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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Viewpoint: GMOs pose ‘systemic threat to humanity’? Debunking Nassim Taleb’s apocalyptic assault on crop biotech
Nassim Taleb is a statistician and financial risk analyst. As interesting as his observations about the uncertain risk of large ...
Book review: ‘The Lives of Bees’ offers 14 tips to help keep honeybees healthy and pollinating our crops
What were the lives of wild honey bees like before humans began intensively managing them and moving them all over ...
Viewpoint: France’s bad science—its stances on food safety and GMOs at sharp odds with European scientists
Paris is worried that the whitening additive that makes sweets gleam — titanium dioxide, also called E171 — and is ...
China to increase farm imports from US as two nations call for ceasefire in ‘multibillion-dollar tariff war’
President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China agreed on [June 29] to resume trade talks after a seven-week breakdown, ...
Uganda set to embrace artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, but biotechnology languishes
'Something fundamentally detrimental to the progress of scientific and technological innovations in the agriculture of our nation is happening.' ...
Saving bees ‘to death’? Our efforts to grow the honeybee population by using artificial hives may harm other pollinators
Everyone wants to save the bees. But as populations decline every year, we may be saving them to death. Human ...
Organic industry-funded study finds trace levels of antibiotics, pesticides in conventional milk
Results from a recent study examining what’s in organic versus conventional milk show that the majority of samples of conventional, non-organic ...
Monsanto and ‘Big Ag’ strangle American farming? Sanders, Warren likely to attack conventional agriculture, promote organics at Democratic debates
This week's opening round of debates threatens to fall shockingly short on science ...
GMO wheat could put bread and pasta back on the menu for people with celiac disease
A new wheat could help celiac patients return to a gluten-rich diet without fear of health repercussions ...
‘Third way’ agriculture: How technology, good judgement can save our food supply from climate change
Imagine waking up in a world that has become so hot and so crowded that most of what you eat ...
Chinese biologist Qu Dongyu to focus on hunger, poverty eradication as UN Food and Agriculture Organization chief
Qu Dongyu, China's deputy agricultural minister, was elected [June 23] as the new director general of the U.N. Food and ...
People in Africa eat GMO foods. So why do they oppose new crops developed by their own scientists?
GM foods are already sold in supermarkets throughout Africa, but the fear remains ...
‘Google maps’ for gene sequencing helps small labs cheaply, quickly develop disease-resistant crops
Australian researchers have developed a tool described as “Google Maps for genes” potentially throwing open the field of genetic manipulation, ...
Bees with access to diverse flowering plants are healthier pollinators, USDA study shows
Everyone wants healthy, thriving honey bee colonies. One-third of the food we eat requires pollinators, and commercial beekeepers transport honey ...
Varroa mites central driver of uptick in overwinter honeybee colony losses according to 2018-2019 survey, worrying entomologists
Beekeepers across the United States lost 40.7% of their honey bee colonies from April 2018 to April 2019, according to ...
Fear of biotechnology threatens efforts to save Brazil’s pinto beans
The issue of GMO safety has been proven many times over to be a false controversy ...
No ‘meaningful difference’ between GMO golden rice and conventional counterpart, except for boosted beta-carotene levels, study confirms
Compositional analyses were performed on samples of rice grain, straw, and derived bran obtained from golden rice event GR2E and ...
Sequenced genome reveals how almonds went from bitter to sweet, could help produce more flavorful nuts
A team of researchers .... has found the genetic difference between bitter wild almonds and the sweet domesticated variety. In ...
Lab-grown sushi could help meet booming seafood demand, cut overfishing
Salmon has become the guinea pig of the seas when it comes to using technology to supplement falling fish populations ...
Video: African biotech scientist Margaret Karembu defends safety, sustainability of GMO crops
Environmental scientist Margaret Karembu takes on common objections to GMO crops in this interview with Know Ideas Media founder Nick ...
Crops produced with mutagenesis misleadingly labeled ‘non-GMO’ in Germany, biotech industry trade group says
According to research by [Germany's Free Democratic Party] and the genetic engineering-friendly association “Forum Grüne Reason” (FGV), many foods labeled ...
GMO corn doesn’t harm gut microbiome of rats, study team associated with anti-biotech geneticist Gilles-Eric Séralini finds
Safety concerns arising from the consumption of foods derived from genetically modified (GM) crops remains a controversial subject. We report ...
Nigeria’s greenlighting of Bt insect resistant cotton and cowpeas may spur Africa’s acceptance of GMOs
Barring a change of course, Nigeria is on pace to become one of the largest GM producing and consuming countries ...
Kind Bar attacks pro-organic rival Clif Bar for ‘disguising’ sugar in its recipe
Kind’s latest salvo against Clif Bar is another sign that their ongoing rivalry for a bigger slice of the $5 billion ...
How do we stem climate change? Suck a trillion tons of CO2 underground
[In May], carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpassed 415 parts per million, the highest in human history. Environmental experts ...
Podcast: How farmers grow the 2.7 billion pounds of coffee we drink every year
Whether you typically crave a drip coffee or something a bit more intricate, we can all agree that caffeine is ...
Savagnin Blanc: The 900-year-old grape still used in wine making today
DNA from ancient grape seeds shows the grapevine behind a local vintage has been cultivated continuously for 900 years. Ancient ...
