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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Virus-resistant potato genetically engineered with RNAi developed but not near commercialization
RNA interference (RNAi) technology has been successfully applied in stacking resistance against viruses in numerous crop plants. During RNAi, the ...
Epigenetics Around the Web: Dolly the sheep and aging. Epigenetics is not genetics. Obstacles to gene editing.
This week’s features include: a clinic that doesn't know the difference between epigenetics and genetics; lessons about aging from Dolly ...
How agriculture can lead the way to a lower carbon economy
Cropland, grassland soils and forests can sequester hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 annually. Environmental Defense Fund researchers are ...
Video: Agricultural robot roams fields to monitor crops and their DNA
A semiautonomous robot may soon be roaming agricultural fields gathering and transmitting real-time data about the growth and development of ...
Super pigs: CRISPR gene-edited virus-resistant pigs could cut piglet deaths, pork prices
Scientists have created a new breed of super pigs resistant to a killer virus... They now have two generations of ...
Widely-held belief that food production must double by 2050 to feed growing population ‘not supported by data’
"Food production must double by 2050 to feed the world's growing population." This truism has been repeated so often in ...
Bayer takeover of Monsanto delayed as US, European regulators seek more information on deal
The German drugmaker will only seek approval for the transaction in the European Union next quarter after regulators there requested ...
New Technology Adoption Is The Ethical Thing To Do
CFI's research shows much stronger support for teaching developing countries how to feed themselves instead of exporting food to them ...
Whole Foods, Patagonia, Clif Bar school lunch program promotes misconceptions about pesticides, seed saving
[Editor's note: Stephan Neidenbach is a middle school teacher, father, and blogger.] The Conscious Kitchen program (funded by Patagonia, Clif ...
European Union ‘dragging its feet’ on gene-edited crop regulations
Plant scientists say that new editing tools, including CRISPR–Cas9, involve no more than making tiny, precisely targeted changes to a ...
US corn farmers switching to more-profitable soybeans to meet rising demand in China
Planting decisions for U.S. corn and soybean farmers are a bit of a no-brainer this year. After confronting the prospects ...
Flood of organic imports has US farmers concerned, asking for more scrutiny of overseas growers
Organic grain is flooding into the U.S., depressing prices and drawing complaints from domestic organic farmers who fear their harvests ...
Trump’s threatened ‘trade war’ with Mexico could undermine US GMO corn market
[Editor's note: More than 90% of the US corn market is GMO — a combination of herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant varieties.] ...
Rice plants could be genetically tweaked to tame arsenic found in soil, reducing risk for humans
Rooted in place, plants can’t run away from arsenic-tainted soil — but they’re far from helpless. Scientists have identified enzymes ...
Why eating soy protects some of us but not others from heart disease
A product of digesting a micronutrient found in soy may hold the key to why some people seem to derive ...
Commercialization, research on ‘home-grown’ GMO crops backed by Kenyan lawmakers
Kenyan crop researchers are free to start commercial growing of Genetically Modified (GMO) cotton, the country’s lawmakers said on Tuesday ...
Google delists Natural News, founder Mike Adams calls it ‘modern day book burning’
[Editor’s note: Read the GLP’s profile on Natural News founder Mike Adams. Also: FBI turns up heat on Mike Adams ...
Did Google do the right thing in blocking Natural News from searches?
[Editor’s note: Read the GLP’s profile on Natural News founder Mike Adams. Also: FBI turns up heat on Mike Adams ...
How European-Based NGOs Block Crop Biotechnology Adoption In Africa
European politicians and anti-biotech groups lobby to prevent Africa from adopting or trading GE crops. Farmers have been forced to ...
Debunking Denialism: 5 environmental benefits from GMO crops
Editor's note:Â Emil Karlsson is a Swedish science communicator who runs the Debunking Denialism blog, which is dedicated to scientific skepticism ...
Winter harvest? Russian grass genes could hold key to developing cold-tolerant corn, sugar cane
Winters in eastern Russia are intensely cold, with air temperatures regularly reaching minus 30 degrees in some locations. It is ...
Science Denial Is A Global Issue Hampering Food Technology Advancements
On GM foods or myriad other issues, what barriers are important to science denial? This is the latest in the ...
1 cigarette ‘more carcinogenic and toxic’ than a spoonful of glyphosate pesticide
[Editor's note: Matan Shelomi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Entomology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical ...
Chickens genetically engineered to act as surrogates could protect vulnerable breeds from avian flu
In a radical plan to preserve rare varieties [of chicken breeds] such as the Nankin, Scots Dumpy and Sicilian Buttercup, scientists ...
Genetically tweaked ‘seasonless’ broccoli may double yields
Scientists at the John Innes Centre are developing a new line of fast-growing sprouting broccoli that goes from seed to ...
Insect-resistant GMO cowpeas speed toward commercialization in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan African farmers will soon have access to improved cowpea varieties that will lead to increases in yield. This follows ...
Asian Agrobiotechnology Slowed By Private-Public Sector Tensions And NGO Activism
Asian food security challenged by population growth and rising calorie demands that non GE farming cannot meet. Foreign funded anti-GE ...
