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.
Second Green Revolution in India depends on well-tested GMO crops
As a part of its strategy to bring a Second Green Revolution, India must return to permitting... well-tested GM technologies ...
Monsanto reportedly agrees to sweetened Bayer takeover offer
Bayer AG has reached an agreement to acquire Monsanto Co. for about $56 billion to create the world’s biggest maker ...
India’s new pest-resistant GMO cotton uses gene from edible fern to resist whitefly
A new transgenic [cotton] variety is at India's doorsteps -- this one developed by the country's own scientists. . . ...
FDA pondering whether ‘natural’ claims are meaningless
So what does “natural” mean? Nobody knows. Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed claiming that the term is used ...
Field trials of pest-resistant GMO cotton approved in Kenya
[The week of September 5], the NBA [National Bio-Safety Authority] allowed Monsanto Kenya Ltd to conduct field trials on GM ...
After Brexit, British agricultural biotech firms have big opportunity in China
Inspired in part by India’s “Green Revolution”, China has been keen to expand their area of influence in the agrichemical ...
Could GMO microbes provide new source of ‘natural’ vanilla?
World production of natural vanilla is tiny and has been falling in recent years... With demand on the upswing, trade ...
Is drought-tolerant CRISPR corn GMO?
With GMOs going off patent, anti-science activists and the PR groups running interference for them... are running out of time ...
CRISPR crops could make agriculture more sustainable if public accepts them
Hopes are high for CRISPR, an emerging genetic technology that has been called “ground-breaking”, “jaw-dropping” and a potential boon for ...
Farmers struggling to counter activist demonization of safe herbicide glyphosate
Is agriculture reacting to the GMO debate when we should be focusing on protecting glyphosate? These are questions we need ...
Color palette, hardiness of ornamental flowers expanded by biotechnology
Roses are red and violets are blue, says the old romantic poem. But nowadays, roses can be blue, too, thanks ...
Highly refined foods like sugar contain no DNA. Should GMO labeling rules apply?
[N]obody—absolutely nobody—can tell the difference between sugar that comes from GMO crops and sugar that doesn’t. ...You can even have ...
Federal GMO labeling law temporarily nullifies local farmer’s market GMO rule
A new federal law has reversed a local farmers’ market’s requirement about labeling GMO produce. Congress approved legislation that requires ...
GMO mosquitoes could save Hawaii’s critically endangered birds
[M]osquitoes, which carry avian malaria, are a principal reason that just forty-two of more than a hundred species of native ...
GMO crops help reduce environmental impact of farming
[Editor's note: This is an excerpt from an extensive, open access series of reports on the safety of GMOs produced by ...
Romania used to cultivate enough soy, but after GMO ban, needs to import it
[Editor's note: The article was translated from the original Romanian using Google translate and lightly edited for clarity] Achim Irimescu, ...
GMO corn grown illegally in northwest China smuggled in from abroad
The Ministry of Agriculture responded on [Sept. 5], regarding a case of genetically modified (GM) corn planted in northwest China's Xiangjiang, stating ...
Genetic mutation discovered in barley that increases salinity tolerance
Researchers looking to identify the genetic controls of salt tolerance in crops located a specific point on a chromosome (2H) ...
Why poor may pay the most to satisify public’s ‘right to know’ about GMOs
The additional costs associated with product labeling, ingredient testing, insurance procurement, and continued consumer class action litigation over “natural” claims ...
Indian scientists develop white-fly resistant GMO cotton to compete with Monsanto
National Botanical Research Institute has claimed to have developed whitefly-resistant cotton. The CSIR-NBRI research has been accepted by international journal 'Nature' ...
CRISPR corn: Dupont’s non-transgenic drought-tolerant gene edited corn could be on sale soon
[R]esearchers at DuPont Pioneer. . . have published a study about a strain of corn engineered with CRISPR to be ...
London’s Science Museum archives history of rancorous GMO debate
The effort to prepare an archive of the GM debate began in 2008, when it became clear that the GM ...
Nebraskan to Africans: ‘Green revolution’ to feed malnourished unnecessary, agroecology already working
[S]mall farmers who sell their food locally still produce around 80 percent of the food in sub-Saharan Africa. But that ...
Online marketers target food stamp recipients, selling high-priced ‘organic and natural’ junk food
The federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.. offers nutrition assistance to...low income Americans.... SNAP helps people afford food at stores and ...
How large-scale farms using pesticides can be more sustainable than organic farming
Editor’s Note: In her new book “Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland,” . . . Miriam Horn [tells]. . . the story ...
Impossible Food’s plant-based beefy hamburgers edge closer to market
[T]he more attention consumers paid to the realities of feedlot farming, the more they wanted out. But organic, grass-fed, and ...
Guardian: In Monsanto GMO cotton dispute, government must assure farmers get fair prices
The arguments about GM crops show the folly of trying to understand technology as if it stood outside political and economic power ...
