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: Vertical farming not nearly as feasible as popular media reports
[In] their efforts to develop a system that sustainably supplies cities with a large share of their food, theorists and ...
Fluorescent non-GMO cotton study in doubt after one day, and ‘glowing’ media headlines
Science has issued an expression of concern for a widely covered materials science paper published on Friday, citing issues with ...
GMOs protect bees by reducing use of more toxic pesticides
[Editor’s note: Michelle Miller is the Farm Babe, an Iowa-based farmer, public speaker and writer, who lives and works with ...
Markets—not morals—prompt former GMO executives move to anti-biotechnology labs
[Editor’s note: Julie Gunlock is a book author and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and directs the organization’s ...
Viewpoint: Proposed GMO labeling laws too vague to benefit consumers
Knowing simply whether a food is modified does not actually protect consumers...Different crops and modifications come with different biological, health, ...
Canadian glyphosate opponents take aim at usage by local governments
In the last two weeks, the [Canadian] municipalities of Upper Miramichi, Moncton, and Petitcodiac have all started to question the ...
Indian scientists say anti-GMO activist groups undermine use of modern farming techniques
Days after a Parliamentary panel raised certain doubts over the Center's impending move to give its green signal to commercial ...
Climate change: Could rising carbon dioxide levels explain decreasing nutrient levels in foods?
“Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising,”[Irakli Loladze, Ph.D ...
Cornell’s Tony Shelton: Scientist behind GMO moth in activist crosshairs
[Cornell University Professor Tony Shelton] admits to being disappointed by the “misinformation” directed at his research to find a non-insecticidal ...
‘Food Evolution’ movie tackles ‘frankenfood’ myths by putting GMOs in global perspective
[Filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy] and his fellow producer, Brooklynite Trace Sheehan, decided to delve into one issue: GMOs, or genetically ...
Studies cited by GMO and climate change skeptics similarly flawed, research shows
Benestad, Hayhoe and colleagues developed an open-source analytical tool to replicate and test the results and methodologies of these 38 ...
Perfect apple: Replicating Honeycrisp success to create new, tastier varieties
The Honeycrisp is a millennial apple born in the 1990s, after years of careful planning. It’s also considered the first ...
Ecologist: ‘Heavily scrutinized’ glyphosate not a ‘highly toxic chemical’
[Editor’s note: Frank Hassler is chief ecologist with Good Oak Ecological Services, which works to provide sustainable landscaping and land ...
GMOs for humans blocked in Germany by activist groups, but livestock industry widely uses them
[Note: This report on the Germany's agricultural industry is published annually by the USDA.] Public rejection of genetically engineered (GE) ...
Will France’s rejection of glyphosate reauthorization block Europe’s proposed re-approval?
Major concerns now hang over the future use of glyphosate in the EU with the move by France not to ...
How the ‘DNA revolution’ might change the animal breeding and meat industry
The changes that have occurred in the last three months in the genetics and genomics world have probably equaled the changes in ...
Viewpoint: Organic industry misleads consumers with fear, unethical sales tactics
[Editor’s note: Michelle Miller, the "Farm Babe", is an Iowa-based farmer, public speaker and writer.] While acting like the “little guy” ...
Public education about QR codes important to success of proposed federal GMO label, study finds
The study, the release of which was the subject of a now-moot lawsuit from the Center for Food Safety last ...
Italy’s GMO corn ban unlawful, European Union court rules
The European Union court ruled Wednesday (September 13] in favor of an Italian activist farmer who has defied his nation's ...
Glyphosate herbicide not an ‘endocrine disruptor’, European Food Safety Authority concludes
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that the world's most used pesticide, glyphosate, does not have endocrine disrupting ...
How the Netherlands became a high tech farming center
Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much ...
How glyphosate-resistant weeds led to Monsanto’s dicamba herbicide crisis
[In] the 1990s, Monsanto began selling a series of patented, genetically modified, “RoundUp”-ready seeds. Monsanto had altered crop seeds...to be ...
Disease-resistant cassava research advances could help African farmers
Why are these two cassava varieties—Namikonga and Albert—grown by farmers in Tanzania, able to withstand the devastating Cassava Brown Streak ...
Non-patented, non-GMO herbicide resistant rice in development
A consortium of scientists led the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore has identified a novel mutant of rice which ...
Monsanto targets bee-killing varroa mites through RNA interference
The 11th annual national survey of honey bee colonies was recently released and reports of seasonal honey bee losses across ...
Record number of pesticide misuse claims by Iowa farmers due to dicamba drift problems
Nationally, 2,242 farmers say dicamba has damaged an estimated 3.1 million acres, a University of Missouri report shows. Iowa ag leaders ...
Netherlands wants CRISPR gene-edited crops exempt from Europe’s GMO laws
The Netherlands believes the new plant breeding techniques should not come under the GMO legislation as they are as safe ...
