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.
India’s crackdown on GMO cotton in Maharashtra state boosts illegal planting nearly 25%
Nearly 25 per cent of the cotton crop being sown by farmers in Maharashtra this season is from the banned ...
Pakistan marks another GMO crop milestone
Pakistani farmers and scientists are recognizing the need for genetically modified (GM) crops to help the country transition from subsistence ...
Juror in glyphosate-cancer trial urges judge to uphold $80 million verdict appealed by Bayer
A juror who was part of a panel that delivered an $80 million award against Bayer AG after finding that ...
Alternative meat producers struggle to secure supply of yellow peas as demand for plant-based burger skyrockets
The soaring popularity of plant-based meat substitutes has shone a spotlight on a new star ingredient: the humble pea. From ...
‘Smart’ fertilizers help feed booming global population while cutting pollution, slowing climate change
To feed the world’s growing population, farmers need to increase crop yields. Applying more fertilizer could help. But standard versions ...
African cassava mosaic virus poses serious threat to food security. Is CRISPR gene editing the answer?
.... African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) has been linked to famine and indirectly to the deaths of thousands of people ...
Are plants conscious? Experts say trendy theory in biology based on misunderstanding of evolution
If a tree falls, and no one's there to hear it, does it feel pain and loneliness? No, experts argue ...
Treating nutrient-stripped soil with charcoal made from plants could boost US crop yields 6%
Farmers in the US can expect to see an increase in crop yield of between 4.7 and 6.4%, on average, ...
Want a more sustainable food system? Convince young westerners to eat insects
The rapidly changing climate and an expanding global population are serious risks for worldwide food security. Edible insects have a ...
India says it will take “appropriate action” to stop farmers from planting unapproved GMO insect resistant and herbicide tolerant crops
[India's] agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar reiterated that all genetically modified (GM) crops other than Bt. cotton [have] been banned ...
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 ...
Austria could be first EU state to prohibit glyphosate use as weed killer ban advances through parliament
Austria’s lower house of parliament passed a bill on [July 2] banning all uses of the weedkiller glyphosate, the first ...
New insight into how plants breathe could lead to more water-efficient crops
Scientists have discovered how plants create networks of air channels -- the lungs of the leaf -- to transport carbon ...
Are eggs good or bad for you? Why science can’t make up its mind about our favorite foods
Do you know whether eggs are good for you? What about coffee, red wine, or chocolate? Most people probably have ...
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: Don’t ignore organic industry’s conflict of interest in stoking fears about glyphosate dangers
A California jury recently awarded a $289 million judgment against Bayer, the maker of the herbicide. Lawyers somehow convinced the ...
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 ...
3 things we should do to preserve insect biodiversity
Insects make up the bulk of terrestrial diversity. Reports of insect declines, best documented in Europe and North America, suggest ...
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, ...
Pesticide exposure boosts cancer risk in farmers? Busting one of social media’s favorite agriculture myths
Did you hear? Farmers have less cancer overall than the general population .... Nearly 10 years ago .... U.S. Agricultural ...
Price floor for Bayer shares may not exist as Monsanto glyphosate-cancer litigation costs mount
On June 7th, 2018, Bayer .... consummated its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto, the largest GMO and agricultural chemical distributor ...
‘Innovative’ GMO Impossible burger could help support US soybean growers, says USDA chief Sonny Perdue
Sonny Perdue may be a champion of agriculture and agribusinesses in all its forms. But even he isn’t immune to ...
Argentina approves fifth GMO cotton variety in effort to boost crop yields, spare natural resources
Argentina's Minister of AgroIndustry Luis Miguel Etechevehere and Christian Monty, Head of Global Cotton from BASF have announced the release ...
German farmer’s group calls for updated EU GMO crop rules to combat climate change
German farmers want access to new breeding technologies to protect against climate change. This would require a change in the ...
Viewpoint: Why Monsanto’s pro-GMO ‘crusade’ to win the millennial generation failed
Monsanto has been a lightning rod for people’s views on food, the food system, global health, and war since well ...
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 ...
Maharashtra state in India contemplates lifting GMO herbicide-tolerant cotton ban amid farmer protests
Demands to lift [the] ban on the use of herbicide-tolerant Bt (HTBT) cotton in the state are growing stronger. Several ...
