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.
Why China’s aggressive GM crop approvals represent real great leap forward in food security
China is getting close to commercially producing a variety of genetically modified crops and that is good news for Canadian ...
Viewpoint: ‘So-called environmentalists can eat crow, transgenic corn proves a win for science and the public’
In 2020, storms caused an estimated $12 billion in damage, including in Iowa, where a giant amount of America's corn ...
Why gene-edited non-browning ‘Arctic apples’ are potential game changer for reducing food waste and extending supply chains
Three varieties of non-browning Arctic apples developed by a Summerland-based company are now rolling off the production line at a ...
Viewpoint: Agroecology supporters raise doubts about whether biotechnology-based intensive agriculture can both increase production and minimize biodiversity loss
The idea that increasing agricultural productivity will free up land for biodiversity and solve global hunger is gaining popularity in ...
Transforming agricultural waste into bioplastics
Although bioplastics have been touted as a promising sustainable alternative to traditional plastics for some time, making bio-based materials that ...
Viewpoint: Dark money and tort-lawyer-funded Environmental Working Group (EWG) launches new campaign to scare public about ‘dangerous’ pesticide spraying near schools
On Nov. 2, the EWG (the same folks behind The Dirty Dozen) launched an interactive map created to demonstrate just how ...
Argentina on cusp of releasing first genetically modified non-browning potato in Latin America
Scientists from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology - INTA of Argentina, the public entity in charge of carrying out ...
Viewpoint: If the EU insists on food labeling, organics, not gene edited foods, should be at top of list on safety grounds
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has followed the science in recommending a streamlined approach to regulating gene edited food ...
Viewpoint: Mexico’s GM crop import ban creates dire legal and trade consequences
In December 2020, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), issued a decree banning genetically modified (GM) corn for human consumption. Mexico ...
Ever seen an orange petunia? CRISPR gene-editing can make that happen naturally
White petunias exist in nature, but not bright orange and yellow ones. In 2015, one of my PhD advisers, Teemu ...
Revising 10 fact-based perspectives on entrenched food myths: Gene editing is good, diet soda is fine, organics is not the answer
I’ve been trying to suss out true and false to the best of my inevitably human, imperfect ability, and for ...
Viewpoint: ‘Anti-technology activists unfairly malign genetically modified mustard crop that could drop pesticide use by 40%’
The polarised debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in India is back in the limelight. The advocates and dissenters of ...
If seedless watermelons don’t have seeds, how do we grow more of them?
Although seedless watermelons have existed since 1940, and have been widely available at grocery chains since the 1980s, they continue ...
Almost all supplements are useless, experts say. Here’s a few that offer some benefits
The U.S. dietary supplement industry has exploded in the last 30 years, growing from about 4,000 products in 1994 to ...
Here’s how we can overhaul our food and farming systems to grow enough food to meet population and climate change challenges
As consumers, our relationship with food – how we grow, produce and eat it, must change in response to increased ...
Viewpoint: Why does the French public fully embrace gene editing to cure diseases, but remain wary of use in agriculture, where it could help fight hunger?
French opinion has an ambivalent relationship with scientific progress. Welcomed with enthusiasm in the field of human biology, it is, ...
Joint Kenya-Uganda-Nigeria GMO research project develops blight-resistant, higher yield potato
Timothy Kipsang, a farmer from Kipkabus in Uasin Gishu County, has been growing potatoes on his farm for more than ...
Developing a biological balancing act: How can we target disease-causing insects while sparing beneficial ones?
Insecticides are our traditional way of defending ourselves against insects. But this approach presents several problems. For one, there is ...
Viewpoint: UK’s Royal Society advances agro-biotechnology regulatory reforms to stir innovation and reduce influence of large seed companies
The UK needs an evidence-led and proportionate regulatory approach for genetically modified (GM) crops to realise the technology’s benefits for ...
Viewpoint: Agriculture lobby offers evidence of neonicotinoid safety and critical role of pesticides
For the past decade or so, the area of seed treatment has grown in popularity, among ag retailers and their ...
Biological crop treatments: Farmers divided on whether they’re breakthroughs on the horizon or ‘snake oil’?
Whenever the topic of microbiological crop protection products comes up, the words “snake oil” can appear. Biologicals are said to ...
It takes 25,000 pounds of food to feed 4 astronauts on a 3 year mission to Mars. Here’s how ‘space farming’ might help feed them.
Rajkumar Hassamani, of the Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology at the University of Agricultural Sciences in India, told Al Jazeera Net ...
Farmers and seed producers welcome science-based reform to EU gene editing rules
At a Euractiv media event to mark the launch of the Breakthrough Institute/Alliance for Science’s new report on ‘new genomic techniques,’ ...
Analysis: Europe’s proposed new gene editing regulations are more convoluted and burdensome than plant scientists had hoped for
In 2018, after a ruling of the European Court of Justice put the latest breeding methods under the burdensome EU ...
3D-printed coral reefs? Can this new approach to reef decline revive coastal ecosystems?
Several acres of 3D-printed artificial reefs are currently being planted in coastal North Carolina to bolster the region's biodiversity and ...
37% yield increase: Almost all monetary gains from Indian GMO mustard will go to farmers, not to seed companies
Huge gains from biotech cotton commercialized [in India] two decades back notwithstanding, policymaking came to a standstill in terms of ...
Which is better to fight blindness — Golden Rice or Vitamin A supplement pills?
The story of Golden Rice did not begin last year, however, but more than 20 years ago with the idea ...
