native bumblebees sick. A new study shows that viruses infecting domestic honeybees ...
Alternative meat producers struggle to secure supply of yellow peas as demand for plant-based burger skyrockets
The soaring popularity of plant-based meat substitutes has shone a spotlight on a new star ingredient: the humble pea. From ...
Norman Borlaug: Nobel Prize winning agronomist saved a billion lives and almost banished hunger
Norman Borlaug’s work undeniably changed the world for the better ...
Viewpoint: GMOs pose ‘systemic threat to humanity’? Debunking Nassim Taleb’s apocalyptic assault on crop biotech
Nassim Taleb is a statistician and financial risk analyst. As interesting as his observations about the uncertain risk of large ...
Book review: ‘The Lives of Bees’ offers 14 tips to help keep honeybees healthy and pollinating our crops
What were the lives of wild honey bees like before humans began intensively managing them and moving them all over ...
Viewpoint: France’s bad science—its stances on food safety and GMOs at sharp odds with European scientists
Paris is worried that the whitening additive that makes sweets gleam — titanium dioxide, also called E171 — and is ...
