Daily Food & Agriculture Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of agricultural and food issues, including the GMO debate, conventional and organic farming, regulations, new breeding technologies and sustainability. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
‘Thirsty plants’ to land conservation: How biotechnology helps address developing world’s agricultural challenges
[Editor's note: Sarah Evanega holds a doctorate in plant biology from Cornell University, where she is the director of the Alliance ...
Fish farm problem? Salmon diseases evolving more virulently in farms
Fish farming is one of the fastest growing food production sectors in the world, but infections caused by bacteria, viruses, ...
‘Wouldn’t help much’: What would a ban on neonicotinoid insecticides do for bee health?
“Everyone knows insecticides can kill bees,” says honeybee biologist Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. “The ...
Fake science news: Rise of ‘predatory journals’ makes it easier to publish, spread ‘advocacy research’
[Editor's note: Robert Fraley is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto. He has Ph.D. degrees in microbiology ...
Non-GMO breeding changes the makeup of crops more than genetic engineering
The composition of GM breeding stacks was more similar to the composition of iso-hybrids than was the composition of nonGM ...
Will California break with EPA and ban chlorpyrifos pesticide?
Approximately one million pounds of chlorpyrifos—about 20 percent of what’s used nationwide—are applied annually in California to dozens of food ...
‘Glyphosate is vital’: Scottish farmers launch campaign to support herbicide’s reauthorization
As the EU decision on whether or not to re-authorise the herbicide glyphosate approaches, a farming union has called on ...
‘Backlash’ against GMOs may be more about corporate power than science
Much of the backlash against GMOs is less about genetic engineering and more about the business practices of the corporations ...
There are no GM oranges — So why is Tropicana deceiving consumers with Non-GMO label?
[Editor's note: Greg Jaffe is the Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public ...
Will corporate mergers in agriculture spur innovation?
[Editor's note: Ed Wiederstein is a former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and a farmer in Iowa.] When funding was more ...
‘Non-GMO’ ranked near top, ‘organic’ at bottom in study of consumer meat preferences
For many consumers, buying a gallon of milk is much more complex than finding the preferred fat content and expiration ...
Bee experts say ditch Cheerios’ wildflower seeds, plant native ones to fight pollinator decline
[Editor's note: Jenna Gallegos is a 5th year plant biology PhD student at the University of California, Davis.] Honeybees are ...
Ear to the ground: Crops’ roots use sound to find water
A new study from the University of Western Australia’s Center for Evolutionary Biology, published in Oecologia on April 5, [2017] ...
Insect-resistant Bt GMO eggplant helps Bangladesh farmers increase income, reduce pesticide use
[Editor's note: Deb Carstoiu is managing director of plant biotech communications at CropLife International.] The eggplant, known in Asia as brinjal, ...
Sorghum resistant to herbicide, drought, pests in advanced development
For the past several years sorghum research has lagged behind that of corn and soybeans, but that could soon change ...
Video: Has organic farming ‘ideology’ spread through the scientific community?
[Editor's note: Andrew McGuire is an agronomist at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.] At the core ...
Controversial Italian study finding potential harm from GMO foods flagged by scientific journal
A journal has flagged a paper by a researcher who has questioned the safety of genetically modified organisms, after receiving concerns ...
Nigerian professor: Anti-GMO campaigners ‘play politics’ with food security and poverty, delaying sustainable farming
Prof. Benjamin Ubi, [president of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria] says the adoption of biotechnology will facilitate sustainable agricultural production ...
Cuban officials embrace GMOs to feed hungry population, but groups push back
[Editor's note: Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.] Cuban officials have announced the island is turning to ...
Boulder County, Colorado to phase out GMO crops and neonicotinoid insecticides
Boulder County commissioners voted 2-1 on Thursday [April 13, 2017] to approve the latest version of their plan for phasing ...
Canada’s food regulator finds herbicide glyphosate on 30 percent of samples — But only 1.3 percent above ‘acceptable’ limit
Canada's food regulator has found traces of the controversial herbicide glyphosate in nearly 30 percent of about 3,200 food products ...
Does the administration’s block of the chlorpyrifos pesticide ban signal a changing regulatory landscape?
One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on ...
Green meal: GMO foods, synthetic milk, lab-grown meat on the menu
Feeding the 10 billion will require some creative solutions – and unpalatable compromises. Perhaps we can learn to love algae, ...
Oregon bill to allow local governments to regulate GMO crops fails again
Local governments in Oregon will continue to be prohibited from regulating genetically engineered crops. Bills to ease the ban both ...
Understanding toxicity: Caffeine ’40 times more toxic’ than glyphosate herbicide
[Editor's note: Alison Bernstein is a neuroscientist who studies the role of epigenetics and environmental exposures in Parkinson’s disease.] LD50 ...
GMO labeling could be top line on Sonny Perdue’s menu once confirmed as secretary of agriculture
Should Sonny Perdue be confirmed as the next secretary of Agriculture, it will fall to him to end the biggest ...
Activist-fueled ‘over-regulation’ of GMO research stymies potential to feed the world
[Editor's note: Dr. Amjad M. Husaini is a professor of biotechnology at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in India.] ...
