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.
GMO-skeptical Sierra Club gives cautious endorsement to disease-resistant, biotech chestnut tree
By almost any metric, the American chestnut was a perfect tree. Massive, fast-growing, and rot-resistant, it was easy to mill ...
Viewpoint: Let them eat cheese: Evidence shows this ‘guilty pleasure’ doesn’t deserve its unhealthy reputation
A large body of research suggests that cheese’s reputation as a fattening, heart-imperiling food is undeserved. When it comes to ...
Video: ‘One more tool in our toolbox’: The case for crop biotechnology
Agriculture scientist Channapatna Prakash offers a crash course on agricultural biotechnology on this episode of the Nothing is Rocket Science ...
‘Clean’ seafood? The global struggle to make aquaculture a sustainable source of protein
Surprising to many, over half of the fish we eat comes from fish farms. But some farms, particularly from parts ...
GM, insect-resistant, Bt corn could reach Kenyan farms in 2021 — and may help double crop yields
The TELA Bt maize variety if adopted can help [Kenyan] farmers double their yields. Speaking [February 22] during an open ...
‘This seed is ours’: Cuba poised to grow locally developed, insect-resistant GM corn to mitigate effects of climate change
Between 2014 and 2018, Cuba imported 700,000 tons of corn per year, more than 1,500 million dollars in imported food, ...
Machetes, not glyphosate: Mexican president tells farmers to manually remove weeds following herbicide restrictions
[Mexican] President Andrés Manuel López Obrador …. proposed the use of machetes to remove weeds from crops instead of using ...
Gene editing could boost UK’s virus-plagued sugar beet industry, country’s agriculture minister says
[British farming and environment minister George] Eustice told the annual conference of the National Farmers Union [on February 23] that ...
Senate confirms Obama Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to head USDA again
The Senate confirmed Tom Vilsack as U.S. Agriculture Secretary, opening the way for the Biden administration to move forward with ...
East Africa battles locust swarms by turning them into animal feed and organic fertilizer
Scientists say warmer seas are creating more rain, waking dormant eggs, and cyclones that disperse the swarms are getting stronger ...
GM crops could support food security in Africa, new study suggests
Genetically modified (GM) maize has produced higher yields than conventional hybrid varieties in South Africa, highlighting the technology’s potential to ...
Cavendish banana could ‘disappear’ in the 2020s. Can CRISPR gene editing save it from a deadly fungus?
[T]hat the Cavendish banana will disappear sometime in the 2020’s is extremely likely. It is being threatened by a fungus ...
Viewpoint: Eco-hypocrisy—Mexico bans GM corn and glyphosate to promote sustainability while subsidizing fossil fuels
Imagine for a moment that the US government banned smart phones and tablets and forced everyone to use home telephones ...
China launches GM crop research initiative to strengthen food security
China will support R&D of innovative agricultural GMOs, such as new genes, new technologies and new products. Wang Gangyi, a ...
GMOs in Bangladesh: Insect-resistant eggplant a sustainability success. Here’s how the country can safeguard its progress
In the seven years since Bangladesh approved its first genetically modified crop — insect-resistant eggplant (Bt brinjal) — the number ...
25 years of GM crops: Biotechnology a blessing to many farmers, but not without costs
Brent Rendel, who started farming in the early 1990s, easily remembers how magical Roundup Ready crops seemed and the awe ...
GM canola, soybean don’t harm biodiversity, 15-year Japanese government study finds
According to the report by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), [to] date no sign of any ...
Peru extends GM crop cultivation ban to ‘investigate’ biotechnology’s impact on biodiversity — which government says will take until 2035
The Peruvian Congress approved a moratorium that prohibits the entry of Living Modified Organisms (transgenic) for cultivation or breeding purposes ...
CRISPR could help produce allergen-free soybeans. Here’s how it works
Food allergies occur when you eat .... and your immune system reacts to certain proteins in the food. Proteins that ...
GMOs and nutrition: Disease-resistant, biofortified cassava could boost Africa’s access to essential minerals
For the first time, an international team of scientists… have developed cassava displaying high-level resistance to cassava mosaic disease (CMD), ...
Farm fraud: Consumers spend billions on food that might not be organic
Organic food sales are growing rapidly, with an estimated worth of $272.18 billion by 2027. The premium prices paid for ‘organics’ ...
Lab-grown wood: Could scientists make better trees than nature?
Wood and other plant-based materials may be renewable resources, but obtaining usable forms typically requires lots of transportation, milling, and ...
High-yielding sweet potato that fights vitamin A deficiency could be Ghana’s first gene-edited crop
Research on Ghana’s first gene-edited crop — a high-yielding sweet potato with increased beta carotone content — is under way ...
Spray-on viral treatment can ‘fine-tune’ crops as they grow, without genetic engineering
[W]ith climate change in action across the globe, forecasting temperature and rainfall is becoming more challenging. Hence during the crop ...
China announces birth of first gene-edited sheep as country aims to boost domestic meat production
[T]he world's first myostatin gene (MSTN) edited Huyang sheep was born in China, with the technology used to boost the ...
EU’s refusal to permit GMO crops led to millions of tons of additional CO2, scientists reveal
Europe’s refusal to permit its farmers to cultivate genetically engineered (GE) crops led to the avoidable emission of millions of ...
Developing countries grow more GM crops than their industrial counterparts
Developing countries continued to plant more biotech crops in 2019, according to the ISAAA report on the Global Status of Commercialized ...
GMOs and the environment: ‘No significant difference’ and no unintended gene transfer in GM rice compared to conventional varieties, study shows
In this research, we analyzed the potential for weediness, unintended gene transfer, and viability in the natural environment for risk ...
