Agriculture & 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.
Should we be afraid of our food?
America's food-safety system hasn't kept pace with an increasingly industrial, globe-spanning food supply, and recent staffing and budget cuts are ...
Tearful onions? CRISPR has a solution for that
Chopping onions may one day be a dry-eyed affair. Researchers at Japan’s Chiba University and food company House Foods have ...
Scaremongering or legitimate safety concerns? The political dogfight over America’s food safety system
The run-up to the midterm elections is turning into a food fight — literally. The summer was marred by a ...
GAHA: The corporate-created “healthier America” movement challenging what it claims is MAHA misinformation about modern farming, chemicals, and food
Some of America’s biggest food and farm interests have decided the best way to answer the Make America Healthy Again ...
9 wellness myths busted
Spas and wellness gurus are still peddling ideas that science left behind, as The Times’ Susan d’Arcy reports in her ...
RFK Jr.’s plan to curb America’s appetite for ultra-processed foods and artificial dyes blocked by the White House
RFK Jr.’s push to rein in ultraprocessed foods and artificial dyes has hit its biggest roadblock yet: the White House ...
‘Forever chemical’ concerns: Separating hysteria from reasonable concern in the debate over PFAS danger
PFAS have become a flashpoint in the debate over public health, environmental protection, and chemical regulation—but are millions of very ...
Is organic farming really more sustainable? 100 recent studies say ‘no’
Organic produce may wear a green halo, but it doesn’t earn a clear climate advantage. Organic and conventional farming come ...
No, GMO foods do not “damage genes, natural disposition and hormones, or decrease physical health and intelligence”
Social media posts spreading in Indonesia claim that genetically modified food can rewrite your DNA, and the science says otherwise ...
Non-browning CRISPR gene-edited bananas move one step closer to British markets
Bananas that stay yellow long after their peers have turned to mush are edging closer to British supermarket shelves. A ...
Viewpoint: Food cults: Online ‘nutrition communities’ can pose unique dangers
Nutrition advice used to tell us what to eat. Social media increasingly tells us who we are based on what ...
Here are all the ways CRISPR gene editing is transforming Africa’s staple crops—and there’s a lot more innovation to come
CRISPR gene editing is already reshaping Africa’s most important food crops, from disease-resistant bananas to less toxic cassava, and a ...
Viewpoint: Even lousy scientific articles can shield authors when they hype dubious health claims and products
Peer review in reputable journals gives scientific claims an authority that commercial speech rarely enjoys. But what happens when scientists ...
Social media influencers are driving food misinformation across Europe
Scroll long enough and someone will promise that a supplement, superfood or detox tea can fix whatever ails you. Those ...
Viewpoint: Chipotle-inspired lesson: 10,000 sick customers suggest that processed foods can be safer than fresh ones
The Environmental Working Group recently compared ultra-processed foods across major fast-food chains and found one conspicuous exception: Chipotle. That makes ...
No, organic eggs are not more nutritious or necessarily healthier than regular eggs. They are far more expensive.
Organic eggs cost considerably more than conventional ones, but that premium mostly pays for how the hens are raised, not ...
Anti-GMO activists in Pakistan rev up their campaign of dire warnings
Pakistan is weighing whether to commercialize genetically modified maize, and critics of the technology are sounding the alarm, warning of ...
There has been a slew of recent reports of food recalls and foodborne outbreaks. Do we face an escalating problem?
Egg recalls, salmonella-linked jalapeños and a spike in cyclospora cases have dominated headlines this year, but the U.S. food-safety system ...
Viewpoint: America’s food-safety system is being methodically dismantled by the Trump administration.
America's food-safety infrastructure is being quietly hollowed out even as outbreaks grow more complex and harder to trace, journalist Eric ...
Viewpoint: Is corporate embrace of regenerative agriculture greenwashing?
Major food companies are racing to tout “regenerative agriculture,” but the term has no legal definition — and that vagueness ...
Viewpoint: How to ecologically damage America’s forests: Ban glyphosate
A recent Mother Jones’ investigation ran under the headline “We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup.” The authors claim that ...
From Malaysia to the world: A pioneering science communicator reimagines global science communication for a digital age
By 2024, I was exhausted. For more than a decade, I had carried The Petri Dish through the realities of ...
CRISPR fine-tuning unlocks vitamin C-rich potatoes without yield loss
Potato is a central pillar of global food security, yet its highly heterozygous, tetraploid genome has long frustrated conventional breeding ...
‘Glyphosate is not carcinogenic’: Independent EU chemical oversight agency reaffirms—for the 3rd time in 9 years—that the herbicide is safe-as-used
The European Chemicals Agency's Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) has reaffirmed, for the third time in nine years, that glyphosate does ...
Bayer urges court to approve $7.25 billion Monsanto Roundup settlement that could limit its future liabilities
Bayer is asking a Missouri court to grant final approval to a $7.25 billion settlement covering roughly 65,000 lawsuits claiming ...
Fibermaxxing: Latest Instagram diet craze raises hope that a fiber-rich diet can improve health
This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine. In the world of dietary trends, proteinmaxxing is taking a back seat ...
The GMO-seed sovereignty debate comes to Nigeria
Across Nigerian farms, market stalls and WhatsApp groups, one word is triggering fear, hope and fury in equal measure: Genetically ...
