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.
Tanzania developing drought tolerant hybrid seeds
On January 10, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project in Tanzania, in collaboration with the Commission for Science ...
Four trends driving food labeling
Like food, labels are something we need, but are at constant risk of abusing. The FDA regulates what can, as ...
Would you prefer to eat genetically modified eggs, or see day-old chicks destroyed?
World egg production industries rely on a single sex only (female), with the males generally disposed of by carbon dioxide ...
Why the Gates Foundation wants to make Golden Rice
Imagine if you could prevent hundreds of millions of children from suffering malnutrition maladies such as blindness, stunting, poor health ...
Gene technology develops longer, stronger cotton fiber
An international team with Texas A&M University ties is using cutting-edge genetic engineering techniques to suppress expression of a key protein in ...
What if natural products came with a list of ingredients?
Processed foods are notorious for their jaw-droppingly long lists of chemical-laden ingredients, each one sounding worse than the last. But ...
After voters reject GMO labeling, Washington state lawmaker aim at GM salmon
Months after Washington voters narrowly rejected an initiative requiring the labeling of genetically modified foods, lawmakers are reviving the GMO ...
Pakistan working to formulate ‘national biotechnology policy’
Pakistan's Ministry of National Food Security has started the process to formulate a ‘national biotechnology policy’, and was working on ...
View from an Iowa farm: In choosing seeds, ‘I’m no pawn of Monsanto’
Every year, farmers are faced with difficult decisions about which seeds they will plant. The wrong choices can be disastrous ...
Amy Harmon GMO redux: Targeting female journalists for deviating from ideological expectations
Journalist Amy Wallace explores gender expectations in science communication and overcoming bias in writing about GMOs and other important topics ...
Panama to use GM mosquitoes to battle deadly dengue
Two weeks ago, Panama declared a dengue outbreak, that up to that point, had affected more than 3,100 people and killed ...
U.S. agriculture can change the GMO conversation
Despite the head start biotechnology opponents have, there’s still plenty of opportunity for farmers, ranchers and the biotechnology industry to ...
An example of how much pesticides have changed
The pesticides that farmers use to protect their crops have changed a great deal over the last few decades. While ...
Humanity needs science, not ideology
Vaccines once faced the same scrutiny GM crops face today and are now widely accepted. But can the science of ...
Anti-GMO take on USDA green-lighting of corn and soybean with herbicide 2,4-D resistance
The USDA recently gave a virtual green light for Dow's new GE corn and soybean seeds, but according to opponents, ...
Is there a farmer and consumer backlash against GM crops?
Most US consumers say they want genetically modified food labelled (it isn't) and believe that they don't eat GM food ...
Russia moves to legitimize GM seed imports, spur research
Russia has introduced a registration system for foods containing genetically modified organisms that could drag the illegal import of genetically modified seeds ...
Food First anti-GMO activist Lappé challenges Grist’s coverage of GMOs as naive
If you’ve been reading the running commentary over at Grist for the past six months, journalist Nathanael Johnson has been opining about ...
Sustainability case for GE crops
The public debate about food has become deafening. "Local" and "organic" are mantras of the organic lobby, but organic food ...
Grist for the genetic engineering mill
A “what I’ve learned about GMOs” (“genetically modified organisms”) end-of-the-year column by Nathanael Johnson, Grist’s food writer, would ordinarily not warrant much attention ...
China vows ‘active, cautious’ GMO food stance
With the safety certificates for China's GMO rice and corn expiring soon, the country will take an "active and cautious" policy ...
Massive data do not support Don Huber’s GMO/glyphosate pathogen claims
Anti-GMO figure Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Purdue University, has stirred quite a bit of controversy as ...
The fable of Hawaiian ‘Frankencorn’
Hawaii is the epicenter of a furious campaign to shut down production farms that yield genetically modified seed. It was ...
Organic food and farm groups ask Obama to require GMO food labels
Four U.S. lawmakers joined with more than 200 food companies, organic farming groups, health and environment organizations and other groups on Thursday ...
Ted Talks and videos on the science of GMOs
Blogger Cami Ryan has compiled a list of Ted talks and videos that relay reliable scientific evidence on GMOs ...
Retraction Watch: Back story on Séralini’s censorship demands on GMO study and critique of retraction
The debate over the retraction of a highly controversial paper on the effects of GMOs on rats continues as new ...
Weighing the plusses and minuses of GMO labeling
The most visible and contentious debate in our food supply is undoubtedly over labeling of genetically modified organisms. In the ...
