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.
Fermentation and sustainability: Synthetic biology poised to bring us dairy-free milk and cheese that taste like the real thing
Fermentation is a type of biotechnology that uses microorganisms to create a chemical change that can produce food additives and ...
Viewpoint: ‘The Dirty 8’ — Which are the most notorious advocacy groups spreading disinformation about food, farming, biotechnology and agricultural sustainability
When it comes to food safety, there's no shortage of well-funded advocacy groups stirring up public concern. Under the guise ...
‘Lose-lose situation’: Facing unprofitable organic farming, Mexico cotton growers resort to illegally planting GMO seeds
Cotton producers [in Mexico are using] illegal seeds due to the government's ban on using transgenics and due to lack ...
‘Future proofing’: Rediscovered wild coffee species could protect against production drops caused by climate change
In dense tropical forests in Sierra Leone, scientists have rediscovered a coffee species not seen in the wild in decades ...
Natural GMOs: Plants and animals ‘steal genes’ from other species during process of evolution, mimicking transgenics
Little did biologist Gregor Mendel know that his experiments with sweet peas in a monastery garden in Brno, Czech Republic, would ...
‘For the benefit of all’: Why governments should play a ‘critical role’ in funding biotechnology research
Governments should invest in gene editing research to avoid profiteering by large multinationals at the expense of farmers, Farmers Union ...
Viewpoint: Is our western food system based on ‘intensive agriculture’ broken? Not if the environment and alleviating poverty and hunger matter
In the popular bourgeois imagination, the idealized farm looks something like the ones that sell produce at local farmers markets ...
Viewpoint: 6 debunked anti-GMO talking points activists should abandon for good
The public still accepts some blatant untruths about biotechnology, food safety, and sustainability ...
Worth the higher price tag? What benefits are you really getting when you garden using organic seeds?
Whether a seed is labeled organic or not depends on the parent plant. If the parent plant was only treated ...
Kenya aims to multiply production of GMO insect-resistant cotton seeds 10-fold by 2022, and distribute across Africa
Farmers in Kenya have been harvesting an average of 5,300 tonnes lint of cotton against a demand of about 38,000 ...
Book review: Jennifer Thompson’s ‘GM Crops and the Global Divide’ addresses Europe’s neo-colonialist attempt to intimidate Africa into rejecting crop biotechnology
Jennifer Thomson’s excellent new book, “GM Crops and the Global Divide” (CSIRO Publishing, 2020), is a highly informed, lucid, and ...
Replacing fungicides? GMO potato crops appear to be the only solution to addressing late blight disease in sub-Saharan Africa
[Late blight disease] remains the main threat to potato production globally with a 15-30% production reduction. Using an average cost ...
Fighting gut inflammation? Limiting alcohol, sugar, processed foods and animal-based proteins could be key
Reporting their findings in the journal Gut, [a team of researchers at the University of Groningen and University Medical Centre ...
‘Blissfully unaware’: Many food manufacturers don’t realize new GM labeling law applies to them and are unprepared for end-of-year deadline
Compliance with the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS) – which requires firms with annual sales of >$2.5m to label ...
CRISPR poised to deliver dramatic benefits in fighting hunger and disease in Africa
In Africa, hunger and starvation are rapidly accelerating. Economic issues and dramatic weather changes resulted in over 20% of the population experiencing ...
Zinc-fortified wheat set to boost access to essential mineral for millions of poor people
Scientists at a leading global grains research institute expect to sharply ramp up new wheat varieties enriched with zinc that ...
Revamped regulations could accelerate Kenya’s GM, insect-resistant, Bt cotton approval
Radical reforms in Kenya's agricultural sector are set to inject fresh impetus to Bt cotton farming in the country, should ...
‘In the Weeds’: Answering the question—Do biotech crops increase pesticide use?
At CSPI, we set out to answer the question of whether GE crops increase the use of pesticides, and dove ...
Chemicals can no longer easily defeat weeds and insects. These genetic solutions might help farmers control voracious pests
’Resistance is leading to this problem where the control measures that we have relied on for decades are no longer ...
Brazil approves environmentally ‘Friendly’ GM tool for controlling fall armyworm
Brazilian farmers are a step closer to using an environmentally friendly tool to control a destructive agricultural pest with the ...
DNA of lettuce: How humans bred a weed into a favorite leafy vegetable over 6,000 years
Try to imagine a collection of 2500 different types of lettuce: approximately 1500 varieties that were ever grown by farmers ...
Our food has never been safer, so why are we so scared of it?
Why you shouldn't trust your brain ...
How the Biden Administration can accelerate prosperity by fixing agricultural-biotech regulations
The Biden administration has a rare opportunity to accelerate agricultural innovation and spur broad and lasting economic growth by taking ...
US intelligence report predicts greater global role for biotechnology
Biotechnology could potentially account for about 20 percent of the global economy by 2040, with agricultural and manufacturing uses the ...
Bangladesh developing new generation of genetically engineered disease-resistant Bt eggplant to fight plant diseases, dramatically cutting insecticide use
Starting with only 20 farmers in 2014, the technology of Bt brinjal – a crop developed to drastically lower hazardous ...
Market for CRISPR-edited crops will be limited by hazy global regulatory environment and societal ambivalence
New breeding techniques pioneered by genome editing have gained substantial traction within the last decade, revolutionizing the plant breeding field ...
Overwhelming majority of Europeans support compulsory labeling of GM-derived food, claims study commissioned by EU Green group
[A] report, commissioned by the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament and carried out by the polling organisation Ipsos, surveyed ...
