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.
Gene editing could help make vertical farming a viable tool in the battle against global hunger
Dr. Huw Jones of Aberystwyth University stressed the importance of genetic engineering in the future of agriculture, saying that while ...
Viewpoint: Mandatory gene-edited food labels would ease consumer fear of CRISPR
The food industry’s last venture into genetic engineering, more than 30 years ago, was a commercial success for agriculture ...
GMO diamondback moth shows promise as sustainable pest control tool in first ever open-field release
A newly published study reports a successful, first-ever open-field release of a self-limiting, genetically engineered diamondback moth, stating that it ...
Glyphosate herbicide cancer fears could turn electricity, microwaves into viable weed-killing tools
Concern about glyphosate - the world's most widely-used weedkiller - has been growing since 2015, when the World Health Organization's ...
Malthusian inversion: Slowing population growth could mean cheaper food and a cleaner environment
I’ve noticed several articles in the past few weeks talking about slowing or even falling population growth .... The richer ...
CRISPR gene editing knocks out viruses responsible for billions of dollars in crop losses
Viruses cause billions of dollars in losses for many food, feed, and fiber crops, including staples like wheat, rice, potatoes, ...
41% of Americans have had plant-based meat, survey shows, and most will keep eating it
Forty-one percent of Americans report having personally tried a plant-based meat, with age being the biggest factor in whether they ...
Kellogg’s to cut wheat, oats treated with Bayer’s Roundup herbicide from supply chain by 2025
Kellogg’s, the multinational food manufacturer based in Battle Creek, Mich., is taking a stand. But very quietly. At the end ...
EU officials open to ‘science-based’ decision making on CRISPR crops, USDA’s Sonny Perdue says
When it comes to food, EU policymakers should make science-based decisions if they want to help European their farmers tackle ...
Video: Biotech firm Syngenta defends GMO crops, Impossible Burger as climate change mitigation tools
Syngenta Chief Executive Officer Erik Fyrwald discusses the need to help farmers adapt to climate change, genetically-modified food and the ...
Bayer, plaintiffs postpone latest glyphosate-cancer trial to facilitate possible settlement
Bayer AG said on [Jan. 24] it has reached an agreement with plaintiffs’ lawyers to postpone a Missouri jury trial ...
GMO crops with enhanced carbon-storing ability could help slow climate change
More than 10 percent of the Earth’s land-surface is cropped, about 3.7 billion acres of carbon sequestration Farmers’ toolkits for ...
Drones detect plant pests, dispatch natural predators to kill them
In Santa Monica, Calif., researchers flew drones with light-sensitive cameras over a strawberry field to locate pest-damaged plants. Armed with ...
Growing diverse crops may not slow climate change as much as previously thought
Integrating perennial crops into corn and soybean rotations doesn't consistently increase the ability of soils to store carbon, according to ...
Biotech industry aims to avoid backlash from GMO-wary consumers as CRISPR-edited crops near mass commercialization
The biotechnology industry wants to avoid repeating mistakes with gene editing that it made nearly three decades ago with transgenic ...
Plant biologist explains how disease-resistant crops could help prevent global famine
Each month, those working at the pioneering heart of Norwich Research Park [in the UK] tell us how their work ...
Herbicide-tolerant GMO soy ‘as safe as conventional counterpart’, confirms EU safety panel
In the present scientific opinion, the scientific Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of the European Food Safety Authority (hereafter referred ...
Viewpoint: Effort to ban 262 pesticides in Kenya threatens nation’s ability to stop locust swarms from devouring crops
As locusts rage in the biggest attack for 25 years, the majority of Kenyans will never have seen the like ...
Glyphosate harms soil microbes? USDA research challenges common criticism of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide
There are dozens of conspiracy theories about glyphosate. One of those theories goes something like this: glyphosate, the active ingredient ...
Nearly half of US fruit growers want biotech crops, survey shows, but fear consumers won’t buy GMO products
And you thought growers could go on and on about problems with the weather, or their employees, or any of ...
CRISPR immunizes chickens against deadly virus, potentially boosting global egg and meat production
CRISPR genome editing has been used to make chickens resistant to a common virus. The approach could boost egg and ...
Have regulators failed to address agriculture’s fertilizer pollution problem?
Everywhere Randy Souder looked, he saw mud. On his soggy fields. In the mechanized crannies of his planter. Along the ...
Reforestation: Climate change solution or ‘ecosystem disservice’? Depends where you plant the trees
Reforestation is an important part of tackling climate change, but it seems we need to think carefully about where we ...
We can sustainably feed 3.4 billion people. Study shows 4 eco-friendly farming practices will help produce food for 10 billion
Global agriculture puts heavy pressure on planetary boundaries, posing the challenge to achieve future food security without compromising Earth system ...
Natural GMOs: Study shows that 12 popular foods were genetically modified by mother nature
Even though no one has found any evidence that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are harmful, anti-GMO activists have campaigned against ...
Vertical farms, lab-grown meat: The sustainable future of food, or ‘wishful thinking’?
Farmers have grown food in roughly the same way for thousands of years .... Now, entrepreneurs say they have a ...
Saving seafood: Lab-grown microalgae could help sustain the world’s overfished oceans
Oceans once teeming with life are being whittled away. Larger, predatory fish – salmon and tuna included – are now ...
