Crops & 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.
Open letter to Consumer Reports: Organic alternatives to glyphosate not necessarily safer
Dear Consumer Reports, In the article Beat Those Weeds (Which was, somewhat ironically, published in the YOUR ADVOCATE section of ...
New study challenges Moms Across America claim glyphosate present in mothers’ breastmilk
Washington State University scientists have found that glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, does not accumulate in mother's ...
House passes voluntary GMO labeling law as Senate girds for fight
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, July 23, passed a hotly debated measure that would set up a system ...
East African countries face harsh biosafety restrictions in expanding gene editing research
For scientists across the globe in agricultural value chain to counteract the upcoming challenges likely to be faced by factors ...
GM canola becoming popular in Australia as farmers see yields increasing
Canola was once considered only useful as a break crop to clean-up weeds in paddocks, according to agronomist Greg Sefton, Cobram, ...
Star Trek, synbio and sustainable food: Will Friends of the Earth and other activists block the future?
Far as we are from instantaneous synthesis of food on command, advances in synbio and genetic engineering offer a glimpse ...
UK lifts EU ban on neonics to allow farmers to fight pests
Farmers will be able to use blacklisted pesticides linked to serious harm in bees after the UK government temporarily lifted ...
Why regulators conclude glyphosate safe while IARC, alone, claims it could cause cancer?
Glyphosate joins apples, coffee, sunning and night shift work as an IARC "probable" carcinogen. But the real risk to humans ...
Biofortifying crops for better nutrition helps improve health of poorest
When I started my career as an economist 30 years ago, I had no idea that I would eventually work ...
Fraud or drift? USDA finds 43 percent of organic foods contain ‘prohibited’ substances
Pesticides have been found in nearly half of organic fields. Is this a case of accidental drift, or fraud? ...
Talking Biotech: Kevin Folta on how farmers can communicate science effectively
Don't let Dr. Oz and others who know nothing about ag tell a farmer's story: Kevin Folta ...
As bugs become resistant to Bt maize in South Africa, new practices needed to delay resistence
In the case of maize, the GM crops planted and consumed in South Africa are known as Bt-crops, so named ...
Chilean salmon industry aims to replace antibiotics with biotech bacteria
In an effort to reduce the use of antibiotics in the Chilean salmon farming industry, researchers in the South American ...
Nutrition professionals need to enter conversation on GMOs
I originally discussed the need for nutrition professionals to enter the genetic engineering (GE) conversation/GMO debates on the American Society ...
After cancer assessment of farm chemicals, farmers still comfortable with using herbicides
Farmers count on chemical herbicides to keep their fields weed-free. In the last few months though, scientists brought together by ...
GM rice could address hunger, cut methane emissions 90%, fight climate change
It’s food for climate conscious consumers. A strain of rice has been genetically engineered to produce less methane. Rice agriculture ...
Cripr-Cas9 DNA editing opens world of possibilities—and Pandora’s box
Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people ...
Chef Tom Colicchio weighs in against the ‘DARK act’
It’s not surprising that as a chef, I want to know what I am feeding my customers. It’s also not ...
Chipotle loses integrity hyping non-GMO menu, as growth and traffic sour
In April, the high-class Mexican food chain Chipotle announced that it was going GMO-free. That is, the company would no ...
Neil Young donates $100,000 to fight Vermont’s GMO lawsuit
Canadian rocker Neil Young joined Gov. Peter Shumlin to voice his support for Vermont’s GMO labeling law, which requires food ...
Water: California drought yet water bottles everywhere
Humanity's future depends on how we manage our interactions with water. This takes the form of how we package it, ...
Audio: Bill Nye suggests ‘Proudly GMO’ label
Just in case Part 1 wasn’t controversial enough, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice are back to answer new fan questions ...
Democratic critics of voluntary GMO labeling bill launch attacks
Critics of a GMO regulation bill are proposing amendments that would add restrictions or exemptions to the legislation and allow ...
Anti-GMO activists so religiously dedicated to ideology they’ve lost progressive ethos
Plentiful are the takeaways from Will Saletan’s expertly researched, if a bit viciously anti-activist, barn-burner of piece over at Slate ...
WTO members raise concerns over EU, China biotech restrictions
The World Trade Organization committee dealing with food safety, animal and plant health, formally known as the Committee on Sanitary ...
Out of his depth, Nassim Taleb bungles risk assessment of GMOs
In a July 13 commentary in the New York Times, financial gurus Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Taleb, neither of whom boasts any ...
