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.
GLP’s Jon Entine: Gene editing will cut time, costs of commercializing new genetically engineered crops
Monsanto, the world’s largest producer of GMO seeds, is betting that a new technology called gene editing may calm consumers ...
Plaintiffs suing Monsanto over alleged carcinogenicity of herbicide glyphosate say EPA colluded with company
For 12 years, [Christine] Sheppard had no idea what might have caused her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma -- until a group of ...
Has ‘big data’ lived up to its promise to revolutionize farming?
For farmers—and the tech companies that want them as customers—data has been a disappointment. A few years ago, the agricultural ...
Canadian parliament voting on mandatory GMO food label
Members of the Canadian Parliament will decide whether to approve mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods in a vote in ...
UK approves field trial of GM potatoes resistant to blight and nematode
In the United Kingdom, farming minister George Eustice (DEFRA) has approved a four-year trial of genetically modified (GM) potatoes at ...
CSPI’s Greg Jaffe: USDA should regulate GMOs, gene-edited crops based on end-product, not process
[Editor's note: Greg Jaffe is the Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public ...
Pink GM pineapple with high levels of antioxidants unlikely to boost human health
[Editor's note: Layla Katiraee is a scientist with a PhD in Molecular Genetics.] A couple of months ago, I saw ...
Infographic: 6 ‘snake oil salesmen’ who profit from food fears
Several activists opposed to genetic engineering run small media empires, including websites, TV and radio programs. Scientists say they are ...
10 years after Colony Collapse Disorder scare, what have we learned about the plight of bees?
Managed honey bees are afflicted by a range of pests, viruses and predators--the worst being the Varroa mite--that have been ...
UK’s Labour Party ‘pledges to ban’ neonicotinoid insecticides if it takes power
Neonicotinoid seed treatments will be banned if Labour forms the next government, according to a leaked draft of the party’s ...
Ghana suspends GMO cotton field trials after Monsanto withdraws funding
[Ghana's] Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has suspended trials of GMO cotton in the country after US Company ...
From kale to cows: Modern supermarket full of foods genetically modified by humans
Here are just a few of the modern supermarket offerings that we have been genetically modifying for centuries: Cow and ...
‘Unstoppable’: How corn took over America’s farmland
Farmers who had long rotated plantings among a diverse group of grains are increasingly turning to a single one. Corn ...
‘Organic civil war’: Do advocates care about promoting food security and sustainability?
Last June [2016] Stephanie Strom, reporting for the New York Times, broke the story about how Whole Foods had upset ...
How Trump’s ‘get-tough’ immigration policy is impacting agricultural technology innovation
President Donald Trump's get-tough attitude on immigration is spurring a surge of high-tech investment in America's heartland, where farmers are ...
European Commission: Scientists find neonicotinoids don’t harm bees, restrictions hurt farmers—but support permanent ban
The EU's Joint Research Center found that the temporary ban on neonics did not help bees and hurt farmers' ability ...
What role can crop biotechnology play in feeding Nigeria’s growing population?
[Editor's note: Modesta Nnedinso Abugu is program assistant for the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology-Nigeria Chapter and Fellow of Cornell University’s ...
Federal judge rules EPA did not consider potential impact of neonicotinoids on insects besides bees
A Minnesota beekeeper has won a round against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a protracted lawsuit over a ...
India expected to approve 3 indigenously developed varieties of insect-resistant GMO Bt cotton
The government is expected to soon allow commercial release of three genetically modified (Bt) and indigenously developed varieties of cotton ...
Coming age of CRISPR gene editing: What in heck is the ‘Pink Chicken Project’?
A new website called "the Pink Chicken Project" offers up an intriguing nugget of an idea: what if we turned ...
Infographic: How RNAi helps protect crops, prevent spoilage and increase nutrients in food
RNA interference--a natural process that cells use to 'turn off' or silence unwanted or harmful genes--can be a powerful tool ...
Talking Biotech: How Uruguay—major producer of GMO soy and corn—regulates GE crops
Uruguay biosecurity expert Alejandra Ferenczi: 'Regulate the uniqueness of the final food product and not genetic engineering' ...
Podcast: Horticulturalist Kevin Folta exposes US Right to Know’s smear campaign against biotech scientists
The development of GMOs have helped farmers feed more people and create sustainable methods in modern agriculture. But that fact ...
What does USDA organic label really mean? WaPo investigation finds imported corn and soy often mislabelled
A shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans sailed late [2016] from Ukraine to Turkey to California. Along the way, ...
GMO disease fighters: Zika-destroying GM mosquitoes may soon be joined by GM moths to quash cabbage and kale pest
A half-inch-long moth that devours kale, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts may not inspire the same fear as a Zika-carrying mosquito, but ...
Varroa mites—‘leading culprit’ of honey bee losses—hitchhike to nearby hives to spread disease
As the managed honey bee industry continues to grapple with significant annual colony losses, the Varroa destructor mite is emerging ...
If biofortified crops are goal, both genetic engineering and conventional breeding necessary
[Dr Swati Puranik, of the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University in the UK] and her ...
