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.
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Viewpoint: ‘All exposed, all contaminated’—How France learned to fear its food
According to the latest Eurobarometer on food safety in the European Union, published at the end of September 2025 by ...
Viewpoint: European farmers protest the nightmare of the Green Deal and other science-rejectionist EU agricultural regulations
Over the past two years, farmers throughout Europe have mobilized on a scale that should dominate news headlines. ... European farmers are ...
Europe pursues three different regulatory paths in efforts to open the gates to agricultural gene editing
The landscape of agricultural innovation in Europe is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades. New Genomic Techniques (NGTs)—including highly ...
Glyphosate’s climate dividend: Weedkiller reduces greenhouse pollution equal to taking 21.8 million cars off the road each year
This paper estimates the annual global carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions from the manufacture, distribution and farm level use of ...
Well-intentioned but scientifically misguided activist claims of what constitutes biological diversity hinder actual biodiversity and agricultural progress
... [S]ince the 1990s, well-intentioned laws shifted the governance of biodiversity from a shared global resource to the sovereign control ...
Viewpoint: RFK, Jr., MAHA, and USDA close ranks in support of ‘regenerative agriculture’. Here’s why this trendy concept is bad policy
[On December 10, 2025], Kennedy, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Dr. “Snakeoil” Oz trotted out in front of the cameras ...
CRISPR chicken: Could gene editing be the key to cheaper poultry?
Chicken is one of the world’s most affordable and widely consumed proteins, yet its price remains surprisingly sensitive to feed ...
Discovery of growth ‘switch’ in cold-hardy plants could unlock pathways to develop more cold-resilient crops
Scientists in South Korea have discovered a rapid molecular “switch” that reprograms plant growth in response to cold stress. The ...
Okay, but not nearly enough: EU’s loosened restrictions on CRISPR and other gene-edited crops help, but it’s still a wasteful long-haul for approvals
The first part of the EU’s Biotech Act has been published. The act, which is mainly focused on health, also ...
GLP podcast: Evolutionary mismatch. Is civilization wrecking our health?
There's a dangerous mismatch between our biology and the tech-saturated world we inhabit—and it might be killing us. That's the ...
Organic food consumer snapshot: Okay benefits but only if cost premium is under 5%
Understanding what truly drives consumers to choose organic or locally produced foods requires looking beyond assumptions and into real behavior ...
Corporate control, ecological challenges and food safety: Challenges await expansion of the gene-editing crop revolution
Ethical considerations surrounding genome editing are as complex as the science itself. As the debate rages on about the safety ...
Europe’s veggie burger wars: Farmer backlash against plant-based labeling restrictions stall
EU wrangling over whether to give plant-based "sausages" and veggie "burgers" the chop and restrict such labels to meat products ...
Viewpoint: U.S. and Europe lagging behind China’s embrace of crop gene editing
Ships, chips, and missiles dominate discussions about defense. But don’t forget food. Secure supplies are key to supply-chain sovereignty — ...
Bitter dark chocolate appears to slow the aging process
The same chemical that makes dark chocolate taste bitter could help slow the ticking of your biological clock. A new ...
The expanding role of robotics in agriculture … on Earth and in space
Despite challenges, agriculture remains an appealing sector for robotics applications. ... In recent decades, agri-tech companies have been investing in ...
What’s a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’?
Food fraud is the intentional and deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food products, food ingredients, and food packaging ...
Fungus ‘meat’? Yes, it could be a less expensive, environmentally sustainable —and tasty— chicken substitute
Chinese scientists have genetically tweaked a fungus to make protein-rich “meat”, which they say can be a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative ...
Yummy goldenberries with their pineapple-mango taste could transform via gene editing into a mass grocery market star
Goldenberries taste like a cross between pineapple and mango, pack the nutritional punch of a superfood, and are increasingly popular ...
Viewpoint: Fake news about Italy’s 2023 ‘unenforceable’ ban on lab grown meat reignites fact-twisted furor
Italy passed a law banning cultivated or cell-based meat years ago, but posts online suggesting that it has just happened ...
Yield, resilience and profits: Seed technology is put to the test
Dr Godfrey Kgatle, plant pathologist and research coordinator at Grain SA, offers insight into how traditional breeding, hybrids, genetically modified ...
Utopian fantasy or realistic tools? Deploying synthetic biology to jump crop yields sustainably
As the climate crisis accelerates, there’s a desperate need to rapidly reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, both by ...
Viewpoint: San Francisco’s ultra-processed lawsuit: Stupid politics meets dumb science
[On December 2, 2025], San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed what he calls a “first of its kind” lawsuit ...
Viewpoint: Despite growing acceptance of gene-edited crops, cloned meat still gives people ‘the ick’
After working with other government departments and conducting a review of the scientific literature, Health Canada had determined that food ...
Will South Korea join the rest of the science world in deregulating genetically engineered crops?
[Korea's] National Assembly [just] passed the “GMO Full Disclosure Act (Food Sanitation Act Amendment).” This reflects progress in transparency, safeguarding ...
Viewpoint: The rosy-eyed view of the changes that could be coming with the EU’s approval of agricultural gene editing
In recent years, there has been a need for the rapid development of new varieties to address the negative constraints ...
Viewpoint: India needs to refine its view of the benefits and limits of crop biotechnology
This year’s Nobel laureates in Economics affirm that the future of growth models will be driven by innovation. This is ...
