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 tweaks could lead to improved corn and sorghum yields
Researchers at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have discovered a gene ...
Neonicotinoid ban cost UK farmers $23.7 million in 2016, while replacement pesticide use soared
The full cost to farmers of the neonicotinoid ban in 2016 was £18.4 million ($23.7) and resulted in almost 28,800 ...
Largest threat to honey bees in Canada? Bears
Contrary to what some headlines and marketing campaigns would lead us to believe, honey bee numbers in Canada are at ...
Video: Bill Nye finds people are terrified of GMOs — despite knowing little about them
Along with terms like organic and free-range, GMOs are a hot topic when it comes to our food. GMO stands for ...
Kenyan scientists push for female farmers’ access to biotechnology
Dr. Felister Makini, Deputy Director General (crops) at the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), noted that African women ...
Canada’s health regulator reaffirms glyphosate herbicide neither genotoxic nor carcinogenic
Health Canada says the potential risk to human health and the environment from pesticides containing glyphosate are acceptable, if used ...
Are you ‘anti-science’ if you resist biotechnology on political or economic grounds?
[Editor's note: Tess Doezema is a doctoral student at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona ...
Fact check: Conflicting studies on chlorpyrifos insecticide’s human health impact
When the Environmental Protection Agency decided to not ban chlorpyrifos, an insecticide widely used in agriculture, both the EPA and ...
China’s slowdown in approval of GMO imports harming US farmers
U.S. officials have prodded China repeatedly for a faster and more open system for deciding whether to approve the import ...
Better beer? Sequenced barley genome could help breeders improve taste, other staple crops
Showing up in your cereal in the morning, your sandwich at lunch, and your beers or single malt Scotch whiskey ...
USDA considers release of GM moths to control broccoli pest, GM virus to stop citrus greening
Diamondback moths are a global pest of cruciferous crops such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts and cabbage. On April 18, USDA ...
Farmers could control rice harvest timing with strain that flowers after fungicide application
A new strain of rice that flowers within a certain period of time after being sprayed with commercial chemicals commonly ...
‘Shockumentary’: How to spot fear-based movies about food and farming
It seems as though every year a food “shockumentary” comes out (GMO OMG, Forks Over Knives, Food Inc etc). I’ve ...
How will Sonny Perdue’s appointment to secretary of agriculture affect small family farms?
Donald Trump owes his election in no small part to the support of farm country. But since entering office, almost ...
National Academies tighten conflict-of-interest policies after backlash stemming from GMO, pain-relief reports
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are toughening their financial conflict-of-interest policies after publishing reports that some critics ...
China’s delay in approval of GM cotton could cost Australian oilseed farmers hundreds of millions of dollars
A lack of regulatory approval from China for cotton seed produced from the genetically modified (GM) Bollgard 3 suite of ...
In reversal, AquaBounty adds GMO salmon fishery to proposed facility, angering locals in Canada
The company that proposed to set up a conventional salmon broodstock facility in Rollo Bay West, has changed its proposal ...
Revamping ‘woefully out of date’ biotech regulations easier said than done
Depending on whom you talk to, the CRISPR’d mushroom isn’t strictly defined as synthetic biology. Still, genetic technology exists on ...
Dow Chemical asks Trump administration to ‘set aside’ government studies pesticide maker says are flawed
Dow Chemical is pushing a Trump administration open to scrapping regulations to ignore the findings of federal scientists who point ...
Sustainably grown meats hitting markets, but public perception of technologies may hinder benefits
Americans love protein. Each year they eat an average of 210 pounds of meat per capita, more than double the ...
USDA will craft GM label plan by July 2018, but it’s unclear when labels will be required
The U.S. Agriculture Department will attempt to follow the congressionally mandated schedule to create a plan for mandatory disclosure of ...
Farmers’ lawsuit alleges $5 billion in losses stemming from Syngenta’s release of GM corn before Chinese approval
The first of tens of thousands of U.S. lawsuits [went] to trial on Monday [April 24, 2017] against Swiss agribusiness ...
Did Bill Nye err when discussing Monsanto, GMOs in new Netflix series?
Bill Nye comes out swinging in the first season of Bill Nye Saves the World, his new Netflix series. ...
Funding for USDA’s National Organic Program tripled under Obama. What will Trump do with it?
[Editor's note: Mischa Popoff is a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, and is the author of Is it Organic? Jay Lehr ...
Indian farmers return to GM insect-resistant Bt cotton after failure of non-GMO variety
After the experiment with the desi cotton failed to bear fruits, farmers are returning to the BT cotton in the ...
Spider silk from plants? GMO tobacco could provide new generation of tough, lightweight clothing
Scientists have revealed they can generate the fine but strong threads used by spiders to make their webs by growing ...
After months without a secretary of agriculture, former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue confirmed to post
After months without a secretary of agriculture, the Senate voted Monday evening [April 24, 2017] to confirm former Georgia Gov ...
