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.
How climate change is altering the look, taste and nutrition content of fruits and vegetables
The economic cost of food waste in Australia is staggering. It’s estimated $36.6 billion is lost to the economy every year ...
Edging toward Agriculture 3.0: Genetics, irrigation and fertilization are improving—Is that enough for the leap forward necessary to feed the world?
Sometime in the 1980s, an unprecedented change in the human condition occurred. For the first time in known history, the ...
Viewpoint: Biotechnology rejectionists and many regenerative farming advocates maintain that the Green Revolution caused more harm than good. Here are the facts.
After the Second World War, regional famines began to occur. Believing that increasing agricultural performance can be the solution to ...
Genetics, irrigation and fertilization: What needs to evolve to increase global food production without destroying our planet
Almost one out of ten people still do not get enough to eat. But hunger today is generally due to low ...
GLP podcast: Africa needs ‘regenerative’ farming, activists say; Time to ban menthol cigarettes? Trump wrong to leave World Health Organization?
Some public health experts claim that banning menthol cigarettes will save hundreds of thousands of lives. Are they right, or ...
How CRISPR could revolutionize banana farming and spur sustainable agriculture in Africa
Speaking about real-world application of CRISPR to improve crops, Valentine Otang Ntui discussed the different genome editing strategies he developed ...
What’s the future of plant-based deli meats?
As consumers continue their search for nutrient-dense, texturally satisfying and flavorful plant-based deli meats, brands are cleaning up their ingredient ...
Viewpoint: Le Monde’s activist ‘journalist’ Stéphane Foucart twists science to ‘prove’ organic food is healthier than conventional
Le Monde devoted almost three pages of its "Science & Medicine " section of November 6, 2024 to two articles by ...
Israel’s Bedouin turn moisture in the desert air into drinking water
“The project empowers one of Israel’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities to be leaders in sustainability practices and environmental stewardship,” ...
‘It’s a new way to think about food production’—Growing algae on Iceland’s futuristic farm
Under a strange pink-purple glow, illuminated panels buzz and cylindrical columns of water bubble away as a futuristic crop of ...
‘They don’t use organic fairy dust to control pests’ Here’s the list of approved natural and synthetic herbicides and pesticides
While much about modern farming techniques centers around the use of synthetic pesticides [...] on large acreage, the question often ...
Viewpoint: GMOs are scapegoated by activists and blamed for encouraging the world to skirt global food and agriculural challenges
The debate around GMOs entails far more than scientific facts: GMOs have become a proxy for many socio-economic issues such as ...
Enriching soil: In agriculture, ‘there are no solutions, only trade-offs’
This is a critical moment for land use policy globally, with many countries (e.g. the UK and the European Union) ...
Viewpoint: What is sustainability? What are pesticides? The way media and politicians define ideologically diffuse words shape policy – often for the worse
Reality is perceived by the definitions we give; the black and white lines we draw upon a grey canvas. So ...
Viewpoint: Africa needs to reject commercial agriculture and embrace small farms if it hopes to address food insecurity
Rates of hunger in Africa are unacceptably high and getting worse. The UN State of Food Security and Nutrition in the ...
Viewpoint: 7 social media food scare disinformation mongers getting rich peddling disinformation
Fighting disinformation around agriculture can be frustrating. Just like a hydra, whenever you manage to slay (er, discredit) one influencer, ...
Viewpoint: Challenging the simplistic and false dichotomy between GM crops and environmental restoration
It would seem that environmental activists and organizations would be natural allies of approaches that could decrease pesticide use and ...
Global food security moonshot: 153 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates outline what needs to be done to prevent a future global food catastrophe
World leaders must make massive investments in agriculture to avert an imminent food catastrophe by 2050. This is the urgent ...
Viewpoint: Environmental activists roiled by Trump administration’s rollback of proposed limits on PFAS
Amid a flurry of actions curtailing Biden’s environmental policies, the administration of newly inaugurated President Donald Trump ... withdrew a ...
EU’s proposed Green Deal farming strategy poses serious challenges to South African farmers
The EU’s central strategy to implement the European Green Deal is designated “Farm to Fork” (F2F). A significant element in ...
European farmers concerned about climate change push to ground EU’s ‘Green Deal’ because of it restricts crop gene editing
Leveraging the proposed European Green Deal (EGD) announced in December 2019, the EU aims to become the first climate-neutral continent ...
Viewpoint: Global food deficiencies are the result of faulty policies, not a shortfall in production
[W]hen more than 150 Nobel laureates and World Food Prize winners sign an open letter calling for “planet-friendly moonshot efforts ...
Viewpoint: Here’s a plan to reduce chemical inputs in agriculture
Many countries have implemented policies to reduce the use of chemical inputs in agriculture. However, these policies face many obstacles ...
Breakthrough Institute report: ‘Why genetically engineered microbes need a pathway to market’
Genetically engineered microbes need a pathway to market. Fertilizer runoff and nitrous oxide emissions remain massive issues for agricultural climate ...
10 ways CRISPR gene editing is revolutionizing agriculture and medicine
What if we can delete the gene responsible for the life sentence called genetic disorder? What if we can modify ...
Viewpoint: Genetically modified crop advantage: Block on advanced sustainable farming technology cripples Africa’s goal of food and farming independence
The future growth of Africa will be driven through conventional breeding approaches and the use of biotechnologies, which can produce ...
Viewpoint: Agroecology and other variations on organic farming that seek to mimic nature are doomed to fail
Organic farming, regenerative agriculture, and agroecology all aim to mimic nature under the assumption that natural systems offer the best ...
