Daily Food & Ag 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.
Viewpoint: Here’s why we have to harness gene editing to promote global food security
There is an urgent need to develop crop varieties which tolerate adverse growth conditions while requiring fewer inputs. Plant breeding ...
CRISPR food in Japan: Consumers more skeptical of gene-edited livestock than crops, survey shows
Because humans tend to feel closer to animals than plants, and commonly express feelings regarding animal welfare but not plant ...
Agroecology in Africa: Silver bullet or pathway to poverty?
A model of agroecology that limits farming inputs in Africa to solely indigenous materials is meeting resistance from farmers and ...
Viewpoint: Uganda’s ‘mistrust of science’ threatens local farming innovation and economic growth
Uganda is merely watching as other countries embrace technologies such as biotechnology that are transforming agriculture and earning them huge ...
Skeptical of AquaBounty’s salmon? Nature makes GM fish, too
A new study by Queen's University researchers Laurie Graham and Peter Davies finds "conclusive" evidence for the controversial idea that ...
GM Golden Rice yield and grain quality comparable to conventional counterparts, field studies show
The first series of peer-reviewed publications on the GR2E Golden Rice field trial data are now available in Nature Scientific ...
Gene editing could help Kenya’s valuable tea crop retain its competitive edge
Genome editing may help protect Kenya’s most important cash crop — tea grown in the country’s prime highlands — from ...
‘Meat: It’s still what’s for dinner.’ Can popular plant-based burgers really displace beef?
Walmart now peddles house-brand vegan “chick’n patties,” and KFC is trialing not-chicken nuggets developed by Beyond Meat. But here’s a ...
Changing course, Health Canada finds neonicotinoid pesticides ‘not a threat’ to aquatic insects
In 2018, Health Canada proposed to phase out all agricultural uses of thiamethoxam, a Syngenta product, and clothianidin, a Bayer ...
While COVID held our attention in a vice grip, 2020 brought some major crop biotech breakthroughs
This month marked one year since the COVID-19 pandemic turned life upside down around the world. The anniversary wasn’t exactly ...
Engineered tomatoes kill whiteflies by ‘silencing’ gene that protects them from pesticides
A pernicious agricultural pest owes some of its success to a gene pilfered from its plant host millions of years ...
Central Uganda’s new leadership pledges support for GM crops: ‘We have a cardinal role to ensure food security’
Newly elected leaders from Wakiso district in central Uganda pledged support for genetically modified (GM) crops during a sensitization workshop ...
Infographic: Here’s where GM crops are grown around the world today
Do you know where biotech crops are grown in the world? This updated ISAAA infographics show where biotech crops were ...
Processed food doesn’t necessarily equal unhealthy food, study finds
Classification systems that categorise foods according to their ‘level of processing’ have been used to predict diet quality and health ...
Gene-edited crops ‘safe for human consumption and the environment,’ Health Canada finds
Health Canada is proposing new rules to deal with plant breeding innovation, including gene-edited crops. To develop the new guidelines, ...
Europe could become an ‘agricultural museum’ unless it embraces crop gene editing, officials warn
Speaking during the AGRI Committee debate, right-wing MEP Mazaly Aguilar raised a concern that, by imposing new restrictions on the ...
3 science communication tips from a pro: Geneticist Kevin Folta explains how to build trust with GMO skeptics
Kevin Folta, professor at the University of Florida, has dedicated much of his professional life to not only pushing the ...
Opposition to crop biotechnology fuels ‘global trade concerns,’ Congressional Research Service finds
When foods containing GE ingredients were first introduced in the 1990s, some members of the public called for banning them ...
Honey without bees? A synthetic version that mimics the ‘real thing’ could be available in 2021
MeliBio, the Berkeley-based startup claiming to make real honey without bees, has closed $850,000 in pre-seed funding as it gears ...
‘My position is not ideological’: Why some agroecology advocates accept GM crops and synthetic pesticides
[Head of advocacy and programs at the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Dr. Charles Nyaaba] said that modern technological inventions, ...
Grapevines that spent a year in space may help researchers breed crops better suited for climate change
Researchers in France are studying a dozen bottles of French wine and hundreds of snippets of grapevines that returned to ...
Nigerian farmers welcome new cassava varieties: ‘My joy knows no bounds’
Nigerian farmers are enthusiastic about the government’s approval of five new varieties of NextGen cassava that promise to double yields ...
Viewpoint: COVID-19 vaccine success should prompt us to rethink our fear of GMO ‘Frankenfoods’
[COVID vaccines are] one of the biggest, and certainly the most high-profile, utilizations of genetic technology in the history of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Science-based trade’ — Why the US should dispute Mexico’s glyphosate, GM corn bans at the WTO
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, issued a decree that has U.S. agriculture worried. The decree bans glyphosate, a herbicide, ...
Food of the future: Will plant-based and lab-grown proteins become household staples?
Plant-based meats are now a fixture at fast-food restaurants around the world, and plant-based milk is a household staple. Alternatives ...
UK sugar beet farmers could be growing gene-edited, disease-resistant crops within 5 years
[British Sugar] is investigating gene-edited beet seed as a long-term solution to [virus yellows] disease, which devastated crops across eastern ...
Following glyphosate ban, Belgian gardeners find ‘eco-friendly’ weedkillers mostly ineffective
The majority of weed-killing products on the market today were rated “weak” or “bad,” according to results from the Belgian ...
