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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Largest threat to honey bees in Canada? Bears
Contrary to what some headlines and marketing campaigns would lead us to believe, honey bee numbers in Canada are at ...
Video: Bill Nye finds people are terrified of GMOs — despite knowing little about them
Along with terms like organic and free-range, GMOs are a hot topic when it comes to our food. GMO stands for ...
Kenyan scientists push for female farmers’ access to biotechnology
Dr. Felister Makini, Deputy Director General (crops) at the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), noted that African women ...
Debate heats up: Did National Academies of Science GMO report go far enough in affirming GMO safety consensus?
The debate among scientists over whether the 2016 NAS report unnecessarily muddied the debate over GMO regulations spilled over into ...
Former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack: Environment benefits when farmers plant GMO
[Editor's note: Tom Vilsack is a former agriculture secretary under President Obama and currently serves as President and CEO of the U.S ...
China’s slowdown in approval of GMO imports harming US farmers
U.S. officials have prodded China repeatedly for a faster and more open system for deciding whether to approve the import ...
Talking Biotech: Naturally transgenic sweet potato can be tweaked to fight plant disease, boost nutrition
Plant virologist Jan Kreuze: Disease-resistant sweet potatoes could make nutritious, naturally GMO crop key tool to fight malnutrition ...
Should the European Union continue to fund anti-science and unaccountable NGO non-profits?
Public tax money in Europe is being given with limited or no accountability to organizations actively working to undermine consensus ...
Canada’s health regulator reaffirms glyphosate herbicide neither genotoxic nor carcinogenic
Health Canada says the potential risk to human health and the environment from pesticides containing glyphosate are acceptable, if used ...
Are you ‘anti-science’ if you resist biotechnology on political or economic grounds?
[Editor's note: Tess Doezema is a doctoral student at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona ...
Fact check: Conflicting studies on chlorpyrifos insecticide’s human health impact
When the Environmental Protection Agency decided to not ban chlorpyrifos, an insecticide widely used in agriculture, both the EPA and ...
Better beer? Sequenced barley genome could help breeders improve taste, other staple crops
Showing up in your cereal in the morning, your sandwich at lunch, and your beers or single malt Scotch whiskey ...
USDA considers release of GM moths to control broccoli pest, GM virus to stop citrus greening
Diamondback moths are a global pest of cruciferous crops such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts and cabbage. On April 18, USDA ...
China’s delay in approval of GM cotton could cost Australian oilseed farmers hundreds of millions of dollars
A lack of regulatory approval from China for cotton seed produced from the genetically modified (GM) Bollgard 3 suite of ...
Farmers could control rice harvest timing with strain that flowers after fungicide application
A new strain of rice that flowers within a certain period of time after being sprayed with commercial chemicals commonly ...
Does plant patent system restrict innovation and hurt small breeders?
The one-size-fits-all approach, that imposes the patent system on the agricultural sector irrespective of the consequences, may not be in ...
‘Shockumentary’: How to spot fear-based movies about food and farming
It seems as though every year a food “shockumentary” comes out (GMO OMG, Forks Over Knives, Food Inc etc). I’ve ...
How will Sonny Perdue’s appointment to secretary of agriculture affect small family farms?
Donald Trump owes his election in no small part to the support of farm country. But since entering office, almost ...
National Academies tighten conflict-of-interest policies after backlash stemming from GMO, pain-relief reports
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are toughening their financial conflict-of-interest policies after publishing reports that some critics ...
Dow Chemical asks Trump administration to ‘set aside’ government studies pesticide maker says are flawed
Dow Chemical is pushing a Trump administration open to scrapping regulations to ignore the findings of federal scientists who point ...
Farmers’ lawsuit alleges $5 billion in losses stemming from Syngenta’s release of GM corn before Chinese approval
The first of tens of thousands of U.S. lawsuits [went] to trial on Monday [April 24, 2017] against Swiss agribusiness ...
Did Bill Nye err when discussing Monsanto, GMOs in new Netflix series?
Bill Nye comes out swinging in the first season of Bill Nye Saves the World, his new Netflix series. ...
Sustainably grown meats hitting markets, but public perception of technologies may hinder benefits
Americans love protein. Each year they eat an average of 210 pounds of meat per capita, more than double the ...
USDA will craft GM label plan by July 2018, but it’s unclear when labels will be required
The U.S. Agriculture Department will attempt to follow the congressionally mandated schedule to create a plan for mandatory disclosure of ...
Breitbart vs. Kellogg’s: Forcing some anti-GMO progressives to choose a side
Critics of GMOs tend to align with the political left. But an ongoing feud between a right-wing news service and ...
Revamping ‘woefully out of date’ biotech regulations easier said than done
Depending on whom you talk to, the CRISPR’d mushroom isn’t strictly defined as synthetic biology. Still, genetic technology exists on ...
Funding for USDA’s National Organic Program tripled under Obama. What will Trump do with it?
[Editor's note: Mischa Popoff is a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, and is the author of Is it Organic? Jay Lehr ...
