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.
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Did you hear the story about the GMO that nearly destroyed the world?
An old myth has resurfaced that a GMO almost destroyed all life on Earth — but what's the real story? ...
Methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2, and it’s increasing in the atmosphere. Here’s why and what must be done
The greenhouse gas methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2, and its presence is increasing in the atmosphere ...
Viewpoint: The Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list is a danger to public health put out by an organic industry funded activist group
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an anti-science activist organization ...
How are we feeding a global population that has tripled since 1940? Propelled by genetic tinkering, crop production takes up 8 to 11 times less land while maintaining yields
The impacts of climate change, particularly extreme weather events, will increase the likelihood of crop failure in the future. As ...
What role can gene editing play in neutralizing the global devastation caused by papaya viruses?
Amidst a backdrop of devastating viral attacks on papaya crops worldwide, scientific innovation emerges as a beacon of hope. Gene ...
False dawn or new dawn for genetically engineered crops in the European Union?
It's going to be a long and difficult journey before the fate of the European crop biotechnology reform bill passed ...
Viewpoint: Healthy eating is less about what you eat and more about how much
“Avoid carbohydrates!” “Eat intermittently!” “Eat like a caveman!” “Increase foods that are antioxidants!” The list of recommendations is vast ...
How gene editing could rescue virus-devastated global papaya crop
Plant viruses are formidable adversaries when it comes to producing high yielding crops, causing significant harm to global agriculture, and ...
Video: Devastating Witches’ Broom disease is wiping out cassava crops across South Asia. Here’s how CRISPR nanotechnology could help contain the spread
In Southeast Asia, most smallholder farmers rely on cassava: its starch-rich roots form the basis of an industry that supports ...
GLP podcast: Technology keeps debunking ‘The Population Bomb;’ Internet access can harm mental health; Is urban farming sustainable? Probably not
Technological innovations continue to debunk predictions that global population growth will lead to mass starvation. Some mental health experts are ...
With climate change disruptions of farming and food escalating, scientists look to resilient ancient plant varieties as a possible safety net
In late September, an international team of researchers fanned out across a remote New Mexico mountain range, in search of ...
Genetic diversity squeeze: Camembert is on the verge of extinction. Here’s what can be done to rescue ‘endangered cheeses’
Each hunk of Camembert or smear of brie is an ecosystem, an assortment of fungi and bacteria that turn milk ...
Is tilapia a human-made freak that we should avoid — or an evolutionary rockstar?
Posts were appearing on my Facebook feed warning against the dangers of eating tilapia. So I decided to do a ...
What’s driving the ‘multi-billion dollar fear-and-smear campaign against genetically-engineered crops’ — and the link between activists and Russia?
Because most of society is between two and six generations removed from farming, to many people that subject is largely ...
Analysis: Climate activists issue scare-warnings of impending starvation, but they ignore technology’s future role in scaling productivity
In 1968, the American scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. In it, The Ehrlichs foresaw widespread death and ...
Post-apocalyptic farming? How seaweed could help us avert starvation during a nuclear winter
A nuclear war would plunge our planet into a deep nuclear winter. In the worst-case scenario, a nuclear exchange... could ...
China reverses course, authorizes genetically modified corn and soybeans to wean itself off western imports
China is about to start growing genetically modified crops, and that has me wondering what it will mean for its ...
‘Insects are perfect machines’: Bug-mimicking tiny robots can pollinate crops, lift many times their weight
Insects are the “perfect machines,” faster and stronger than humans relative to size, [Conor Trygstad] said. They are also tasty ...
Viewpoint: Whitewash — How four obstructionist journals and their academic enablers are corrupting reporting on the science of chemicals and crop biotechnology
In 2022 and 2023, two papers analyzing the intersection of genetic engineering and disinformation were published. Neither were in very ...
Better tasting, climate-proof coffee: Largest genetic map of Arabica coffee helps researchers grow optimized beans of the future
Researchers in Italy pieced together the most complete genetic map yet of Arabica coffee, the world's most popular drink ...
Viewpoint: Are corporations and Western countries shackling African agriculture to suit their interests, as anti-GMO groups claim? Or are the activists doing the shackling?
Genetically enhanced (GE) crops, pesticides, and fertilizers have fueled an explosion in food production over the last six decades. Following ...
How Russia is weaponizing food and fertilizer
Europe is more food dependent on Moscow now than we were before the war, with the bloc replacing energy dependency ...
Viewpoint: Will ‘irrational fears of mutations and a naive understanding of nature’ derail Europe’s effort to reform 20+ years of misguided crop biotech regulations?
The European Commission has now published a proposal on how, in the future, to regulate crops produced by new breeding ...
50%+ yield boost: Nigeria commercializes four varieties of insect-resistant, drought-tolerant corn
Nigeria’s government is taking the bull by the horns and exploring various ways by which the nation can put an ...
African scientists challenge activist claims that crop biotechnology revolution spreading across Africa threatens continent’s plant biodiversity
Do genetically modified (GM) pose a threat to the Africa’s plant biodiversity? ...
Carbon tradeoff: Which is better for the environment — grain-fed or pasture-raised beef?
Beef production accounts for the largest share of global livestock greenhouse gas emissions and is an important target for climate ...
Viewpoint: ‘I’m talking about you Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth’ — Nobel Laureate Sr Richard Roberts urges Thailand to reject anti-biotechnology advocacy group fearmongering
Speaking in an exclusive interview to The Nation, Dr Sir Richard J Roberts, Nobel Prize winner for medicine in 1993, ...