Daily Food & Agriculture Digest
Midwest farmers feel pinch from tighter regulations restricting development of next-generation weedkillers
Reuters interviewed two dozen farmers, scientists, weed specialists and company executives and reviewed eight academic papers published since 2021 which ...
Mother Jones joins science-literate chorus criticizing the American Academy of Pediatrics’ bungled critique of GMOs and glyphosate
Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines for doctors fielding parents’ questions about the risks of foods containing genetically modified ...
Viewpoint: With only 4% of New York farmland organic, why is the state letting this narrow special interest group dictate crop protection policy for all farmers?
The 1980s farm crisis wasn’t only a fiscal and economic burden on the states and the farm workers, it also ...
Clothes made of banana peels: How fruit waste can be turned into a sustainable cotton alternative
Every year, the world produces about 10 million metric tonnes of bananas a year. 35% of the banana’s weight are ...
Next breakthrough CRISPR crop? Turning wild rice species into a domesticated crop
[Jiayang] Li, a plant geneticist at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing, is working on a wild ...
Israel becomes first nation to approve a cell-based beef product
Aleph Farms has announced that Israel’s government agency has issued regulatory approval for Aleph Cuts, the “world’s first” cell-based beef ...
Viewpoint: Science or scare-mongering? How many pieces of misinformation can you find in this disgraceful American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) attack on GMO crops and glyphosate?
On Dec 11, 2023, a clinical report titled, “Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) – Containing Food Products in Children” ...
Here’s how CRISPR is evolving into a tool to protect small African farmers
A research team has used genome editing to produce a rice variety resistant to yellow mottle virus, which is responsible for high ...
Viewpoint: ‘Drought-sensitive crops keep Kenya on the precipice of famine’ — Why anti-GMO court challenges stall biotech solutions to Kenya’s food security
Dr Chris Ojiewo of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) says Kenya is on the path of a ...
Viewpoint: Proposed Arizona lab-grown meat ban protects cattle ranch interests and holds back needed food innovation
House Bill 2121 has been introduced in the Arizona legislature and would ban the sale or production of cultivated meat ...
Ugly, browning bananas could become a fruit of the past as gene-editing tweak reduces spoilage
Bananas turning brown is a natural process that occurs over time as the fruit overripens and produces too much ethylene ...
Methane gas from cow burps and other sources accelerates global warming. Here’s a genetic tweaking technique that could transform it into organic fertilizer
A Bay Area biotech firm is working on a clever strategy to capture a worrisome greenhouse gas, and in the ...
Nearly half the Earth’s land mass is devoted to growing crops, with no large arable areas still uncultivated. With demand for food expected to skyrocket by 2050, what are our options?
By 2050, the global population is projected to total 9.7 billion people. That’s nearly 2 billion more folks on the ...
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 ...
Growing food without dirt? Electric ‘e-soil’ reduces fertilizer usage, boosts barley crop growth by 50%
Growing crops without soil may sound like a contradiction, but for the research team "Eplants" (Electronic Plants) at Linköping University, ...
‘If a viable herbicide was discovered this year, farmers couldn’t use it until at least 2035’: Why new weedkillers take so long to hit store shelves
Some often wonder why there have not been any new herbicide modes of action [or MOAs] registered in the past ...
Biodegradable plastic made of milk byproducts tackles plastic pollution and food waste all at once
As the issue of plastic pollution continues to escalate in the United States, a scientist from the Agricultural Research Service ...
European organic farming pioneer on why agricultural sustainability supporters need to drop their opposition to gene edited crops
For years, as director of the Swiss Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Urs Niggli fought against the genetic modification ...
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 ...
Far-right election successes across the EU may disrupt European Commission’s goals to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050
The growing electoral success of nationalist parties across the [European] continent risks undermining pro-environment forces in the next European Parliament ...
Viewpoint: Is California violating the free speech right of farmers in demanding a safety warning label on glyphosate? The liberal federal Ninth Circuit court rebukes the state for labeling the weedkiller a ‘dangerous chemical’
California’s Proposition 65 has become a poster child for ineffective and counterproductive over-warning. You know what we are talking about. ...
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 ...
American Pediatric Society lambasted by scientists, researchers, GLP’s Jon Entine for promoting scientifically-baseless claim that food grown from genetically modified seeds pose unique dangers to children
Immunologist and microbiologist Andrea Love, Ph.D., recently received a flood of messages from concerned parents and pediatricians. They were all ...
Modernizing ancient techniques: How harnessing microbes could make alternative proteins more palatable
There’s a growing category of foods using an age-old technique that experts say could be a dark horse in the ...
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, ...
Just 27% of Americans think genetically modified foods are safe to eat. It’s time to set the record straight
Thirty years after tomatoes became the first genetically modified produce sold in the U.S., lots of people remain skeptical of science-ified ...