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.
Europe’s veggie burger wars: Farmer backlash against plant-based labeling restrictions stall
EU wrangling over whether to give plant-based "sausages" and veggie "burgers" the chop and restrict such labels to meat products ...
Viewpoint: U.S. and Europe lagging behind China’s embrace of crop gene editing
Ships, chips, and missiles dominate discussions about defense. But don’t forget food. Secure supplies are key to supply-chain sovereignty — ...
Bitter dark chocolate appears to slow the aging process
The same chemical that makes dark chocolate taste bitter could help slow the ticking of your biological clock. A new ...
The expanding role of robotics in agriculture … on Earth and in space
Despite challenges, agriculture remains an appealing sector for robotics applications. ... In recent decades, agri-tech companies have been investing in ...
Yummy goldenberries with their pineapple-mango taste could transform via gene editing into a mass grocery market star
Goldenberries taste like a cross between pineapple and mango, pack the nutritional punch of a superfood, and are increasingly popular ...
What’s a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’?
Food fraud is the intentional and deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food products, food ingredients, and food packaging ...
Fungus ‘meat’? Yes, it could be a less expensive, environmentally sustainable —and tasty— chicken substitute
Chinese scientists have genetically tweaked a fungus to make protein-rich “meat”, which they say can be a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative ...
Utopian fantasy or realistic tools? Deploying synthetic biology to jump crop yields sustainably
As the climate crisis accelerates, there’s a desperate need to rapidly reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, both by ...
Viewpoint: Fake news about Italy’s 2023 ‘unenforceable’ ban on lab grown meat reignites fact-twisted furor
Italy passed a law banning cultivated or cell-based meat years ago, but posts online suggesting that it has just happened ...
Yield, resilience and profits: Seed technology is put to the test
Dr Godfrey Kgatle, plant pathologist and research coordinator at Grain SA, offers insight into how traditional breeding, hybrids, genetically modified ...
Viewpoint: Despite growing acceptance of gene-edited crops, cloned meat still gives people ‘the ick’
After working with other government departments and conducting a review of the scientific literature, Health Canada had determined that food ...
Viewpoint: San Francisco’s ultra-processed lawsuit: Stupid politics meets dumb science
[On December 2, 2025], San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu filed what he calls a “first of its kind” lawsuit ...
Will South Korea join the rest of the science world in deregulating genetically engineered crops?
[Korea's] National Assembly [just] passed the “GMO Full Disclosure Act (Food Sanitation Act Amendment).” This reflects progress in transparency, safeguarding ...
Viewpoint: The rosy-eyed view of the changes that could be coming with the EU’s approval of agricultural gene editing
In recent years, there has been a need for the rapid development of new varieties to address the negative constraints ...
Viewpoint: India needs to refine its view of the benefits and limits of crop biotechnology
This year’s Nobel laureates in Economics affirm that the future of growth models will be driven by innovation. This is ...
Most people have no clue how gene edited could tweak crops, but when the benefits are clear, they are receptive
Consumers are far more open to gene-edited foods when the benefits are personal, values-driven and clearly explained, according to recent ...
Activist claims that U.S. crop yields are in decline are mostly propaganda
For years, climate activists have pointed to the threat of declining crop yields as a reason to pass the most ...
Agri-biotechnology innovators turn to living organisms and natural materials to build future-focused food systems
[B]iotechnology companies are turning to living organisms and natural materials for inspiration. ... [U]nibaio extracts chitosan from shell waste and transforms ...
How to future-proof global food security to meet 2050 demands
Food security faces growing challenges due to population growth, resource limitations, economic pressures, and industrialization-induced lifestyle changes. Traditional food systems ...
CRISPR is coming: Europe takes a giant step forward escaping three decades of crop biotechnology denialism
[The European] Council has reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on a set of rules that establish a legal framework ...
In case there was any remaining doubt: 7-year long primate study proves no health issues are linked to GMO crops
Genetically modified foods have become increasingly prevalent in daily life, raising concerns about their safety and public acceptance, which in ...
Beautiful and delicious mutants on your plate: The misunderstood world of crop improvement
When most of us hear the word mutation, the images that come to mind are not positive. We think of ...
Viewpoint: Who’s Who of litigation-financed junk scientists publish screed in European pay-for-play journal designed to target safe chemicals and their manufacturers for billion-dollar tort actions
Springer Nature published on November 4, 2025, in Environmental Sciences Europe, "Scientists' warning: we must change paradigm for a revolution in toxicology and ...
Roundup litigation reprieve? U.S. government backs Bayer’s claim that its glyphosate is safe-as-used finding preempts random, conflicting state-by-state ‘failure-to-warn’ claims
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a brief on Monday urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review Monsanto’s federal ...
Protecting pigs and loving bacon made from them—Here’s how we can get the best of both worlds
Cultivated pork is the newest entrant in the effort to rethink meat. For years, plant-based offerings have been mimicking burgers, ...
Viewpoint: Small-scale organic farming’s ‘costly indulgence’—Unlike genetically engineered crops, sustainability myths cannot reduce chemical use and increase yields on less land
The modern food debate is full of comfortable myths. The most persistent is that “organic” is better for you, and ...
Viewpoint: Toxic politics and the culture wars—MIT’s ‘Undark’ caves to the MAHA—RFK, Jr.—predatort lobby
Few issues reveal the corrosion of scientific reasoning in contemporary politics more clearly than the escalating fight over the alleged ...
