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.
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 ...
Why I changed my mind about the need to feed my kids organic food
[Editor's note: Jenny Splitter is a writer, storyteller and mother of two.] A few years ago I learned that most ...
Malawi moves towards commercialization of GM cotton, cowpeas and bananas
[Editor's note: Katherine Chaweza is a 2016 Alliance for Science Global Leadership Fellow and the communication and outreach coordinator for the Programme ...
Anti-GMO activist attacks Monsanto research center in Italy with ‘bottle bombs’
[I]n the middle of Easter night in Olmeneta, Italy, an unknown person attacked the Monsanto Research Center with several “bottle ...
Cargill under fire: ‘We don’t agree’ GMOs unhealthy; biotech crops ‘key tool for sustainability’
Cargill is attempting to satisfy both ends of the spectrum by acknowledging the growing group of people against genetically-modified organisms ...
EU food safety chief: Critics of glyphosate safety finding are ‘playing politics’, undermining science
Politicians who attack the EU agency that ruled the weedkiller glyphosate probably does not cause cancer are in danger of ...
Wide range, high levels of pesticides found in apple orchard honeybee colonies
Honeybees - employed to pollinate crops during the blooming season - encounter danger due to lingering and wandering pesticides, according ...
‘Wouldn’t help much’: What would a ban on neonicotinoid insecticides do for bee health?
“Everyone knows insecticides can kill bees,” says honeybee biologist Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. “The ...
Fake science news: Rise of ‘predatory journals’ makes it easier to publish, spread ‘advocacy research’
[Editor's note: Robert Fraley is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto. He has Ph.D. degrees in microbiology ...
Non-GMO breeding changes the makeup of crops more than genetic engineering
The composition of GM breeding stacks was more similar to the composition of iso-hybrids than was the composition of nonGM ...
Can you be a skeptic and anti-GMO?
[Editor’s note: Myles Power is a chemist in Manchester, England.] Over the past year, I have been giving a talk to ...
‘Thirsty plants’ to land conservation: How biotechnology helps address developing world’s agricultural challenges
[Editor's note: Sarah Evanega holds a doctorate in plant biology from Cornell University, where she is the director of the Alliance ...
Fish farm problem? Salmon diseases evolving more virulently in farms
Fish farming is one of the fastest growing food production sectors in the world, but infections caused by bacteria, viruses, ...
Will corporate mergers in agriculture spur innovation?
[Editor's note: Ed Wiederstein is a former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and a farmer in Iowa.] When funding was more ...
‘Non-GMO’ ranked near top, ‘organic’ at bottom in study of consumer meat preferences
For many consumers, buying a gallon of milk is much more complex than finding the preferred fat content and expiration ...
Will California break with EPA and ban chlorpyrifos pesticide?
Approximately one million pounds of chlorpyrifos—about 20 percent of what’s used nationwide—are applied annually in California to dozens of food ...
‘Glyphosate is vital’: Scottish farmers launch campaign to support herbicide’s reauthorization
As the EU decision on whether or not to re-authorise the herbicide glyphosate approaches, a farming union has called on ...
‘Backlash’ against GMOs may be more about corporate power than science
Much of the backlash against GMOs is less about genetic engineering and more about the business practices of the corporations ...
There are no GM oranges — So why is Tropicana deceiving consumers with Non-GMO label?
[Editor's note: Greg Jaffe is the Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public ...
Sorghum resistant to herbicide, drought, pests in advanced development
For the past several years sorghum research has lagged behind that of corn and soybeans, but that could soon change ...
Controversial Italian study finding potential harm from GMO foods flagged by scientific journal
A journal has flagged a paper by a researcher who has questioned the safety of genetically modified organisms, after receiving concerns ...
Video: Has organic farming ‘ideology’ spread through the scientific community?
[Editor's note: Andrew McGuire is an agronomist at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.] At the core ...
Bee experts say ditch Cheerios’ wildflower seeds, plant native ones to fight pollinator decline
[Editor's note: Jenna Gallegos is a 5th year plant biology PhD student at the University of California, Davis.] Honeybees are ...
Ear to the ground: Crops’ roots use sound to find water
A new study from the University of Western Australia’s Center for Evolutionary Biology, published in Oecologia on April 5, [2017] ...
