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.
Hawaii documentary claims presence of Big Ag GMO test facilities forces islands to import food
Did you know that the state of Hawaii imports between 80 and 90 percent of its food? This is, among ...
Hobbyist beekeeping practices and rejection of chemical treatments major driver of bee-killing Varroa mites and disease
Hobby beekeeping is very common. A European Bee Health Report found that in many countries, the majority of beekeepers pursue the activity ...
Is the US unwittingly funding anti-agriculture and anti-Monsanto conspiracy theories?
There is an organization that is using [US] tax dollars and they have replaced fact-based science with conspiracy theories and ...
Tomatoes resistant to fungus and blight developed by 94-year-old West Virginia scientist
Mannon Gallegly, West Virginia University professor emeritus of plant pathology, has made it his mission to develop a disease-free tomato ...
EU Food Safety Authority: Risk from pesticide residue on foods low, unlikely to pose health risk
[Editor's note: The following is from the EFSA's 2015 European Union report on pesticide residues in food, published April 11, ...
Monsanto is changing the way people eat — Using traditional breeding to make better fruits and vegetables
Monsanto is no one-trick GMO pony. Founded in 1901, the agricultural biotech company has fueled innovations in herbicides, pesticides, and ...
Will rusty patched bumble bee’s endangered listing become a legal weapon for anti-development activists?
[Editor's note: Paul Driessen is a policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.] Trump’s Interior Department opened a ...
Video: CRISPR-created seedless tomatoes could eliminate need for bee pollination
Don’t like the seeds in tomatoes? You might be pleased to know that seedless ones have been created by gene editing ...
Will CRISPR plant breeding be used for good — Or mostly to drive corporate profit?
This rapid-fire timing [of agribusiness mergers] may have been a coincidence, but it also may be a sign of what’s ...
Biodiversity on the farm: It’s more complicated than you might think
[Editor's note: William Price is a statistician in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho ...
How to address skeptical concerns about GMOs and ‘violating nature’
The main concern with GMOs seems to be rooted in a disgust for the artificial — “synthetic” has become synonymous ...
After warning label victory, California activists push for a glyphosate herbicide ban
[A]fter a yearlong legal battle, California’s environmental health agency has announced that it will list it as a known carcinogen ...
Agriculture’s Big Data revolution increases efficiency, reduces food waste from farm to table
[A]bout a third of food produced is lost or wasted every year. Globally, that’s a $940 billion economic hit. Inefficiencies ...
Kenyan oncologist: Shift health focus away from safe GMO foods to actual carcinogens — Like alcohol
[Editor's note: David Makumi is an oncologist and chairman of the Kenya Network of Cancer Organisations.] Every time the Health ...
Infographic: The history of modern crop breeding — And how biotech seeds fit in
Biotech crops are an important milestone for agriculture as it continually improves to keep pace with the growing demand for ...
Will China relax GMO cultivation restrictions in wake of Syngenta takeover?
Although China imports preapproved GM foods, the agriculture ministry has never approved a biotech food crop—other than papaya, a minor ...
Herbicide use has increased more for non-GMO crops than genetically engineered varieties
[Editor's note: Andrew Kniss is a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Wyoming.] Herbicide use is ...
Microbiomes could help plants grow, resist disease and make agriculture more sustainable
Feeding a growing world population amidst climate change requires optimizing the reliability, resource use, and environmental impacts of food production ...
Ayman Jallad: Mysterious Syrian-Lebanese businessman funds anti-GMO activist network in Europe
Ayman Jallad has two battles on his hands. The Syrian-Lebanese businessman is in the challenging business of selling imported Caterpillar ...
‘Opportunity or death knell’? Organic movement debates embracing CRISPR plant breeding
There have been public debates and whether certain novel plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) such as CRISPR, could be used within ...
‘Refuge planting’: How farmers could help slow developing insect resistance to GMO Bt crops
To date ... Bt crops have been remarkably successful. However, insect pests have shown the ability to evolve resistance to ...
President of Senegal bucks anti-biotechnology pressure: ‘I am for the use of GMOs’
President Macky Sall of Senegal has thrown his weight behind the adoption of agricultural biotechnology in the country. .... President ...
Selling marijuana like wine: ‘Flavor’ genes identified that could lead to tastier strains
Scientists at the University of British Columbia have reportedly identified those parts of the cannabis genome which determine flavor, potentially paving ...
Inexperienced hobbyist beekeepers ‘major driver’ of honey bee colony losses in Europe
Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to ...
GMO sugarcane: Dual-purpose bioenergy crop produces oil for biodiesel, more sugar for ethanol
A multi-institutional team led by the University of Illinois have proven sugarcane can be genetically engineered to produce oil in ...
California v EPA: Legal challenge possible over Prop 65 labeling of herbicide glyphosate as carcinogenic
Monsanto officially lost its fight to avoid a Prop 65 warning label on its products containing glyphosate, a chemical used ...
Our food system isn’t broken, it’s flourishing — and GMO crops are a big reason why
[Editor's note: Randy Krotz is CEO of the US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance.] Activists and others [say] the food system [is] broken, ...
