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.
Insect-resistant Bt GMO eggplant helps Bangladesh farmers increase income, reduce pesticide use
[Editor's note:Â Deb Carstoiu is managing director of plant biotech communications at CropLife International.] The eggplant, known in Asia as brinjal, ...
Sorghum resistant to herbicide, drought, pests in advanced development
For the past several years sorghum research has lagged behind that of corn and soybeans, but that could soon change ...
Video: Has organic farming ‘ideology’ spread through the scientific community?
[Editor's note: Andrew McGuire is an agronomist at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.] At the core ...
Boulder County, Colorado to phase out GMO crops and neonicotinoid insecticides
Boulder County commissioners voted 2-1 on Thursday [April 13, 2017] to approve the latest version of their plan for phasing ...
Nigerian professor: Anti-GMO campaigners ‘play politics’ with food security and poverty, delaying sustainable farming
Prof. Benjamin Ubi, [president of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria] says the adoption of biotechnology will facilitate sustainable agricultural production ...
Does the administration’s block of the chlorpyrifos pesticide ban signal a changing regulatory landscape?
One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on ...
Green meal: GMO foods, synthetic milk, lab-grown meat on the menu
Feeding the 10 billion will require some creative solutions – and unpalatable compromises. Perhaps we can learn to love algae, ...
Neonicotinoid fiasco: How American NGOs turn Europe against science, push EU towards insecticide ban
The current EU ban on neonics has been disastrously counterproductive, resulting in an increased use of more damaging pesticides, mainly ...
Canada’s food regulator finds herbicide glyphosate on 30 percent of samples — But only 1.3 percent above ‘acceptable’ limit
Canada's food regulator has found traces of the controversial herbicide glyphosate in nearly 30 percent of about 3,200 food products ...
Cuban officials embrace GMOs to feed hungry population, but groups push back
[Editor's note:Â Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.] Cuban officials have announced the island is turning to ...
How CRISPR gene editing will ‘supercharge’ agriculture
[J]ust as corn helped create these civilizations, these civilizations helped create corn through meticulous selective breeding. Today’s grain hardly resembles ...
Understanding toxicity: Caffeine ’40 times more toxic’ than glyphosate herbicide
[Editor's note: Alison Bernstein is a neuroscientist who studies the role of epigenetics and environmental exposures in Parkinson’s disease.] LD50 ...
GMO labeling could be top line on Sonny Perdue’s menu once confirmed as secretary of agriculture
Should Sonny Perdue be confirmed as the next secretary of Agriculture, it will fall to him to end the biggest ...
Activist-fueled ‘over-regulation’ of GMO research stymies potential to feed the world
[Editor's note: Dr. Amjad M. Husaini is a professor of biotechnology at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in India.] ...
Gene salad: First comprehensive genome assembly of lettuce reveals ‘treasure-trove of genetic information’
UC Davis researchers announced in Nature Communications that they have unlocked a treasure-trove of genetic information about lettuce and related plants, releasing ...
Oregon bill to allow local governments to regulate GMO crops fails again
Local governments in Oregon will continue to be prohibited from regulating genetically engineered crops. Bills to ease the ban both ...
Urban ‘treatment-free’ beekeeping leads to explosion in killer Varroa mites
[Editor's note:Â Toni Burnham runs one of 10 hives at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.] In this season of vitriol ...
Rotten tomato: Senator Rand Paul misses mark targeting tastier tomatoes as wasteful research
[Editor’s note: Kevin Folta is a molecular biologist and chair of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida.] Senator [Rand] ...
Jack in the corn stalk: Record 45-foot-tall corn plant created by New York breeder
Gason Karl has been growing corn since he was a teenager. Starting in 1996, he began planting the crop on ...
Talking Biotech: Why is the government not funding research into the most nutritious foods?
Journalist Helena Bottemiller-Evich explores the health impact of the government's meager research support for fruits, vegetables and nuts ...
GMO corn that resists cancer-causing aflatoxin showcases biotech’s life-saving potential
The creation of GM corn that neutralizes a cancer-causing toxin is a game-changer for human health. The method could be ...
Trump’s deregulation push could undermine trust in safety of our food system
Pro-agriculture conservatives seem to be welcoming Trump’s push for deregulation because they felt Obama-era policies on GMOs and school lunch ...
Africa’s biotechnogy sector crippled by lack of electricity
Money is power, the saying goes. Sure enough, the fraction of GDP invested into science and technology (S&T) is a ...
New EU independent herbicide glyphosate study shows no toxic effects or genetic changes
Results of a new animal study into possible health risks of the weedkiller glyphosate will be published in time to ...
Will organic community embrace gene editing if it restores ancient crops?
Precision genetic engineering techniques could bring back beneficial genes from wild relatives of crops without using foreign genes. The concept ...
Conventional (GMOs) vs organic farming: Which is better for animals and the environment?
[Editor's note: Iida Ruishalme is a writer and a science communicator from Sweden who holds a M.Sc. in Biology.] I ...
A crucial climate mystery is just under our feet
[F]armers could turn their fields into giant greenhouse gas sponges, potentially offsetting as much as 15 percent of global fossil ...
