Sustainability & Climate Change
Food production needs are expected to roughly double over the next 35 years as the world population grows and people in under developed countries become more affluent and demand more calories. Healthy ecosystems are vital to the survival of all organisms. How can we grow crops without harming the environment? How can we balance technology and global food security? What is the right balance of organic and conventional farming? What role can genetics and biotechnology play without compromising the needs of tomorrow?
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Engineering plants to rapidly repair heat damage could preserve crop yields as climate changes
As plants convert sunlight into sugar, their cells are playing with fire. Photosynthesis generates chemical byproducts that can damage the ...
Bugpocalypse? New research challenges widely publicized claims of impending catastrophic insect declines
Drastic declines in insect biomass, abundance, and diversity reported in the literature have raised concerns among scientists and the public ...
Viewpoint: ‘Big Ag’ caused the coronavirus pandemic? Predatory science journal amplifies baseless COVID-19 conspiracy
With the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, agricultural supply chains around the world have been taxed to ensure consistent and ...
Gene editing will revolutionize crop breeding in Africa, new paper predicts
Genome editing technology has the potential to revolutionize crop development on the African continent, especially in sub-Sahara Africa, according to ...
Podcast: How domestication turned cattle into a key source of increasingly sustainable food
Cattle provide meat, milk and hide products to people all over the world, and are used as work animals for ...
Why we need globalization: Locally grown food could only feed 27% of the world’s population
It is true that in North America and much of Europe you can grow plenty of wheat locally, but in ...
Gene-drive technology may combat notorious Fusarium fungus that decimates global wheat yields
The Fusarium fungus is the bane of every wheat farmer’s existence. Causing wheat scab—also known as head blight—it decimates harvests ...
Can vast ocean seaweed farms provide sustainable biofuel?
One day in the future, the Pacific Ocean could be home to kilometers of seaweed farms tended by submarine drones ...
GMO Impossible beef hits 1,000 new grocery stores as plant-based meat demand surges
Starting [April 17], 777 supermarkets in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nevada [began] stocking the Impossible Foods plant-based meat substitute ...
Video: 30% bigger crop yields; 60% less pesticide use—The massive impact of GMO Bt insect-resistant eggplant in Bangladesh
Since entering the market in 2014, Bt brinjal [eggplant] has helped smallholder farmers in Bangladesh achieve higher yields, a 60 ...
Buy organic, local and non-GMO? 9 popular practices that aren’t so eco-friendly after all
We all care about the environment, at least a tiny bit. Many of us recycle all we can and own ...
PBS documentary profiles Norman Borlaug and his ‘Green Revolution’: It fed billions but critics claim unintended consequences
The Man Who Tried to Feed the World tells the story of Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist who won the ...
Viewpoint: How plant-based meat and other biotech innovations fuel ecological restoration
Agriculture, livestock and fishing are the sectors with the greatest ecological impacts on the planet. Soon, in a generation, they ...
Puff piece: Lab-made ‘Incredible Cotton’ may grow 10 times faster and cut environmental impact of the traditional crop
You might call this a puff piece, because it’s about cotton that’s just as fluffy but more sustainable than the ...
Will genetically improved crops be enough to sustainably feed a booming global population?
A growing, increasingly affluent and urban human population is driving demand for more food grown in more-sustainable ways. ... Sustainable ...
Kenya distributes free GMO Bt insect-resistant cotton seeds to farmers to revive nation’s flagging textile industry
The government has started the distribution of free cotton seeds to farmers, including a genetically modified variety, in the latest ...
CRISPR could speed growth and increase disease resistance in farmed fish, boosting aquaculture sustainability
The potential of fish and shellfish production to feed a growing global population could be significantly enhanced through advances in ...
Can we meet global food demand using conventional, intensive agriculture without sacrificing the environment?
The expansion of farmlands to meet the growing food demand of the world’s ever expanding population places a heavy burden ...
Can a novel ‘genetic’ pesticide knock out citrus greening disease before it devastates US orange groves?
[Citrus greening] disease has already decimated citrus groves in the other major citrus-producing states of Florida, California and Texas. According ...
Next-generation gene-editing technology: Path to a second Green Revolution?
Might gene-editing facilitate the task of generating and identifying yield-enhancing genetic variation? ...
‘Climate-resilient’ wheat may provide sustainable fiber source, promote gut health
Some new crop varieties are bred to be more nutritious. Others are more resilient, bred to tolerate harsher environmental conditions ...
Biotech-powered, plant-based seafood poised to cut overfishing, pollution and ‘food fraud’
Plant-based seafood specialist Kuleana is targeting seafood and sushi lovers with what it describes as the ‘next generation of raw ...
Cellular agriculture could replace some of the 270 million dairy cows needed to produce milk
Worldwide demand for milk is continually increasing in response to a range of factors, including global population growth and changing ...
5 nations grow 174.5 million hectares of GMO crops annually—more than 90% of global total
High adoption of biotech crops continued in 2018 with 26 countries planting 191.7 million hectares worldwide. This area is an ...
Low-hanging fruit: How the first generation of GMO crops yielded massive economic and environmental benefits
There are still no widely available GM varieties of either wheat or rice, the second and third most widely grown ...
FDA has ‘no objections’ to lab-made dairy proteins produced with GMO microbes
Perfect Day, a startup producing milk proteins via microbial fermentation (minus the cows), has secured a coveted ‘no questions/objections’ letter ...
Viruses that ‘turn off’ plant genes could help farmers battle herbicide-resistant weeds
A team of scientists from Rothamsted Research have successfully adapted genetic techniques developed for crop improvement to be used in ...
