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.
Turning human ‘biosolids’ into fertilizer raises health concerns
New research suggests [that using sewage as fertilizer, also known as 'biosolids'] could be a problem, as contaminants are now ...
Plants engineered with algae genes could increase crop yields
To meet the food demands of a rising global population, innovative strategies are required to increase crop yields. Improvements in ...
29 states pass ‘seed-preemption laws’ that block cities and counties from banning GMOs
With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from ...
Marijuana legalization has spurred ‘space race’ to exploit medicinal and recreational benefits of cannabis
The federal government's restrictions on cannabis have hindered American scientists from studying it in depth. However states that legalized weed ...
What’s behind EU’s skepticism of Bayer-Monsanto merger?
[Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto] may not go through. Multiple media outlets have reported that European Union regulators are skeptical of ...
Viewpoint: Federal GMO label must be ‘neutral and not misleading’
[Editor’s Note: Greg Jaffe is the Biotechnology Director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.] On July 29, 2016, ...
Judge ponders removal of lawyers behind glyphosate class action suit for possible illegal media release of classified documents
A federal judge [heard] arguments [on August 24] at a federal court in San Francisco over whether the lead attorneys ...
CRISPR could efficiently improve difficult-to-breed oilseed crops, study shows
CRISPR/Cas9 is a valuable tool for both basic and applied research that has been widely applied to different plant species ...
Billionaire Randal Kirk behind GMO salmon, apples and mosquitoes
The world’s first genetically modified fish farm is a subsidiary of Intrexon, a $2.2bn company headed by Randal Kirk, a ...
How technology can reduce pesticide drift
Though neither the EPA nor various state agencies could provide reliable statistics on the total number of [pesticide] drift incidents, ...
Pesticide used on organic farms may cause breathing problems in farmworkers’ children
Elemental sulfur, the most heavily-used pesticide in California, may harm the respiratory health of children living near farms that use ...
Animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam: Agriculture supporters need to stand up to GMO fearmongering
Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California-Davis, told the Idaho Milk Processors Association annual conference there ...
Selective breeding for shorter plant stems contributed to ‘Green Revolution’ yield gains
Untangling the genetics that control and regulate the yield of a crop is a complicated, but potentially rewarding puzzle. High-yielding ...
Crop scientist Kevin Folta on how to engage science deniers and anti-GMO activists
Since the 2016 presidential election, tensions in the political arena have spilled into the science world. Scientists have been notably ...
Can GMO crops help Australian farmers cope with climate change?
Queensland farmers could use genetically-modified plants to tackle the threat of climate change. Environment Minister Steven Miles said farmers would ...
Pesticide seed treatments may decrease soil health, increase weeds, study finds
Use of seed coated with mixtures of fungicides and insecticides has exploded in recent years to protect most crops from ...
Infographic: Why single out GMOs—one of many forms of crop modification—for labeling?
[Editor's note: Layla Katiraee is a scientist at Integrated DNA Technologies. She has a PhD in molecular genetics with a ...
Portable DNA sequencer can identify plant species in hours, not months
In a paper published today in Scientific Reports , researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, detail for the first ...
India may be forced to import more food if it doesn’t adopt biotech crops to increase yields
India is not keeping pace with its peers like China in adopting innovative farm technologies, especially biotechnology, a US embassy ...
Viewpoint: Farmers not trapped into annually buying patented GMO seeds
[There] is one myth that often gets used as a criticism against genetic engineered crops. This myth usually takes the ...
GMO ‘virus-free’ pigs stir debate about ‘pushing limits’ of genetic research
These pigs are really just like any other pigs, except they were born without any genes in their genomes that ...
Mozambique harvests first GMO corn field trial
Mozambique's Institute of Agricultural Research (IIAM) is harvesting its first genetically modified maize (GM maize), which has been grown in ...
North American Indians used selection to genetically modify ancient crops, research shows
Ohio’s first farmers, beginning sometime after 5,000 years ago, relied [on] a number of local plants, including sumpweed, goosefoot, maygrass, ...
Dicamba fiasco: Are Monsanto’s labels too restrictive and confusing for farmers?
Dicamba, sold under different brand names by BASF and DuPont, can vaporize under certain conditions and the wind can blow ...
Bayer-Monsanto merger faces delay as European regulators hone in on antitrust concerns, impact on farmers
Bayer AG’s takeover of Monsanto Co. faces deeper scrutiny from European antitrust regulators who say they have “serious doubts” about ...
Wine grapes case study: How modern crop management has led to dramatic reductions in pesticide use
[Editor's note: Steve Savage is a plant pathologist who has been working in agricultural technology for over 35 years.] Grapes grown ...
Conservation biology, ideology and the dangers of censorship
If conservation science is in service to an agenda, then it seems inevitable that research would at times be viewed ...
