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.
‘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 ...
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, ...
Talking Biotech: What’s blocking GMO crop adoption in Africa?
Sociologist Matthew Harsh: Poor communication between Kenyan scientists, policymakers, farmers and anti-biotech activists slows GMO adoption ...
March for Science: Agony and ecstasy of a Malaysian agricultural biotechnology science communicator
In many ways, communicating science can be more difficult than scientific research. As advances in biotechnology speed up, scientists around ...
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 ...
‘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 ...
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] ...
Insect-resistant Bt GMO eggplant helps Bangladesh farmers increase income, reduce pesticide use
[Editor's note: Deb Carstoiu is managing director of plant biotech communications at CropLife International.] The eggplant, known in Asia as brinjal, ...
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 ...
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 ...
Nigerian professor: Anti-GMO campaigners ‘play politics’ with food security and poverty, delaying sustainable farming
Prof. Benjamin Ubi, [president of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria] says the adoption of biotechnology will facilitate sustainable agricultural production ...
Cuban officials embrace GMOs to feed hungry population, but groups push back
[Editor's note: Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.] Cuban officials have announced the island is turning to ...
Boulder County, Colorado to phase out GMO crops and neonicotinoid insecticides
Boulder County commissioners voted 2-1 on Thursday [April 13, 2017] to approve the latest version of their plan for phasing ...
Does the administration’s block of the chlorpyrifos pesticide ban signal a changing regulatory landscape?
One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on ...
Green meal: GMO foods, synthetic milk, lab-grown meat on the menu
Feeding the 10 billion will require some creative solutions – and unpalatable compromises. Perhaps we can learn to love algae, ...
Neonicotinoid fiasco: How American NGOs turn Europe against science, push EU towards insecticide ban
The current EU ban on neonics has been disastrously counterproductive, resulting in an increased use of more damaging pesticides, mainly ...
Activist-fueled ‘over-regulation’ of GMO research stymies potential to feed the world
[Editor's note: Dr. Amjad M. Husaini is a professor of biotechnology at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in India.] ...
Oregon bill to allow local governments to regulate GMO crops fails again
Local governments in Oregon will continue to be prohibited from regulating genetically engineered crops. Bills to ease the ban both ...
How CRISPR gene editing will ‘supercharge’ agriculture
[J]ust as corn helped create these civilizations, these civilizations helped create corn through meticulous selective breeding. Today’s grain hardly resembles ...
Africa’s biotechnogy sector crippled by lack of electricity
Money is power, the saying goes. Sure enough, the fraction of GDP invested into science and technology (S&T) is a ...
Urban ‘treatment-free’ beekeeping leads to explosion in killer Varroa mites
[Editor's note: Toni Burnham runs one of 10 hives at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.] In this season of vitriol ...
